Writing Into Existence

“I had a diary when I was little,” my best friend said during a conversation that extended beyond continents, “and then I realized my parents had read it.” One day, she found out that her diary was not placed into her drawer the way she always did. If you’re going to read my diary, at least place it back into the drawer the way you found it, she said. An amateur move by your parents, I added.
My friend hasn’t written in any diary ever since. Morning in New York City, afternoon in Stuttgart — which is where she is — , we both silently decided that no one had the time to unpack a childhood trauma.
I was never good at keeping diaries, and my half-written Looney Tunes-themed diaries can attest to that. Years change, but I don’t. I write every single day for a month or two, then I get overwhelmed with my teenage life and stop journaling. I had — actually — decided to get better at it after our apartment was robbed when we were on a vacation in the early 2000s. The last thing I had written in my diary before we left was how I was suspicious of our neighbors.
My parents had told them — and only them — that we were going to be away for a week. I’m worried they’re onto something, I had jotted down. A few days later, my parents got a call from one of our other neighbors: Someone had broken into our house. Everything was gone, or that was how it felt like. The burglar(s) didn't touch my room and oddly enough my dad’s laptop — which is an ancient artifact right now. They took most of my mom’s belongings.
Still to this day, I’m terrified of the power of my pen and my inner disaster-meter. I always want it to be wrong.
Six years ago, I watched a girl in my scriptwriting class scribble in her Moleskine. The soft black leather cover had vague stretch marks of overuse, and the beige pages were filled with who-knows-what genius idea. The professor would say something, she would nod and then frantically take notes, or draw some eccentric doodles. Whenever she had an idea, the pages became her mind’s canvas.
After class, I ran to the bookstore before it closed and bought the exact same notebook. I brainstormed story ideas, script outlines, short scenes, and occasionally wrote about good days and also bad ones. I taped tickets from concerts I attended and had a special section for my Disneyland trip during my sophomore year.
But, a few years into college, when I first started having feelings for someone, I couldn’t get myself to write in my Moleskine. I knew that some of the good memories would have been followed by my future worries. What if I was writing all this bad stuff into existence? Of course not, that was dumb so I blurted everything out. Things were over in less than a week.
Still, I used the notebook until the day I graduated. I flipped the last page as my college life came to an end. Somehow it all made sense as a unique journey I took with my notebook, and I wasn’t going to journal again — though everyone knows I’m really bad at ending things. Sooner or later, I change my mind.
So I did, two years later as I was checking out overly-priced memorabilia at my college bookstore. I had traveled up to New England for the weekend, back for commencement and losing myself in the bookstore. Just as I was about to extend my credit card, a black Moleskine with my school’s logo caught my eye. It was a hard cover, and I was not really into that but I snatched it anyway.
This is it, I had written in the very last page of my college journal — which now resides somewhere deep in my closet — , everything is finally in order. Oddly enough, nothing has been in order ever since, and yet, even with my journal track record (or curse?), I cannot stop writing. Twenty pages into this new one, I am looking forward to all the times my instincts will be right — and (at least once in a while) wrong.
July 2017, Bryant Park
