All I want for Christmas is some privacy
A personal story about the practice of journaling and the privacy desired for it.
The Christmas gift was small and perfectly square. I opened it and found a diary that was bubblegum pink and had a heart with a black and white spotted dog on the front of it. Most importantly, it had a lock on the side. My first diary. I was eight years old. A place to write all my third grade secrets — what music I liked, how frustrated I could get with my parents, which boy was the cutest in our class. It was like a friend, one that would never judge me. I wrote in it regularly, the early clumsy loops of my cursive handwriting, and in the regular practice of private journaling found something special.
The physical practice of writing was a release. It helped me sort through my thoughts, pour out frustrations and longings, process events of the day, and explore ideas about the person I was — all in a very private and personal way that wasn’t possible for me in regular conversation.
It was in seventh grade that I really committed to journaling. I would write every day just before bed. I wrote about the struggles of early puberty, the mood swings, the sweet blossoming of crushes, first dances, first kisses, and even the awakening of my mind to new ideas as school became more challenging. Processing these new emotions and experiences through the act of writing was therapeutic. I felt free there. No one would read it, no one would make fun of me for what I wrote. The assumption of total privacy begot total honesty and in being able to be totally honest with myself, I could more fully be my authentic self. Writing with the expectation of privacy gave me permission to proclaim my wildest ideas, my silliest thoughts, and share the most embarrassing moments without fear of what others might think.
My commitment to daily journaling became a discipline. Writing down the events of the day and processing how I felt about them also helped me start to define what my core values were and who I wanted to be as a person. Having years of a private written log to go back to also helped me see my past mistakes and how they helped shape the story of my life. If there had been an audience for my journal, I could have never felt as free.
I kept journaling every day, through middle school and high school. After high school I took a gap year where I lived with a family in India. My journal became more precious as I found myself in a new, unfamiliar place where everything I had known was turned around and I didn’t know the unwritten rules. My close friends and family were twelve and a half time zones away. I saw incredible things that I wanted to share. Journaling became even more important to me to record these scenes and feel like I had a friend in between the pages.
In that year abroad, my privacy was violated. The conversation started so innocently.
“Good morning, Katie!” My host dad greeted me over leftover chappatis and daal for breakfast. “What have you been doing with your friends?” I started telling him about the cultural programs that had been put together for us recently. “We learned how to play kho-kho, we saw a rangoli demonstration, and learned a little song this week in our Hindi language class.” While listening to me, he was fidgeting with his empty chai cup. “And what about your friend,” he asked. “What’s his name, Ryan, Richie…?” I shrugged and said he had been at class too. My host dad pressed, “Did he get in a fight or something? Is he going home?” I froze at the second question. My friend had confided in me that he was worried he would get sent home early and I had just written about that in my journal. There had been a fight, but only the four of us friends who were there knew about it. I hadn’t even written the details in my journal, but just briefly wrote that it happened. I excused myself from the table and went to my room where I kept my journal. I hadn’t noticed it before, but now I saw how some inserts were askew and recalled a few occasions when I had found my journal in a different spot from where I remembered leaving it. I had chalked it up to my forgetfulness, but now realized that someone else had been handling it, leafing through the pages, reading it.
As an eighteen year old, this was a crushing blow. Ten years of writing. I had grown up trusting that everyone would respect that a diary was a personal thing. Even though it was only my first diary that had a lock, I thought that there was an invisible lock on every other journal that others would respect. When it became clear that the unwritten rule of ‘you don’t read someone’s diary’ was broken, it was devastating.
I quit writing. I lost that safe space, that trust, the intimacy I had with my own writing, and I couldn’t bring myself to journal like I did before. I felt robbed, hurt, betrayed. The loss of that practice has, at times, been a physical pain. I’ve written here and there when I really needed an outlet to process something or had the urge to write about an experience, but nothing consistent. There is always a lingering fear of someone reading my private thoughts.
When I go into stores these days, I am still drawn to the blank book section. The pages and pages of unfilled space that I long to fill with my no-longer-clumsy cursive writing. I flip through the clean lined ones, the blank pages, and the ones with question prompts. I touch their covers — soft leather, smooth matte cardboard, and rough handmade paper. I admire the classic designs, the arty abstracts, the ones that either have a cliche painting or saying on the front. I breathe them all in and wish to return to that safe space of trust and privacy for my daily secrets.
Maybe this year for Christmas, I’ll ask Santa for a journal — with a lock.
Katie Evans is Director of Communications & Operations at the Center. You can follow Katie on Twitter at @mskatieevans.
