Week 2: The Book Burning Type

I know  a diary is not a book in the usual sense. It hasn't been published or edited or sent to a printer. Sometimes it offers no greater insight than what the person had for lunch that day. Most are never intended to be read, so they rarely contribute anything meaningful to the world of literature. But then again, sometimes they do.

I think of the journals we have been reading for this course; Anne Frank's, Sylvia Plath's, and Sir Walter Scott, among others. I think of what the world may have been like or even my childhood for that matter if we didn't have those diaries and I can't imagine how much emptier it would be if someone had burned those diaries before they had a chance to be read. Anne Frank's diary started me on my path to writing and journaling. I read it as a 4th grader and devoured her words, emotions, and insights in my own immature way. But the impact it had on me is undeniable. I cannot say that I would have started writing and journaling as early as I did if I had not read that book.

What if your diaries hold the key to someone else's passions? What if your experiences, however terrible or wonderful, draw such an emotional response from someone that it changes their lives? What if those words were never read? Their potential never recognized? Or the fire they could have ignited in another person was extinguished before it had even had the chance to send up a spark?

That's what I think of when I think of burning diaries. True, most of our diaries will never be read by anyone other than ourselves and maybe a handful of our closest family members. But even so, their impact could be so meaningful. What if my mother had kept a diary? If she had poured her soul onto pages and pages and someday I was able to read it and understand her heart. Would I want to? Would I be better off? I am not sure. But I would have liked to chose. And maybe someday my kids will feel the same way. Maybe they will read my journals and fall in love with their mother in a new way, or maybe not. But if I burned them, that would never be an option.

So I don't think I am the book burning type. I just don't have it in me. Maybe because I think too much. Maybe because some egotistical part of myself would like to hold onto the possibility that my writing could change someone's life. I am not really sure. It's a combination of all of the above. I guess I just don't care who reads my diary. If I am dead when it happens, well it won't impact me in the slightest. And if I am alive, and heaven forbid they read something they don't like, well then that's on them for invading someone's privacy and they can live with that. No sweat off my back. I am not burning my journals any time soon.

Week 2: "Ryan Started the Fire"

First off, my title is a reference to The Office, hopefully anyone reading this got that. 

     Personally, I would never destroy my journals/diaries. We spend all this time sitting down and writing about our feelings and about the events and situations we have lived through. What would be the point in destroying all that? I will definitely go back and read all my diaries one day when I am living in my own house and have my own family. I'm sure some of it will make me laugh, some of it will depress me, and some of it will just be a huge "oh my gosh, I totally forgot about that" moment. For the most part, I wouldn't want my family or friends to read my private thoughts, although I'm sure there will be some things I'll want to share with them in the future- especially funny stories. Instead of destroying them, I would just be keeping them in a box or something somewhere safe in my house. As far as what happens to your journals when you pass away one day, if you are paranoid and don't want anybody to ever read them, then yes, I think burning them could be a good option for you. However, maybe you want to leave them for your grandchildren, for example. It could be something fun for them to read while still connecting them to you even after your passing. 

     I strongly believe that anybody who has a diary should be given the automatic right to privacy. If someone wants a safe space to vent on paper, then they are absolutely allowed to do that. That right of privacy should be respected. There can be so many different purposes for writing in a journal. It can be something to vent to, giving you peace of mind. It can help you really assess a situation and realize something you didn't before. It can help you notice things within yourself that you'd like to work on. The motivations are endless. 

    

Week 2: I'm Not Gonna Start the Fire

I don't think I could ever destroy my journals.  Yes, some of the stuff I write in them is embarrassing, and there is a ton I wouldn't want people to read, but they're important to me.  Even if no one ever reads them, I'm proud to have written them, and would like to keep them for myself.  Maybe one day I'll read through them if I'm feeling sentimental.  Don't get me wrong, I keep them locked away where no one will ever find them, my privacy is very important to me.  But who knows?  Maybe they'll be read when I die, I wouldn't care who reads them then, and offer my surviving family a little insight into who I was behind the mask I put on for the world to see.  If they would even care about such a thing.

Let It Burn, Let It Burn!!

I remember my mother used to always tell me that when she would write in her journal, she would write everything down, tear the page out of the journal, and rip it up. It didn't matter whether her thoughts were sad, angry, or the happiest, she just always made it a priority to make sure she didn't keep it around. I've only done that if I felt that what I said didn't sound right, or if what I wrote made no sense. I never use to think it was that serious. I have kept all of my old diaries and journals from middle school to high school, even the early ones I had when I first started my college journey. Every now and then I go back and read them. When I would read them,  I would always laugh and be amazed at what I used to write about, the things that used to bother me, what would cross my mind and how I used to write in general. I like to see my growth and I like to see how my thoughts have changed. I don't think the way I used too and I could always see on paper the phases when things would change.
Now that I have made my way on this new path, I can't say I would want to keep everything now. My thoughts aren't the same. My experiences are more deep. I think that's why I rarely write anything down anymore. I usually write in my notepad on my phone, than after a certain amount of time, I delete all my notes. We as human beings are always changing our way of thinking. We change in general, sometimes for the good and sometimes for the bad. Personally I don't always want the constant memory to continue to linger on, so I choose to get rid of it. I probably would burn my diaries, or simply delete any trace of my written thoughts I wouldn't want anyone to see. I wouldn't have a problem leaving around my old innocent teenage thoughts, I guess it all depends on what I would be burning, and how important it would mean to me if it was left behind for everyone to see.

Week 2: Give People The Chance To Put Your Journals On A Shelf

Just because you intend something, doesn't mean it will happen. You can accidentally do something mean - but it's an accident because you have good intentions (that's not always an excuse, though). You can intend for your journal to not be read, but someone might have already found it and read it. Maybe when you left it out rather carelessly that one time by mistake, or perhaps a nosy family member carefully combed your room and now you have an avid subscriber to your life and your innermost thoughts unbeknownst to you.

Or maybe not.

Regardless, you get to decide what YOU do with YOUR journals. Now the question is; when your lifeline is coming to an end, should you destroy your journals?

On one hand, if you keep then then you run the inevitable risk of them being found, and worse, read. No doubt the words on the pages would be broadcast after your passing. Not everyone needs to know everything about you. It would be so embarrassing!

On the other hand... If you destroy them, no one would really know about you. Maybe this is getting too existential, but most people want to leave some mark on the world after they've left. The painful truth of it is that a lot of the general population will not be credited for doing something great that contributes to the building blocks of the future - they'll settle down with a family (or a bunch of cats) and pass the days doing the bare minimum. Sure you hear about older family members through stories told by others, but the stories fade with time. Make an heirloom. Make your mark.

I'm not trying to persuade anyone one way or another. I've been told that destroying your journals at some point is a purifying experience. Which is a little confusing to me because I feel that if you feel impure after writing in the diary, or if you want to forget that you felt a certain way in your past, then it sort of defeats the purpose but I digress. Like I said. You do you.

The way that I see it is, if you keep your books around then you're serving a purpose. If you plan to destroy your personal books when you're old or dying, the worst that would happen if you kept them instead is that they would be found by whoever is cleaning out your crap from your house then read sometime later. Who cares? What are they going to do? You'll be in the ground anyway. Skeletons can't blush from embarrassment.

Might I suggest an alternative, or perhaps a happy medium of both? I know I got a little deep with the existentialism and maybe making you feel small and insignificant. Hopefully this will cheer you up; bury your journals instead. Preserve them, keep them whole and when the time comes, bury them. That way they don't have to be found by those that may have to deal with the consequences of your writing. But they can be found later, way in the future by someone who is recording and analyzing history, the same way we do now. Your name and thoughts and feelings can become the building material for the future. Y'know, for when aliens want to eventually run us off of Earth and start building on top of our cities.

Week Two: Water the Burning Diaries

Burning the Diaries is about a who is dying burning 40 years of her diaries. Her reason for doing this is so no one else could read them when she’s gone in including her children. She says that diaries are irresistible. And knows that if she leaves her dairies untainted that someone will get curious and start reading her diaries which were private and also had some intimate details she didn’t want anyone to know. But she also goes on to mention that she has a blog that she posts on to take about her daily life. This is hypocritical to me because she’s giving pieces of her life to an audience but is burning her diaries so that no one will get too much information about her.

My question is why wouldn’t she want her children to learn from her mistakes? The Arthur says “Burning those diaries, I realized I didn’t want my sons to know how profoundly I had suffered from the slides down the chutes, the tumbles through the holes that gaped open in the scaffolding of my life. That would be too hard for them. I wanted them to remember me as one who clambers back.” But wouldn’t reading about the problems that she had to get through give them hope when they are going through similar situations?

I think that burning her dairies was a mistake because I think that someone could her benefited from reading them. I think if her boys would have gotten ahold of them that they would have gotten to know their mother on a more personal level. Me personally, If I kept a journal, I would have saved my dairies for my daughter because I want her to know me, the real me. Like she said in her article “I should know. I spent years as an adolescent rooting around in my parents’ closets looking for letters, sorting through boxes of letters and photographs, riffling through sock drawers, searching for clues about who they were, how they came together, why on earth I was on earth?” I just don’t understand why she would rob her boys her getting to understand her life better. And if she decided one day that my diaries are something that should be destroyed, I would trust her to make the right decision. But for me I would be happy to read a family member dairy because I believe that it would be a part of history. But I wouldn’t want to read a girlfriend’s diary because I feel that it would belong to her family.

Week Two: Hide Ya' Kids, Hide Ya' Diary

If someone today asked you to remember something specific from sixth grade, could you visualize a clear memory?

Probably not. Unless something significant or traumatic happened at a specific age, or on an exact date, the concept of time can get misconstrued. For example, I vaguely remember passing out during lunch period when I was in elementary school. It might have been third grade (or fourth grade? …or fifth grade?) when that happened, but I cannot be 100% certain. Therefore, I would group evident memories into four specific time periods: elementary school, middle school, high school, and college. Time moves too quickly, and it almost seems bizarre to think about things that happened in a precise grade once someone grows older. Although, this journal prompt forced me to think about a particular time that I went through someone else’s diary, and I classify this memory to my middle school era. 

Hold onto your diaries, folks: this is the story of how I went through someone’s private journal. 

It was a sticky, summer day. My grandmother picked me up from my house, and excitedly exclaimed that I was going to have a sleepover at her house. It was Labor Day weekend, so she informed me that we would stop into Kohl’s on Saturday to do some back-to-school shopping. It was a long, boiling car ride to her house; the air-conditioning was not working in the van. The wind from the outside smacked my face, and I was debating on rolling the windows up. Considering that my shirt was plastered to my body from sweat, so I refuted the idea. We pulled up to Margaret Street; I knew it was my grandma’s street because of the store on the corner, Wallie’s (they served the best Slurpee’s). As we headed down the street to her house, I remember smelling a foul odor. It burned my nostrils, so I searched to find the source. Behind Wallie’s stood a group of teenagers smoking cigarettes. Two teenagers leaned against the fence, and were making out. I was pretty immature at that age; I did not truly take interest in the concept of drugs, sex, or anything a teenager could be tempted with.

“That’s disgusting.” I groaned to my grandma. 

“That’s why you’re never going to do any of it!” She replied with a stare. 

Once I got into the house, I asked my grandma about a good place to hunt for school supplies. My mom still hadn’t taken me to purchase anything from my teacher’s lists, and it was giving me middle-schooler anxiety. My grandma told me to search in Matthew’s old room; he had a bunch of unused notebooks, and binders from recently graduating college. Matthew was my only uncle on my mom’s side, and I adored him. As I dug through bins and drawers of his old stuff, I played dress up. I posed in the mirror wearing his purple senior graduation cap, and a neon tie from Prom. The final drawer in his desk consisted of socks (that was odd). I thought to myself: why would there be socks in a desk drawer? Digging through the mismatched greys, whites, and yellowish-whites a small black journal toppled into my hands. 

Uh-Oh.

I opened the cover, it read: Matthew McMillian’s Journal. The phrase “DO NOT READ” was written in red ink pen at the bottom of the page. I was too excited, I couldn’t believe that I was getting the chance to read all my uncle’s thoughts. Besides, my uncle never would have done anything bad, right? I skimmed pages, he mostly wrote about school, sports, and if my grandma or mom was “pissing” him off. Mid-way through the journal, I hit gold—he was writing about his crush! I was day-dreaming if he would be writing about my future auntie. When I stopped to think about it, my uncle never brought anyone to Christmas; he was always alone. This made me more intrigued; did my make-believe auntie break his heart in high school? I couldn’t wait for the answer, my eyes hung on every word that he wrote about this mystery person. The way he wrote about their blonde hair, and blue eyes—the y’s were all written with significantly curly tails. He wrote a smiley face after he described what they were wearing on the first day of school. It didn’t hit me until six pages later, but my uncle was not describing his crush as female. I don’t think a girl would have been described as having a “sexy, muscular back”. And I don’t think a girl would have smiled at my uncle in the men’s room after first period. That was the moment when I realized I had messed up by reading his diary. Did my grandma know? Did my mom know? Why was I never told? My mind was racing, and I quickly shed myself of his clothes; I violated him. I realized, in that tiny room of my grandma’s house, that my uncle was gay. My uncle is gay, and that is how I found out. At that time, I didn’t even know what being gay meant, or if being gay was okay. It didn’t make me upset with my uncle, or make me love him any less; I was just a distraught middle-schooler trying to make sense of the situation.

Years passed, and I never said a word to anyone. I was skeptical about everyone in my family. In my freshman year of high school, I finally felt mature enough to understand what I actually read in Matthew’s journal that day, so I decided to ask my mom about him when she was driving me home from school:

“Is Matthew gay, Mom?”

She seemed perplexed, but not angry. 

“Yes, he is. How do you know?” She replied. 

“I read his diary at Grandma’s house.” I confided to her. 

“Yeah, he is. Do not say anything, though. Your grandpa does not know.” She focused on the road. 

After the conversation about my uncle, my mom and I had an even longer discussion about what being gay meant, and how everyone is entitled to love whoever they want. 

***

To this day, the only people in my family that know my uncle is gay besides myself, are my mom, grandma, and brother. My grandpa still does not know, or acknowledge the fact that my uncle does not have kids, or has never been married. My uncle does have a boyfriend, and I have never told him that I read his private diary. I felt ashamed after I read it, but I felt more ashamed having to keep a secret for years. The thoughts made me feel isolated from my family. Therefore, I would suggest people burn their diaries (or hide them better). This reminds me of a quote from the weekly reading, in Burning the Diaries, Dominique Browning said: 

“Diaries are irresistible. And I am an unregenerate snoop. I will read any diary left in my path. I’ve even bent my path toward diaries carelessly left lying around. I know it is horrid of me, but I can’t help it.”

I lock my diaries in a small safe that I own; I keep them, so I can look back, and read them for laughs, or reminiscence purposes. I would not want other people reading my diaries unless I allowed them to (especially not my family members). Often, I will write about extremely personal thoughts. My diaries should be categorized in the Not Safe for Work (NSFW) edition. If someone were to break into my safe because I were to pass, and read my diaries I would want them to burn them immediately. Especially if I have children, I would not want them reading my dark, personal thoughts. 

P.S. Names have been changed in the story to hide identities, I do not know anyone named Matthew McMillian. 

Week 2: Why Leave Words

My personal opinion is that I don't believe in the destruction of personal journals.  I think that in my way i don't mind having a part of myself from a different time to look back on.  No matter how much I have changed or how different I am now I think it is important to reflect on how you used to think and who you used to be.  In this way you can see how far you have come as a person and you have the ability now to keep moving forward.

Even though in theory it would be nice to burn all of your old journals maybe as a symbolic way of leaving who you used to be behind.  I think there is a real disservice in this kind of thought process.  It seems to be a perspective that you are no longer connected to who you used to be when in fact you are the way you are today as an exact product of who you used to be.

On the topic of who actually would get to read those old thoughts I think that comes down to the individual basis. In my case I believe that journals should be meant for family when you are gone.  The reason I have this thought process is because my mom throughout my whole life has actually kept a journal that she writes in every morning.  She has specifically told my sister and I that these are for me and her when she is no longer around. Although this wont be for a long time,  I love the fact that I will still be connected to her even when she is no longer physically her.

Week 2: Burn it to the Ground

Oh, I would absolutely burn my diaries, if I didn’t already burn each entry directly after it had been written.  If I, myself, were not to do it, the people I would ask to burn my diaries in the event of my death (i.e. the people closest to me) are the exact people I would never want to misconstrue my words and be hurt by them in any way.  Momentary feelings are often fleeting and never an image of the bigger picture.  I would never want my last impression on someone I love to force them into a life of focusing on that small piece of the puzzle, forgetting that there’s even a puzzle at all. 

Dominique Browning, in her article, “Burning the Diaries,” talks about how her own curiosity, insatiable at times, led her to go looking for the secrets of others she did not realize she may not want.  This reminded me of a past memory and possibly one of the roots of my resistance to diary keeping.  I had wrongly invaded the privacy of my own mother and had found information I was in no way developed or experienced in life enough to handle.  That information had come out of me in an explosive, hurtful way and I will never forget the pained look of betrayal on her face.  Now that I am an adult, wife, and mother myself, I understand that there were complex feelings and emotions bearing down on her everyday and that any of what she ever went through was hers alone.  I had no more of a right to any of that private information than any person has to another’s.  A person can know all of the factual information surrounding the circumstances of another, but they will never truly know how that other person felt, and it is those personal feelings that govern a person’s actions.

Browning also considers her own children and knows that, eventually, they will “become voraciously curious about what exactly their parents did do, what were their secrets, who were they, anyway” (Browning).  I actually think about this often, and it only helps to strengthen my apprehension at putting my most personal experiences and feelings in writing.  Talking to my mother and hearing her story directly from her is such a better experience than reading it ever could be.  However, I also think often about my own mortality, as many parents do.  Leaving my children unable to hear my story directly, when they are old enough to understand me as a person separate from their mother, is one of my most profound fears.  To combat this anxiety, I write for posterity, to each of them in their own respective journals.  I probably don’t do this as often as I should but I try to make sure that the most life shaping events and how I or they felt during them make it into those books.  This information though, is shaped by me as I want them to hear and understand it.  The voice I give that writing is, I hope, one of love and wisdom.

I think that Jenny Alexander hit the nail square on the head, in her article “Why you Should Never Read Someone Else’s Journal,” when she said “If you read someone’s journal . . . . you will not find the person there, and thinking that you will could give you every which kind of wrong impression” (Alexander).  I would always want to represent myself to any person in my life as genuinely and as much in the appropriate context as I can.  Giving anyone access to thoughts and feelings that do not contextually belong to them would compromise that goal.

Week 2: Saved from the Flames

I just bought a journal earlier this week, and even though I have yet to start writing in it, I can’t imagine ever burning it. If someone wants to read my journal after I am long gone, I say: All the power to them. I think the reason I might feel this way is because I am a pretty private person. I know sounds backwards since you’d think a private person would be more guarded about something as intimate as a journal but allow me to explain. Maybe because I am such a private person, there are some things about myself that I will not be willing to put into writing, but rather keep for my mind alone. I’m not saying that my journal will not be personal and include moments in my life that I would rather keep to myself. I just do not think I could write something in a journal that would bother me if someone were to read it after I am gone. In fact, I hope if someone does decide to read my private writing in the distant future that they are able to learn or reminisce about my experiences in life.

When I was younger, I read a couple entries in my sister’s diary. At first, I remember feeling a little bit empowered. I knew these secrets that nobody knows, and what was even better was that my sister didn’t even know that I knew. However, I am not exaggerating when I say that this feeling went away as soon as I set down that diary. After that, I just felt plain guilty because I invaded her privacy. I realized there was a reason why she kept these thoughts to herself, and I wanted to forget everything. Needless to say, I never read from her diary again.

Just as how I did not like reading my sister’s private writing, I wouldn’t like her or anyone else reading mine while I am still alive. The reasoning is knowing that after people read these thoughts, ideas, dreams, or whatever it is that I will write about, they will be able to look me in the eye afterward knowing this information. Therefore, I plan on keeping my new journal to myself for now, but when I’m no longer here, I give those close to me full permission to do whatever they want with it (especially my sister since I feel like I kind of owe it to her).