On Writing That No One Reads
As an avid diary-keeper, I consider writing to be a way of clearing my mind. There is no writing quite as safe or sacred as mindlessly jotting into one’s personal notebook.
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There’s no red squiggly underline beneath words you mistakenly spelled wrong; no one is on the other end expecting context or sanity from their author. It’s the most raw and pure form of writing, and who you are. Words written with zero expectations to be seen, seem to hold a depth that published—or in my case, submitted—writing could never.
For the sake of my well-being, I just need to delete all of my tabs. I need to scratch the Word document and grab a pen and paper. Sometimes words come out. Sometimes… they don’t.
I’ve carried around the same dingy grey notebook for around two years now, and am quickly approaching its final pages. Occasionally, I get a little embarrassed when it's visible in the stack of things I lug around with me. Stuck to it are stickers of bands I don't find myself listening to these days, and drawings of myself I don’t see my character in anymore. The pages hold the words of a girl I don’t completely align with anymore; they also hold the growth that brought me to who I am now.
I rarely read an entry back, but when I do, I can feel moments flood back to me the second I return to it. I can feel them in my handwriting, what pen I used, or the words I chose in my sloppy, documented thoughts. Lingo that I had forgotten I had used so frequently only 9 months ago.
I have documented just about every important detail of the last two years of my life in between my journals’ front and back. For some reason, the blank last pages are beginning to haunt me.
You would think I’m a New York Times bestseller writing their newest novel with the way I am avoiding finishing this journal.
It’s a weird concept, and it’s a weird time for this concept to be introduced to me.
My freshman year of college, and first year living in New York, is coming to a close right beside my journal. Both bring a haunting expectation of a good final ending. A good “last episode.”
Maybe what I’m mourning is not the journal itself, but what it represents. A place unseen and untouched by performance. So much of the writing we do is created with someone already in mind: a professor, a friend, a peer. And the moments that a piece of writing gains an audience, even an imaginary one, it changes shape. Suddenly, you can’t just pour your thoughts out on paper; you become aware of how you sound. You swap one adjective for another. You make yourself more reasonable, more charming, and more healed than you really are.
Even honesty can become a performance when it knows that it will be applauded.
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But, as said before, there is no honesty like the honesty between you and that blank page. Maybe it feels so rare and raw because it asks for nothing in return. It doesn't need to be concise or interesting. No one is waiting for a strong hook or a clearer conclusion.
And you definitely do not need to cite at least three credible sources at the end.
A journal lets you ramble; it lets you contradict yourself, exaggerate, circle the same feeling for six pages, and come back the next night pretending as if none of it happened. No smooth transition is expected between an emotional day and a fun night-out story.
The thing is, people are less forgiving than paper. But my journal has never asked me to be anything.
Pretending that this article is those last remaining pages has brought me to think that the real reason I am so scared of them is that, in ending this journal, I must also admit that a stretch of my life is over. That the girl who existed within them is no longer.
Those pages held thoughts I didn’t fully understand while I was living them; they held more reflection of my life than I realized I was putting into them. They had quietly kept a record of a time when things often felt uncertain, new, and constantly shifting.
What unsettles me is not the journal ending, but the fact that it already contains an ending I didn't notice happening. Nothing dramatic, nothing final in the moment, just a slow accumulation of pages, until I looked up and realized how far I am from the first few.
There’s something quite strange about holding an object that proves that you were once someone slightly different, without any clear moment where that shift occurred.
I am not sure what it means to finish something that only exists, because I kept not finishing it.
Do you write in a diary? Have you completed one? Leave a comment below.