Dear Diary

Hey Butterbeans,

As you might have guessed from the title of the piece this one’s about my diary, and no I don’t mean this blog – that would be a very public diary.

I’m not sure if you picked up on it in some of those travelling posts (all those years ago 😭) but I also keep a diary. Yep, an old fashioned pen on paper diary that I spill all my internal thoughts and madness. 📝

I’ve just realised it’s mentioned in the hitlist as well, because I set a Hitlist task to write in it every day for a year, so I kept up the habit. Which worked, I write at least every other day, if not daily now.

I’ve kept one on and off again (by which I mean there have been a few weeks where I didn’t write when I was younger) since I was around sixteen, if I remember the life events going on in the oldest one I can find. Yes I’ve kept them all, it’s fun to flick back every now an again and see what was going on in my life, and also all the weird things I use to get upset by – legit there’s an entry that focuses on a friend of a friend’s weird toes. In my defence they were very weird! But probs not three pages of a diary level of weird. 🤣

I’m not sure how the other diary-ers of you out there do it, I know there’s a lot of hype still on the bullet journals, but my writing style for my diary is probs pretty similar to my life blogs. In that I tend to just stream of conscious it, it being what’s happened during the day an how I’m thinking / feeling about it, and also all the other things I’m still stressing over.

Don’t get me wrong there are days when I don’t manage to write it all, or when it’s basically midnight when I’m heading to be so I just bullet point the main points of the day and then fill the diary in on everything the next day.

There’s an entry from last week that literally says “He’s coming over” followed by about seventeen exclamation marks. Ikr, drama queen entry! 👸🏻

As I mentioned for a few years I was pretty on and off with the diary an am more regular with it now, but I’ve found that writing things own actually helps me handle it (not that my life is that stressful) and also work out how I feel about things. There was some really sad entries after breakups and some really confused ones after initial hookups!

I know this because every once in a while I’ll open up the box of diaries, usually when I’m adding one to the box or am trying to remember when something happened. And because I love to read and they’re full of lol-able moments I end up spending an hour or two reading my teenage drama.

My mum used to keep a diary when she was younger as well, not sure if she still does. But I know that there’s a few of them buried in her photo box under the stairs. Pretty sure she’s not looked at hers in forever, the box is genuinely at the furthest back point under the stairs, with other boxes on top of it, behind a coat rack.  I feel like my box of diaries might end up like that, for someone to stumble upon one day and wonder what the fuck I was thinking when I decided to write for seventeen pages about my first encounter with the man who would later get twenty-four pages about our break up, two of which was pure waffle about his teeth. 😂

But other than being a great laugh when I read, and confusing whoever ends up finding them once I’m dead, I find my diaries super useful at the time. Because they let me process everything, and when I’m in a shitty mood they help me work out why and move past it. They also make me way less stressed about things like boys who send more mixed signals than Jekyll and Hyde did, because I can write all my reasons for stressing down instead of them playing on a loop in my head. Just going to take a minute to point out I’m not boy obsessed, they just tend to confuse me more than work, family and friends so I obvs write about how they’re fucking with my head (and if I’m lucky other places) more than the fact me and my friend still getting along and laughing at a particular episode of Brooklyn Nine Nine.

Anyways, feel like that’s probs enough about diaries and all the secrets I spill in mine. Let me know if you have anywhere that’s good to get a new one though, I’m nearly at the end of my current one!

Enjoy the below picture of eighteen-year-old Abby alternating between reading, napping and writing in her diary! (Also that hair!!!!) 💖