“This is not a diary” with a twist of Magritte.
I wanted to present you a way out.
I’ve been writing on my diary since 2004 (7-years-old) and my “posts” went from “Today I went to my grandma’s house and it was fun” to actually describe and reflect on what I had done that day. I was first introduced to it when my mom’s friend handed me a blue A5 notebook with teddy bears on it and told me “Here, it can be your diary now.” from that point on I wasn’t just looking at a notebook – no, this was something much better now, like a notebook 2.0.
Since then I’ve written 5 books, all of them with precious memories. From the days at “Cantinho do recreio” (leisure centre for children) with me and my friend burning ants with magnifying glasses and teacher Margarida saying how morally wrong that is, to talk about all of my crushes and embarrassments that oddly enough I want to remember.
Hell! I have a whole diary on my days at “Cantinho do recreio” and that’s without a doubt my favourite. Whenever I want to laugh I just flick through to July, it’s truly therapeutical.
I’ve always been afraid of what people would think about me writing about my life on a notebook and that’s because when you tell someone that you have a diary, usually an image of hateful teenagers writing on their sparkly pink A5 notebook with their fluffy pink pen comes up. That is wrong.
I use my diary as an escape and I would never be embarrassed about the fact that I still always have one next to my bed.
What I say in those pages is just between me and them and I know that only if someone opens them the words will be out. Other times is just to talk, talk about my day and say things that I would like to remember in the future.
I remember in high school when I told someone that I had a diary. Their first reaction was “Yeah you do look like those girls that would write in a diary”. what does that mean? I think it is just the pink teenage girl chewing gum that crosses their mind. I was so embarrassed once that I even said “Oh it’s not a diary! It’s a journal, I don’t write about winey stuff!”.
Who would have said that a set of pages would help my stress so much? They also help immensely to write a better English/Portuguese, I have benefited so much from this activity and even today I can’t just let my little notebook go, the only difference is that I don’t write as often now but whenever I feel like talking my diary is where I go first.
Choose a pen and rip some pages, believe me. It will make a difference.
Random Chipmunk 