I was in fifth grade and ten years old when I got my first diary.
On the blank page before January 1st, I wrote: Dear Diary, I will try to tell the truth as well as I can.My first diary!
Yes, I started my writing career with an existential crisis. Telling the truth seemed to be worth striving toward. And hard work. And maybe not attainable. I clearly understand the difficulty of truth-telling in journals.
Honestly, this intention from my ten-year-old self is exactly how I start my current journals. Telling the truth is very hard. I try to get there, but there are so many layers to truth, and it’s not always possible. Truth is like a slippery wriggling fish you try to hold in your hand. You maybe have it for a few seconds, but then you loose it, and you can spend a lot of time trying to get it back, only to hold it for another moment. How can I possibly have known this at the age of ten? And yet, I did.
Memories can be unreliable. I’m thankful to have this entertaining piece of personal history to set my memories straight. This diary time capsule reveals truths I’ve forgotten, bending my memories away from the fabrications that time creates.
