Dear Diary

I have always had a fondness for the written word.  While I don't recall our house having a shelf full of books growing up, or my reading to my younger siblings,  I definitely remember lots of trips to the bookmobile.  I also remember hiding under my covers with a flashlight reading until I either fell asleep or the batteries died.  I remember getting caught with that flashlight and the lecture on the cost of batteries and how my father couldn't do his job without it and my sin of being wasteful.

After being introduced to Journaling by Sister Beatrice in the eight grade, I remember how hard it was for me to get a notebook and keep it hidden from the rest of the family.  I don't believe it was because they wanted to read my journal, it was just that paper for schoolwork was always in short supply in our house.

I remember packing up those journals and everything else I owned into several large boxes that I stored in my parent's basement when I moved to town for my first full-time job. I lived in a rented sleeping room near the bus line that took me to work. I'll never forget the day I came home to find that my Father, in a fit of temper, had thrown all those boxes on a blazing bonfire. He intended to burn all the contents of the basement and knowing my entire life accumulations except for some work clothes was stored there made no difference to him.

That did not stop me from keeping a journal but the frequency of the entries did diminish as my adult life got busier.  There was a long time period when I would only pick up that dime-store notebook to  recording my anger, hurt feelings or some great sadness that I could not discuss with anyone else.

For many different reasons I long ago destroyed all those tattered books but my need to put my thoughts and feelings on paper has never left me.  Now I keep them in a locked file on my external hard drive or just blatantly post them on one of the many blogs I have written over the years.   I will admit there are times when I wish I could go back and read the first scribbled pages of my teen years to learn if the person I became in any way resembles the person that young girl hoped to be.