Dear Diery.....

January 6th, 1998
Dear Diery,
Tanisha thinks she so cool. She is mean to me. In school she always tells on me. This is why I haet her. She is moveing. Im sad and hapi at the same time. I have a boyfiend his name is Kane! I have folen in love with him. Today I am sad bekus I am bord. I have nothing to do! My brather is bothring me also he got me in trubel 3 times.

My first ever diary entry was written on January 6th, 1998. Even at the age of seven I found the need to write about how I felt, what I thought, and who or what made me feel that way. I have always wrote about what I was going through because I hoped that seeing it in black and white might make me truly believe what I know, or it would end up telling me what I don’t. This remains true, and to the present day and I am exactly like the little girl I was back in grade one. Flipping through and reading all of my journal entries, nothing much has changed; I now have a broader vocabulary and all of my elementary school exercises to help with the spelling and grammar, but when I am irritated, miserable, or happy, I still turn to my trusted blank paper and my handy dandy pen. But without a doubt, ten years from now I will open up my journal to today’s date, and once again get a laugh out of my terrible spelling and lack of detail. I’ll probably be disgusted by my grammar and sentence structure, as well.
My greatest fear in writing is not being rejected for my lack of flow and organization, because it has been a lifelong battle to improve in those areas and they are insecurities that I have confidence in. It isn’t because I’m afraid of writing something personal, and having people judge it harshly. What terrifies me is the idea of writing something personal and having the reader see all the invisible ink on my page, of all the things that I subliminally say.
I understand that we all build up castle-like walls to guard ourselves; we all dig a moat and fill it with dirty water. We put so much effort into strengthening our defenses, but in the end, we always have a drawbridge, and we manage to keep the gate open just long enough to let the enemy in. My drawbridge is my writing, my enemies are my close friends, and when my writing gets deep I open the gate and invite everyone onto my territory. Once this has happened, I just let them do as they please on my castle grounds. The invitation is an act of confidence, but it is in my confidences that I am insecure. I never know what the enemy is capable of doing, once they are in so deep. I’m terrified of people seeing a side of me that I only show when I write. I feel vulnerable when others analyze me, and I know that in my writing, a lot of what I keep hidden pours out through my words. Perhaps that is why I now shy away from the prospect of a career in writing.
Growing up, I always wanted to be a journalist. I was envious of their talent, their ability to recreate what they're eyes see on a blank and expressionless piece of paper. I always tried to mirror their writing, reflect their brilliance into my works; mostly I wrote opinion pieces, but I found my opinions were uninteresting. So I started to write poems about forests and beaches, places that I always wished I could magically deport too. I always wished I could stop time in my poetic destinations and be alone to think, breath, and not just listen, but really hear.
As a writer, I never challenged myself, and only recently have I come to realize that I need to write, just as I need to breathe. The blank paper has always been my personal support system; my writing has often ended up being my mentor. I need my words to come alive when I read them, and distract me from reality.