My Diaries

I started a new diary yesterday and this time I'm actually going to write in it as if it were a real person. An ACTUAL person that ACTUALLY exists and is living just a few blocks away... for now. I tend to write about this person a lot, and my hope is when I'm writing now I'll feel more comfortable putting things down when I say "You" instead of "Him" or "Her."
Example:
"Dear Diary... I sent YOU a letter today and I hope YOU get it by the time you leave the MTC. I miss YOU very much and YOU'RE all I think about and I had a dream about YOU last night..."
You get my drift.
No, not all my entries are like that. Some of them are, but not all.

This means I can also ask my diary questions. What would YOU do in this situation.
And then, of course, I'd ask myself that same question... WWTPD? What Would This Person Do? And would that be a smart choice? Knowing this person, yes it would be. This person is very wise.

It's working so far, but then again it's only been one entry.

Moral of the story: make writing fun.


I'm going to put this in for my own reference. You need not read any more. As a matter of fact, I beg of you not to.
I've always named my diaries. Here they are, hopefully in as close an order as possible:

Charlotte -- Charlotte was my first successful Elementary school journal, but I never ended up completely finishing her. I named her after Charlotte Church, my favorite singer at the time. I wrote about pre-pubescent drama. Not as much about boys yet, but more about my girlfriends and how jealous I was that they were always doing things together without me. Also about times when I got in trouble. Times when I felt guilty. Charlotte had grapes on the front cover, and a green spine. Her pages were really smooth -- almost too smooth. The pen hardly left a dent on the page.

Lilly -- I started her the same time I started Charlotte. This was the one I named after my great grandmother, and my future daughter. She was the one I finished first. She was made out of handmade paper, and instead of folding right-to-left like a normal book she had two front flaps that you pulled open like cupboard doors and they were held together by a string and two buttons. I wrote in sparkly gel pen and I only wrote one page a day -- I was very strict about that. One page a day, and only on one side because the pen tended to leak through onto the other side with such thin paper. Lilly was a seventh grade diary. All about boys I liked and girls who hated me. Nothing much changed for a long time...

Heart -- I started her summer of seventh grade year. I think I had the most fun writing in Heart. She was much smaller with lines all the way from one end of the page to another. She had a denim back and a sequin/mirror cover. I liked writing with a blue pen in Heart. I wrote about one boy in particular, Paul, who I liked all through Junior High. This was the time when I wrote really weird looking "s's" and I wrote really hard on the page. I also would put stickers and draw small pictures in Heart. I'd always sign my name a different way, too. I never just put "Hannah." I'd put, "Hopelessly in love" or "Hannah the great" or "Lilly" or something else cool. I thought I was allowed to experiment a lot with Lilly. She didn't look very formative or proper. She was a teenage girl's journal, and I was a teenage girl. So I made the most of it.

Amy -- Amy was blue. I got her from Whitley Brickey for Christmas in eigth grade. There were a few reasons why I named her Amy. For one thing, there was a picture of a water fairy on the front, painted in watercolor by a woman named Amy. I also really liked Amy Lee from Evanescence at the time (these were my goth years), and the fairy on the cover just looked like an Amy. So Amy it was. Amy had a blue ribbon that kept her closed. She was a spiral notebook, but the cover kept the entire thing, spirals at all, contained in a nice washed out blue sheen. There were no real rules with Amy. I wrote about anything and everything. The biggest thing I can remember writing about was my first experience with a boy named David during a Church trek. I mostly wrote in black pen with this one, but there were no rules. Her lines were too wide-ruled and it was hard to flip the pages.

Christine -- She was also a spiral, but this time the coils were exposed and there was just a plastic cover over a bunch of loose leaf pages. They changed colors, though, from one section to the next. On the outside was a dragonfly. I named Christine after the woman from the Phantom of the Opera. Christine was divided into four sections. The first two were for actual writing, and the last two were for lyrics and mementos and whatever else I wanted to put there. I remember my first period was while I was with Christine, as well as lots of things about David. That was the epitome of my strange Junior High experience, I think.

Elena -- Elena was a diary I got WAY back in elementary school when I still liked Star Wars. It was a Queen Amidala diary, and she had a REAL, bona-fide lock system that kept her sealed shut. I don't even know where the key is anymore, but now I'm okay with having her open. All my other journals are. Anyway, I named her Elena because I HAD given the journal to my sister. She eventually let me have it back, but not before writing a few entries in it herself, all of them adressed to an Elena. So I kept the name for her. Elena began my life in high school. I wrote about friends and the stupid mistakes they were making, my Oklahoma experience, and of course, Mike. Elena was VERY small with a lot of pages. It was a little hard to write in her sometimes if the angle was wrong. By now I was really getting the hang of writing every day and about things that were important.

Gerard -- Gerard took a VERY long time to finish -- almost all of my sophomore year. This was a more "grown up" journal, with a big picture of Shakespeare on the red front cover and gold-lined pages. There was also a page-marking ribbon. I decided I'd add a little age to Gerard by seeping the pages in water so they got wrinkled. That made it funner to write. What also made it fun was the dipper ink and quill feather that I used for every entry. A lot of times, the ink would soak and bleed but that was okay. It gave the book character. I named him after a) the actor who played the phantom of the opera and b) the lead singer from My Chemical Romance. Gerard covered Beauty and the Beast. There was a lot of Mike stuff in that one.

Erik -- I got Erik from my mom right before I went on my trip to France. I (once again) named him after the Phantom of the Opera (although my father's name was Erik as well). The cover was very fitting. It was a larger, square shaped journal that had a cover-over-spiral look like Amy. Except Erik was black with a burgundy spine and had a picture of the Eifel Tower on the front and the word VOYAGES. The pages often had inspirational travel quotes and pictures of compasses on them. This was definitely one of the most eventful diaries I ever owned. My trip to france and my first date and first kiss are recorded in that diary. I go back and read it often.

Jacob -- I named this after my first boy (see above). It was a tiny journal I got at the Dollar Spot at Target. It had Jack Sparrow on the front and it was pink. Not very fitting with the name, but it did the job for the rest of that tenth-grade summer. Not much happened after Jake left, so I can hardly remember anything worth remembering in this journal. Once again, it was very small. Not a lot of pages, and not very big pages.

Aubrey -- Aubrey was about the same width as Jake, but with a lot more pages. She was also a cheap journal, this time given to me by a Young Women's teacher. There was a photograph of a monarch butterfly on the outside. I named Aubrey after my favorite cousin. She was short, too, so I didn't get far into eleventh grade before moving on to the next one, but it was fun to write in her. I could finally write as small as I wanted without leaving a bunch of white space above or below the margins.

Sella -- Sella was jam-packed. She was the first real diary I had with no lines, so I wrote as small as I wanted. On the front was that one famous Japanese wave picture that's seen all over paraphenalia these days. She was also an open spiral, but with really big spirals and a hard cover. My friends Ingrid and Anna got it for me. Because the picture was so Japanese, I decided I had to name it Sella, after my Japanese student who came to live with me for a few weeks. Sella had a LOT of Mike in it. Sadie Hawkins, Into the Woods, lots and lots of Mike. That was when he started dating Leah and that was kind of hard. Now my diaries were beginning to be more THOUGHT based and not just ACTION based. I wrote a lot of dialogues in Sella, and my hand would get tired a lot.

Michael -- Michael was named after -- who else? -- the Mike I liked for three years in High School. Michael was a hard cover journal with green, blue, and white ribbon stripes going across him horizontally. He had ribbons that held him together, as well, although all the ribbons started falling off after a while. I tended to take Michael everywhere. The pages were tinted green, and it was (again) very wide-ruled. I wrote a lot about Mike in this journal, as well, of course. There were lots of dialogues in this one, as well.

Vijay -- Vijay was a lot like Gerard. Burgundy cover, this time with "Trust in the Lord" written on it, and a page-marking ribbon. Vijay covered a lot of senior year. I named this one after Vijay Singh, my choir director from All-State. Prom 2009 was in that diary, which included Zack Deaven and all the shenanigans about him. That was Camelot and Secret Garden. I wrote in black pen for this journal, no exceptions. It took a long time to finish Vijay. I didn't write as much or as regularly anymore.

Zachary -- Zachary was also a spiral notebook. Zachary, like Amy, had a storage flap. The cover was a cool black and white design with a burst of colorful floral type things on the bottom righthand corner. I got this journal from Nakisha Davis, a high school friend, for Graduation. I wrote a lot of Zachary in purple pen. I liked Zachary because of the thin lines and the nonexistent margins. I also liked the tiny spirals so I could flip it open and write with only one side showing. Zachary finished off my summer and began my first year in college. I named him after Zack, Mike's brother, the one I went to prom with. With Zack, I had my first NCMO, although I ended up simple typing out that whole experience and setting it inside the storage flap, rather than write it all out. There was simply too much to say about it. I just barely finished Zachary.

Elder Walley -- I would have named this one Jacob if I hadn't already used that name. This one is black with white polka-dots, a hand-me-down from my friend Ingrid. She said she'd never use it, so I got it. Elder Walley also has a red placeholding ribbon and no margins (yes!). This one's smaller and more compact, kind of like Heart. I named it after a very good missionary who had a deep impact on my life.

David -- I don't quite know where he fits into my timeline, but I know he existed. David was written long after any experiences I had with the actual David, but I thought he still deserved a place in my journals anyway. David was given to me when I was a beehive by one of my Young women's teachers. I would use that journal for a hodgepodge of things until almost half the pages were used up. Then I used the rest for a legitimate journal. Also a wide spiral notebook, no margins, purple cover with a basket of Lilacs on the front. I think David goes somewhere among Aubrey and Elena and Jacob but I just can't remember where. I have no idea what's in this one either. I sure wish I brought them out here with me to college, but they would have taken up so much room!

Anyway, those are my diaries. I can't believe you just read all that.

PS I might get some photos of these diaries and put them in here for reference so I can take all the descriptions out. I think it is rather intersesting tracking my progress through these pages. Of course if YOU actually want to read this I'd think you were crazy.

Listening to: "We Used to be Friends" by Dandy Warhols (Veronica Mars theme song)
Things Happening Today: Church, I write to Jacob, Emma's on PBS tonight.