Dear Diaries

I’ve recently become privy to the heart of a 13 year old girl, via her secret and inner-most thoughts kept in her diaries. Behind her still child-like print and neon-colored ink, her thoughts lie in wait, behind her words, even, hoping to be discovered. It’s hard, sometimes, wading through the cotton candy that is firework flames and rapid fire heartbreak, but there’s a person there, a hint of what she will become.
Reading the account of her days is an experience. This girl works in extremes; opposites are built into her nature, and thus I am forced to operate on her same extremes, her same paradoxical emotions transferred to me. I laugh at her dramatic sentences, her wild emotions prefaced with haughty words and grand phrases. I sober at her expressions of her doubt, the quiet questioning of herself—with these she is less bold. I am emboldened when she is sure of herself, painfully afraid when she is challenged.
Our likeness is beyond our keeping of journals—I started writing at the same age she is now. I still have my journals; she will revere her pages until we are both too old to know we wrote them. She has become who I am; she is a part of me. Her 13 year old feelings belong to me at 21. Her hopes, mine. Her doubts, mine, too. She questions the same things I do, and faithfully accepts ideals I embrace along with her. “Who am I?” she asks, and I echo, “What am I doing with myself?” “Am I capable of love?” she wonders. I answer, “Is loneliness forever?” “Am I understood?” we beg in unison.
At times I want to scream at this girl, to rip out her words and abuse her immaturity. Other times, I embrace her in her fragility, long to protect her vulnerable heart. I want to give her the answers, show her how she can live and be happy, but then I remember, I am without answers. Just like her, I have only questions.
I don’t know why this girl has chosen to let me into her life, her world of possible lies, of beautiful truths. Perhaps I am the actualization of her desire for her secrets to be known by another person. Perhaps I am the person for whom she leaves her diary on a café table, the person she wants to read her thoughts and know her truth. Perhaps she needs the affirmation of her voice—as if someone reading her words validates their reason for existing. Or maybe only that she is not an apostle of secrets, a treasurer of mystery. She may be too bold, or not bold enough, too full of lies, or too strict with honesty. But I think in her writing, I have learned only a little of who she is, and infinitely more of who I am becoming.