Diary-ahh....

An article in today's National Post cites a British study which claims that keeping a diary is diagnostic of depression: the longer one keeps a diary, the more depressive one is...and those who go back and re-read old diary entries are most depressed of all. And the first thought that went through my head was 'wow...there's a blog entry in this somewhere!' Then the irony hit me and knocked me out cold for awhile.
I kept a daily diary from January 1988 to February 1991. In all that time, I missed exactly two days: once when I locked myself out of the house (moral to that particular tale: never try to sleep on a picnic table) and once when I misplaced the diary for a day. Both days were made up immediately. The 1989 volume got some kind of acidic soapy goo all over it in one of my moves, rendering a swath from March to October all but unreadable--which is really too bad, because some of the most memorable days of my life occured between May and October of 1989. But I still have the 1988 and 1990 editions. I'm not depressed...anymore...but I often look back at these things. The picture they reveal makes me cringe: was I really that much of a train wreck as a teenager?
My journals were the kind with locks on them, and the first thing I would do when I got a new one was break the lock with my bare hands. My reasoning was simple: anyone who really wanted to read this crap wouldn't let a chintzy lock deter them, so why should I have to find a key every day just to scribble a few lines?
After noting the busted lock, you would then start to read the diary proper, and the first thing you would learn about me is that I had an unhealthy obsession with the weather. Most days would start off with something like this: mc (m), tsh (a), vw 29 (36)/22
and you'd need a sixteen year-old Ken to translate: mostly cloudy (morning), thundershower (afternoon), very windy, high 29 degrees with a humidex of 36, low 22.
Thus warned, you'd begin reading. For the first two years most days were done in cursive writing. My cursive was (and remains) damn near illegible. It was only as my life grew more and more interesting in 1989-90 that I switched to printing, on the grounds that I could print smaller. There were days in those latter two years when I would cram three lines of printing in for every ruled line on the page.
You'd think that I had important things to say.
But no...the first two years consisted mainly of me lamenting how much I loved *******, and how much ******* didn't love me. The latter sentiment would be quickly followed by ruminations on how much I could love ####, and how adorable %%%%%%%% was, until ******* noticed me again, or I thought she did, and here we go round the mulberry bush.
How embarrassing can you get?
I traded my dairy exercise in self-flagellation for a slightly more literary version in first year university. It got kind of tiring writing 'wasted gobs and gobs of money on...nothing much' over and over again, so I took a different tack: instead of writing about the daily happenstance of my life, I started using WordPerfect version 0.00001, making weekly (or so) entries detailing slightly deeper thoughts--and including a truly sad amount of self-written poetry. (STEP BACK FROM THE MONITOR, MA'AM! DECONTAMINATION IS RIGHT THIS WAY. WATCH YOUR STEP!)
From then on...and off...and on again...I'd write whenever the urge took me...sometimes ten pages in two days, sometimes a six-month gap. Successive versions of my diaries saw me through two protracted relationship ka-blams. Some of the best writing of my life is contained in old diaries, long lost. They've probably been recycled into toilet paper more than once now..
And yes, most of the really good stuff was written UID...under the influence of depression. Of course it was. As a teenager I was chicken enough to think about killing myself, but too chicken to actually try, so I'd just use my pen to slit a vein and let words pour out instead. Depression makes for fabulous writing, in my experience.
My last journal before the Breadbin was a bright pink volume I called Past...Present...Fuschia. It starts as my last girlfriend pre-Eva began the long flounce out of my life and it ends on the day I got married. That's three and a half years. For at least one of those years I approached the word count of 1989. Looking back at that now, I see what I was trying to do: I was attempting to come to terms with myself in the world. I increasingly realized that I would never find a lasting relationship with a woman until I had fashioned a strong relationship with myself. Writing about the weather wouldn't cut it anymore, and reminiscing about ******* wouldn't get me any further ahead either.
About two weeks before I met Eva, I got to thinking that I'd examined myself enough, and was reasonably content with what I saw. So I wrote down a series of 'test questions' I would ask of any potential mate. Less than six months later, Eva would read these questions out loud and marvel at how she had all the right answers but one. (That one: she smoked, and I swore up and down I would never marry a smoker. She got the second last laugh on that--she's since quit smoking. Ha.)
Anyway, keeping a diary has been a great experience for me. Writing has always been therapeutic for me. Seeing words on a page convinces me that nothing is ever as bad as it looks inside my head.
Moreover, I can re-read old passages and be instantly transported to Teenworld. That heightened sense of where I have been is crucial to understanding where I am and where I am going. Whatever the National Post may say, I'd recommend a journal for anyone who needs one.