Just as Joan Didion kept to herself a sort of diary or notebook where she could record all her thoughts, feelings, and deepest secrets away from the rest of the world, I myself can relate to her on a personal level for the reasons why she had done something along the lines of keeping a notebook for most her youth. When Didion said that: “Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearranges of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss”, she made me remember, quite nostalgically, the numerous times when I was in elementary school in which I kept my own series of diaries. I was partially inspired by Jeff Kinney’s Diary of a Wimpy Kid series, which I had first learned about in third grade, loving each book that came out as the years passed ever since I picked up the first book and found myself wholeheartedly relating to Greg Heffley. Like Didion herself, I was quite lonely especially in my early years of schooling as I had not had a younger brother until I was seven, and I was not the best at making friends (I had no friends for my first two years of elementary school– and the one friend I did have was one I made in kindergarten who was years older than me, and had to leave once I entered elementary school). I was also very melancholy, introverted, and withdrawn, and bullied often by my classmates and even teachers. It isn’t surprising then, that I kept diaries all the way to the 6th grade. And it isn’t surprising that I now write poetry and stories in my free time. You could say then, that my diary keeping has sort of undergone a revival– but in a more poetic fashion.
