“Memory is the diary that we all carry about with us.”
Oscar Wilde
As a little girl, I never kept a diary. I remember what they looked like though. They were some shade of pink or purple. They were often coated in puffy plastic or fuzzy felt and decorated with predictable items like hearts, unicorns, rainbows, or butterflies. Invariably, they had a tiny little padlock and a pair of silver keys. Why do I remember so well what they looked like? Because I had several. Given to me for birthdays. And I remember liking the idea of them, the idea of spilling my young self and my secret crushes onto those pastel pages, but I never followed through. I let those diaries stack up.
And now. Flooded with this random memory of a childhood choice, I am intrigued by the idea of memory. Why do we remember what we remember? Why do I remember these little books which I chose not to write in? I don’t know. Maybe it is that memory, like most things in life, has an inexplicable and opaque essence. Or maybe it is that there was something important about my memory. Something symbolic. Maybe I didn’t write in those journals because I didn’t like the idea of memorializing my moments. Maybe I was more interested in living my moments than in recording them. Or maybe there was nothing meaningful about that tall stack of empty pages.
But what’s interesting to me today is that this is a diary. This blog. This blog is the diary I never kept as a girl. The place where I shed words like tears. The place where I record my stories serious and silly. The place where I store bits and pieces of myself in an effort to remember. And here? There is no padlock. There is no privacy. Rather, this is an open book, pages flipping in the wind. This diary is not just for my eyes. Why am I open to doing this, maintaining this public diary, when I wouldn’t even keep a private journal as a girl?
I don’t know. But I have some ideas. And Oscar Wilde’s words above give me some direction. He said, Memory is the diary we all carry about with us. And isn’t he right? We walk around this world, meandering through our days, toting with us our memories. And memory is its own kind of diary. Unique. Because we do not choose what we put in it. We do not choose how its pages are filled. What we remember? This is not up to us.
And so. This blog? This digital diary of mine? It’s a joy to keep, but it’s also something else. It’s an attempt at control. By writing these words here, I am attempting to control what I do and do not remember. I paint the pictures I want to paint – of my darling kids, of my loving man, of my existential angst, of my dense dreams – and then I hit publish. But the reality is that once I hit publish, it is not over. There are other things, cruel and amazing, that find me. Other memories.
And sometimes the memories are welcome. The bring me back. They make me smile. They make me realize that my life right now is the storehouse of of future memories.
But sometimes they are hard. Impossible. Sometimes, as I am lying in bed, the ceiling fan whispering in my ear, I remember myself as a little girl when things were so simple. When Sundays were donut days. When Dad was here and my family was whole. Sometimes, as I am lying in bed, the pages of memory write themselves and I remember the blue eyes and deep laugh of a man who I will never see again. And when this happens, as it so often does, I try to fight tears and lose.
But then I sleep.
And I wake up. And come here. To this place. To these pages. And, to a soundtrack of little girl giggles and big girl fears, I write. These words. One after the other. And today I see these words for what they are. They are attempts. To control. To remember what I want. What’s a bit easier.
Thankfully, it doesn’t work this way. Thankfully, memory does its own thing, making life richer and harder and far more beautiful.
This post was inspired by the Memory topic of Momalom’s Five for Ten Challenge.
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- Did you keep a diary as a child?
- Do you think that blogs are digital diaries or something else?
- Do you blog in an attempt to remember what you want about your current life?
- Do you think that Memory is indeed a diary that we carry with us through our days? Do you agree that the pages write themselves and we have little control over what we recall?
- Are you ever slapped with random memories that make you smile or make you sad?
If you haven’t yet (or even if you have), please click the below image to pre-order Life After Yes. Or roll your eyes and ignore these words. The thing is that publication is a mere four days away and I feel a bit helpless here. And so I continue on with Operation Beg and Beg Some More. Just so you know, you guys are making a real difference. LAY climbed as high as #3,200 in the Amazon rankings yesterday. How high can we climb today? 
Let’s see… Thank you, all.
kept lots of embarassing journals…and now my blog serves as one of sorts. i write down things i want to remember, and call up old memories as well.
and all day i carry around these memories in my head…just like Wilde says.
Lovely. I definitely view my blog as a digital diary of sorts and realize I no longer keep a paper journal because of it.
I blog mostly about the things that make me really feel something. For better or worse, for heart warming story or utter mama disaster, I want to remember those moments I felt so very alive.
I was always intrigued by diaries, yet hate that word. In 8th grade I just bought blank books and started calling it my book. I did this for years, tapering off to mostly poetry with motherhood. I look back and can’t even remember some of what I wrote about happening. Memory is a strange thing, with or w/o record to back it up. I do like the idea of the blog being some way to store memories for my kids about who I am, what I think about them.
Hey, got your book yesterday and stayed up late to start it. My 19 year old daughter has already called dibs on it next. So exciting!
I, too, have a stack of diaries that I thought I would write in…that I LOVED the idea of capturing my emotions on paper. I have stacks of them with no more than 10 pages filled in. Sometimes, my blogs get mothballed for weeks, as life gets in the way. But I have one, strictly for my kids…my recollection of their memory making events. And one for myself, where I can write…whatever I need to write. And it works for me. And unlike my diaries of the past, they do get dusted off and the memories are captured for me…forever.
Its funny that you wrote about laying awake under the ceiling fan. That is actually me right now at 5:46am in LA and I have a meeting at 9 and am desperately need of asleep. It is not memories that keep me up but insecurities of the future. I recently started a blog of my journey here in LA and realized that it is a digital diary but I’m very aware that it is public so I’m careful of what I choose to publish.
As a child I also collected numerous fun pretty diaries… I would start writing in them and then stop. Looking back I can see I was careful of what I wrote. I guess when you commit the ideas, thought or memories to paper it is with you for life and makes it real. I’ve definitely had moments where a smell, or something else will trigger a memory that makes me sad or smile.
I do think that memories are a diary but I do believe we choose to remember situations and things the way we want. Often times my sisters and I recall the same childhood memory in a completely different way.
I like this post. I remember when my cousin died in a car accident (we were raised like sisters) the first person to pass away that I was really close to she was 15. I wrote down every memory I could think of because I was afraid I would forget or remember it wrong. For some reason putting it on paper made the memories real.
I’ve had diaries all through my life, though I haven’t kept very many of them. My memory can be incredibly cruel to me at times, so I try to not think about those things.
The blog, the diaries, the memories that are kept in our heads can all be selective I think. But I don’t think that’s bad. What’s wrong with only wanting to remember the good?
It is funny isn’t it? I also had those cute little diaries with those tiny locks that I hardly ever wrote in. And now, I’ve disciplined myself towrite every day. I’d never have imagined that!
I have all my diaries/journals going back to 1986. There are years where I wrote every day; whole years missing. Even then, writing was how I sorted through my emotions and fears. Today, like you, that place is my blog. Much more public, but in our diaries, aren’t (weren’t) we also kind of writing for an outside reader, whether we knew it or not (I allude to this in my post today). (Of course, my younger sister recently confessed that she was always finding my very carefully hidden diaries and reading, so I guess I really was writing for an audience all along.)
I do believe that they write themselves and that we have very little control over what we recall – a smell, a sound, a picture can trigger a memory (welcome or not). Our body remembers what our mind seems to forget.
Lovely post.
I tried to keep diary after diary as a kid. Nothing ever stuck until I began writing online.
I must be obsessed with control, because I’m obsessed with diaries.
I kept them religiously from the time I first received one of those pink or purple numbers all the way up to the time I started blogging. They are in stacks in my bedroom somewhere, and I’m grateful to have them. Those memories. Locked in those pages. Now blogging is my diary, as you said.
I wasn’t much of a diary keeper as a young girl. I now have tons of journals. Journals that are blank. Journals that are written in. I love collecting them.
And you know that line “When Sundays were donut days. When Dad was here and my family was whole.” Sunday were donut days for my household too and the Dad thing, well you already know how I have struggled so much with my own father’s loss. Those two sentences made me weep today.
I had those diaries too Aidan. I’d start a new one with a renewed purpose every time I got one (or bought one, because I was drawn to interesting covers) and think THIS is the one. And then after just a few entries I’d stop. And like you, they are piled somewhere in a rubbermaid. I have no desire to go back to them. Really, I don’t want to revisit what I wrote. Isn’t that interesting? But like you, my blog is the new place I do this and what I find so different about it is it’s ALIVE. Alive with me, my thoughts and ideas, but alive with some many others, and the joy comes from the sharing with others, when with my “diary” it was all about keeping it secret.
As a girl, I liked the *idea* of a diary, but never could follow through on actually writing in one. In my 20s, I started keeping a journal – not so much a daily account of my life, but a collection of meaningful quotes, advice from my therapist, lessons learned the hard way, mantras and values. And this has been so helpful to me.
I just commented over at Motherese that when I write something down, I remember it. Incredibly well. And so for me, writing in a journal or on a blog is a way of cementing a lesson in my mind. It’s like a shortcut to learning something. I’m more likely to recall that lesson when I’m losing my temper, in a bad mood, fighting with my husband, in the heat of the moment.
I think I might have had the same pile of plasticky-pink, silver-locked diaries that you had. The same pile of unused diaries, that is.
You know, I often think about blogs as the 21st century equivalent of letters, but you’re right, of course: they are our diaries. And we don’t even have to worry about our siblings extricating them from their secret hiding spot underneath our beds.
What a beautiful quote by Wilde. As I go through my day, so many thoughts flood my memory. But you are right- usually when I sit down to right, I choose the happy ones. Subconsciously I always try to end on a high note. I guess that’s the part of all of us that makes the choice to be happy.
But there are times we must venture to rockier shores. We must live in the hard memories every now and then or we aren’t being honest. And the those hard memories help us to seek the happy ones even more.
Beautiful post, Aidan!
And in the comment before, my mommy brain meant to type ‘when I sit down to write, not right’
Oops!
I always tried to keep a diary, but while I’d start with gusto, I’d taper off only a handful of pages in. I think it’s because I always had to keep up with it, hide it away, have a super-sharp pencil, and then write without my hand getting tired. It was work.
Writing online is easier for me. I’m slightly embarrassed to write that, but it’s true. I think better with my fingers tapping these keys.
I never had a diary. I used to hate keeping a journal. Frankly I sometimes think that this blogging thing is just a passing fad. Except I think that many years of doing something makes it into a hobby and not a fad.
Anyway, my blog is my mistress. I whisper all of my secrets into her ears.
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I had a diary for a while. I wrote a lot, and often felt embarrassed when I read it back. Then I threw it away… I hope not to do that with my blog!
I…can’t say I’m proud to have kept a diary since 5th grade. I stopped in the beginning of this year (partly due to running out of pages, and my laziness to actually get a new one). But I have wrote in diaries for a while, and looking back, I kinda cringe. Maybe it’s because I was a whiny kid and looking back at the problems then I sort of just sigh and think about how immature I was. But I think the main reason was that it turned into a dependence really quickly…up to the point where instead of talking to actual people about my day, I wrote about it. I mean, that’s fine, but it was hard because I couldn’t stop writing in it, but I longed to be able to get feedback about what I wrote. Sometimes, I felt like I was talking to a wall.
A blog on the other hand is still scary to me, because I’m still learning to express myself to other people(after all, I’ve been to expressing myself to…well, only myself for a while). I think sustaining a blog requires a lot of energy, and a skill to be able to communicate to people of various kinds.
I compare writing (like, the type for the world to view) to using a knife. If you’re not skilled enough, or don’t have enough experience, you can hurt yourself and other people (okay, I usually say that about satirical writing, since that’s what I do…but I think it works with general writing too).
I did and still do keep journals. Journals are my way of documenting different and easy times in my life. They are also what I turn to when I need a reminder of a certain event (like pregnancy or even birth).
My blog is also a journal of sorts. A journal that collects the thoughts I was too scared to place in my real journal. A place to philosophize. A place to discuss. I put pieces of myself out there and other people come over and arrange them. I just hope they arrange them correctly.
I just wish I had kept one when I was younger. I dabbled in diary-keeping in my late teens and early twenties, but I kind of liked the concept of starting one more than I liked keeping one. Same old same old. But how many fantastic stories and incidents were missed? If I had known that I would be writing later on I would have kept one. Shame really.
I have several journals – I stopped keeping them about the time I was 19, and events too painful to chronicle happened.
Mae West quote: “Keep a diary, and one day it will keep you.”