February 2nd, 2023
I’ve been writing in diaries since I was a teenager, and I just had the strangest thought.
Who am I actually writing this for?
Not myself, I don’t think. Or not only myself. Because if it was only for me, I wouldn’t choose words so carefully. I wouldn’t go back and cross things out and find a better way to say them. You don’t perform for an audience of one.
So who, then?
Some future version of me, maybe. Someone I’m trying to leave a record for—here’s who you were, here’s what you wanted, here’s what kept you up at night when the rest of the world was asleep.
Or maybe nobody. Maybe the wanting of a reader is just the most human thing there is. The need to be witnessed. To say I was here and have it mean something to someone somewhere.
I don’t know.
I just know that when I write in here, I don’t feel entirely alone.
Like someone, somewhere, is listening.