It has taken me years to get back to journalling. I stopped writing my deepest thoughts when my husband read one of my old journals. It was not a good thing. I learned that if you are having an affair or questioning your relationship, your significant other is not happy to read about it in a journal, even if it happened years before the reading. It made me feel unsafe to write my true thoughts and what was really happening to me. That was 18 years ago and I have finally forgiven him for that trespass on my privacy, and finally feel safe enough to journal again. He has forgiven me for having an affair. We got over it, andlearned a lot and made a more powerful relationship.

I have many journals that I have written a few entries in and then laid aside.

But the “Oh” in your post says a lotl. You live with someone. They suddenly take up a lot of time. And I found that the temptation to read what I was REALLY thinking was too hard for him to resist. Do you subconsciously fear the same thing? I don’t know.

Instead, before computers and internet, I used to write very long and rambling letters to friends. When I was living in Salamanca a friend told me that she felt a bit annoyed upon receiving photocopied letters from a friend of hers. Apparently he wrote all his letters in a notebook, then photocopied them to send to his friends so he’d have a record of what he had written.

I actually thought this was rather a good idea but I did it in reverse – I would send off the original letter to my friend but not before making a photocopy of it for myself. Doing this became unnecessary once emails became the norm. But I have at least two huge boxes of my photocopied correspondence over several years in my storage room upstairs (if it hasn’t been eaten by mice and roaches).

As for the ‘showing off’ thing, oh I don’t know. Most of us write to an ‘audience’ even if it’s just one other person. But I see what you mean about the difference between a totally private peronal diary and the stuff one puts on the internet or even in letters.

I put very little *seriously* private stuff on the internet – that is saved for private correspondence. But I do like sharing the lighter stuff.

I’m not sure if I’d actually enjoy reading a totally un-edited version of my former self – as you mentioned when talking about re-reading your teenage diaries. Though I can well imagine it being very interesting on a very personal level.

Anyway, he had a programme on the radio a few months ago about political diaries – why politicians write them (for publication, natch), and what is suitable diary material. He said he found it warping his behaviour, that he would seek out encouters no matter how cringe-making with the great or the famous in order to be able to diarise them.

I’ve never kept a diary. I do have a series of rather nice notebooks around the place full of the random outpourings of a bruised heart. Then I started doing the random outpourings in verse. And then I just dabbed on arnica and it got better.

Apart from the pain involved at the time, there’s a lot to be said for “headache”.