Dear Diary,

I must admit, I’ve been a bit of a failure. Actually, no, not a bit of a failure–a huge failure. The time has come for me to apologize.

Dear Diary, I’m sorry. I got you four years ago off of Anthropologie’s books and candles table with nothing but eagerness and pure enthusiasm; you had enticed me with your floral design and deckle-edged pages, your gold cursive font and soft leather cover. Your blank pages were just waiting for me to fill them with my deepest thoughts, rawest emotions, and hidden dreams.

And for the first three weeks, I was good! I wrote entry after entry about my day and what had made me happy and devastated me and everything in between. I vented about the latest spat with my parents, obsessed over inconsequential crushes, and wrote checklists planning what I was going to do the next weekend.

But then, Diary, one night, I must have been too tired. Laziness must have overpowered me, and instead of fervently writing out another entry, I took one long look at you and decided, nah, not tonight. The following night, sure, I might have written in you, but it was with a different feeling: I saw you as a burden, not a way to let loose and organize my thoughts. That night after, I didn’t write in you. You remained on my bedside table, until one day I cleaned up my room and placed you on my bookshelf, and there you have remained ever since.

What makes you so hard to write in, Diary? You shouldn’t be as difficult to commit to as you are–writing a couple of entries a week of nothing more than an account of the day and whatever problem is stressing me at the time should be easy; cathartic, even. So why can’t I bring myself to write? I know that I want to record my day to prove that that day had happened, and it won’t fade away in my memories; I know that writing a journal would help me organize my past thoughts and future goals. There is no way that writing in you could not benefit me, Diary. What’s the problem here?

Now, I won’t say in the years I’ve had you, after those first three weeks, I’ve left you completely on your own. On the days when I’m filled with frustration and disappointment after a bad track meet, or insanely giddy after finishing my last final and finally being able to enjoy summer, I have written an entry or two. But those are when my emotions are at their most extreme, and when writing is the only alternative from yelling them in my room at eleven at night.

Because, Diary, that’s the beauty in writing in you: I feel, when writing an entry, like I’m talking to somebody. That what I’m writing down on these empty pages isn’t just going to on a piece of plain white paper (deckled-edged as it may be) but to a faceless, omniscient somebody who may not respond to my thoughts but is at least listening to them.

It seems that for me, laziness does play a role in my abandoning of diaries, but not in the way I would think: writing in a diary seems to become more a confession than anything else–something that is mentally and emotionally exhausting. I don’t know if I want to dedicate myself to doing that every single day.

So, Diary, I’m going to be honest. When I say sorry, I don’t know if I’m saying sorry to you (you are, after all, not really a faceless, omniscient entity, but just a bound collection of blank sheets set between two covers), or apologizing to myself. I love the idea of writing down my thoughts, and I know doing so well help me tenfold in organizing both my memories and goals. Writing in you may take work, but I know that in the end, it is worth it.

Hopefully, I’ll see you soon.

Grace