“We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.” - Joan Didion
I haven’t written a diary entry in five years. During this time, I have written essays. I have written long form semi-autobiographical fiction. I have written notes and to-do lists and Facebook statuses and daily updates. I have even penned down bucket lists, long term goals and life ambitions, and listicles of favourite movies, books, food and people. But not a single diary entry.
Diary entries do something which other forms of writing don’t. They chronicle your life. You could zoom in, go back and have a look inside the mind of your previous self, see how they thought, felt. Or you could zoom out, and see recurring patterns of thought. You could possibly get answers for why your life turned out the way it did. Diary entries act like a mirror which shows how your separate day-to-day selves tie into one coherent whole. Even more so than memories, which are fallible, diary entries hold the secret key to your identity.
The second important thing diary entries do is reinforce your memory. Things which are penned down become permanent. Each time you revisit them, some decaying synapse of your brain is revitalised, reconnected and welcomed back into the community of your memories.
I haven’t written a diary entry in five years, and this has affected both my memory and my identity. My memories of this period are less vivid, less available than those of my college days. How time flies by! What have I really done in these five years? How have I really changed?
These questions are both important and urgent. These five years were supposed to be transformative. My life underwent wholesale changes: I went from a science to humanities, from playing football and quizzing to rowing and croquet, from east to west. From the depths of despair in 2013, I was supposed to have made major strides into discovering who I am and what made me happy.
But did I, really? It feels I have instead regressed. I sometimes wonder: had I figured out all the fundamentals of life early on which I subsequently forgot? Did I erroneously change my beliefs thinking that I was in the wrong - when it was only my circumstances that had taken a downturn? Have I really changed? Or am I living life in circles? Who am I? What makes me, me? What makes me happy? Will I ever be happy?
In the absence of a diary, I find that I am no longer able to answer these questions.
26 July 2016