Dear Diary

Dear Diary
- by Sobia Aslam

It was a typical cold winter afternoon in Lahore. I was sitting in my cozy room with the heater on and some light music playing in the background. I was home for the vacations from USA and had made all my social calls for the week. Sunday afternoon was the perfect time for me to sit down and do nothing…but since I'm the restless kind, I decided to do something I had not done in a very long time. I decided to take out all my old diaries and read them, a task that proved to be so enjoyable and yet so emotionally draining that I had to stop in the middle and take a break.

I have been keeping a diary since 1992. It started out as a day-to-day account of my life: school, friends, fears, highs and lows, adolescent problems and other such stuff. But slowly with the passage of time, as I kept getting busier with other things, my diary became only something I wrote in when I was either particularly happy or something disturbed and upset me to an extent that I couldn't speak to anyone about it.

I always started my diary with the words "dear diary", because my diary was, and is, my closest friend. I think these words were also reminiscent of the days when I used to read teen books like Sweet Valley High and Sweet Dreams, when protagonists and idols of that time, Jessica and Elizabeth, kept diaries which contained their deepest, darkest secrets. Theirs were always kept under lock and key, but I never subjected my diaries to extra security. My sister knew where I kept them, but she never read them. I don't think the rest of my family even knew I kept a journal, because I never really talked about it. I religiously wrote in my diary, treating it like a best friend through school, college and university, even though I never lacked in real-life friends. But my diary was always that special friend I barely opened but I always knew it would be there, no matter what the circumstances and conditions.

When I left Pakistan for the U.S. for masters in journalism, I did not take my diary with me. A part of me thought it would be too much hassle to take it along, who would have the time to write in it? In retrospect I see that my decision to become a journalist and a writer was influenced to a very large extent by the fact that I could only vent my feelings in my diary, through words. In the U.S., I became so involved in studies and life in general that I forgot my diary and the fact is that I had separated from my best friend for months without even thinking about her. I do, however, remember that at times when I was very happy, when things would go just the way I wanted them to go, when I was missing my family, or when I felt alien and alone, I would think of my diary and want to just jot down a few words…but I never got around to it because I couldn't write on just any piece of paper. I wanted to write in that familiar leather-bound journal which I did not have with me.

I wrote so much over the years that I filled seven diaries. I lost count of how often I wrote but I do know that when I wouldn't open my diary for a few weeks, my first sentence, subconsciously, would be "Sorry for not writing for so long", almost as if I was talking to a human being.

That cold December day, I went down memory lane and read all my entries. I laughed along the way and I cried some. I could see myself growing up with my words, I could see the adolescent Sobia with school problems, friend trouble and grades; I could see the young woman I became in college, the experiences I had, the friends I made and lost; in university I could see how I grew into a confident, mature and independent woman, who had to face adult problems and for whom school and its seemingly petty troubles seemed trivial. I realized that in the two weeks I had been in Pakistan for vacation, I had written more in my diary than I had in six months when I had lived here. I also realized that my words, my emotions and my feelings were literally poured into these seven volumes which I called 'My Diary". It had all my worst fears, my aspirations, little tidbits from the past, small memorabilia, notes from friends…in the pages of my diary, I once again lived my life.

I recall one particular sentence that I wrote in my diary, which has stuck in my mind. I wrote this sentence ages ago and I wrote it recently, without realizing that I had repeated it. This sentence made me think about how much I have grown as a person but how similar I still am to the woman in my diary entries, the woman with problems that seem trivial but which have such a great impact. A long time back, probably when I had experienced minor heartache or had been upset about something, I wrote this sentence. I had come full circle because I wrote it again, recently: "I hope some day I can laugh at all this". This, I feel, is the essence of my diary, our relationship and me.