The Forbidden Diary Entry

It’s been 3 months since I wrote in my diary.

I’ve got 7 clicky pens in their spot behind my desk mirror practically begging to be picked up and used - yet for some reason I lack any conviction to do so.

I started my diary when I began University in September of 2024.

The first page was jotted down the day that I arrived. Before I unpacked. Before I did my hair - freshly matted from the rain and exited the foreign space for the first time. I wrote about the excitement; the freshness of a new air, the taste of the water and the longing for the boy I had left behind.

I like to read it back sometimes.

I like to reminisce on the time where I knew barely anything at all. Right at the start. Before.

It’s funny how the mind progresses. How the dots connect. How each thought transpires with each action that occurs.

If you could CTRL F my diary, I’m sure a few names spread far and wide. I’m sure that the feelings that accompany them persist more so.

20/10/24

I stalked his TikTok reposts and made myself feel sad. Found out in our actual breakup he sent all the messages to Jacob. I can’t believe my vulnerability was aired out like that. I feel betrayed. Someone I hate saw the rawest part of me. Why?

It all feels so distant now. So trivial. When I read it back, I cling to this memory as though it is truth, but I don’t remember the pang of hurt. I don’t remember it at all.

10/11/24

[redacted] said that my voice changed. Odd to think about that and hear his voice again. Feels like ages ago since I was convinced I loved him. Odd. Weird.

Sometimes I think I chase those feelings. Most often, I’m aware and I do anyway. It does not negate the hurt. It does not negate the fact that even in the depth of my confidentially, I am prone to lying. And, it isn’t all bad.

Sometimes, when I read the words back, I can imagine myself 2 years ago, in the same battered Adidas Gazelles wading through the weeks.

19/11/24

It snowed today! Omg - what a cathartic experience. We had a huge snowball fight. I haven’t seen snow more than once so it was a bit weird but super fun. I wouldn’t get that back home.

Even when the time passes, and the love for the people shifts, at least I have this. I have the memorialisation of the moment

I hate the moments where I’m truthful the most.

10/1/25

I think part of me thought that I could avoid writing about everything that has happened since I’ve been home. I keep staring at this diary from the corner of my room and expecting the pages to fill.

She’s right, of course. How could she be so right?

The gaps become longer from here. I can’t decide which I hate more: the Emily who liked him, the Emily that wrote about him to work through each forgiveness and lingering resentment or the Emily that reads back and wishes to tear through the pages as though it will make it all disappear from memory.

I kept the letter I wrote him. I should’ve torn that page out, but I refrain. As though at some point it will be funny. Maybe feel like a lesson learnt. It doesn’t feel like that yet. I’m not so sure that it ever will.

1/07/25

I know now that those emotions were so volatile and overbearing because i didn’t know how to divide them and put boundaries between resentment and liking, and now I have those boundaries, but I am still 18 year old me. I still care.

…

there is too much time left and I can’t waste it, but all I can do is think. Being back home separates me from Loughborough, but the moments here from before have so much vibrancy, so much life. I can’t help but experience everywhere, in every corner or every path that I know.

I like to read it back sometimes. I tend to skip that one though.

What use is self-reflection now? Why plague the pages with the things that I know I should know?

4/7/25

I know It’s evil, that I want him to hurt and I know wanting that sets me back. Me wanting that puts me in the place of caring, and I don’t want to care. I don’t but I still do. I think a lot these days, about what might have been and what shouldn’t have, and I think this is one of those moments.

I need to forget ; I need to let go.

I know. I need. I must. Yet these words written in cheap black ink settle into the crisp pages like they settle into my spine. Like each confession builds up my body and keeps my head from slouching down. Like pressure that needs to be released.

These things happen of course. I am not ignorant to that. I am not ignorant to the idiom that ‘time heals’, because I think that maybe it does. I am not ignorant to the fact that I write so much above the impact of others and how they shape my life and my mind. How the love of the man corrupts my thoughts and alters my brain.

Maybe I can share this with you now because I know the parts that separate the entries I show you simply show too much. About the friends in between. The loses I still grieve. The cuts that bend and tear with wear, cracking open scabs I don’t have the heart to heal.

5/9/25

I love Plymouth. I love my friends but I’m so excited to go back up. Reunite with my favourite people, decorate my room, go to lectures and join clubs. This year is going to be the best one yet. I can feel it.

As I’ve said, the truth seems to omit my private moments. The hope seeps through, causing weathering in the foundations.

The last entry.

13/2/26

Every time I write again, I comment on how long it has been since my last entry. I could’ve written a long time ago - but writing is no longer liberation and freedom, it is the acceptance of the things that have passed. The realisation that things won’t shift back into place - that this is the new now, these are the new foundations.

Even now, as I hold it in my hands, and type out the loose threads that can’t seem to weave together, I feel it stronger than ever.

The realisation that things won’t shift back into place - that this is the new now.

It’s been 3 months since I wrote in my diary, and I feel something that I can’t quite place, and I feel that If I pick up a clicky pen and place it sharply on the page I will put a name to it. I will come to some resounding conclusion, to a stem of the problem that I didn’t want to acknowledge existed.

I think that by writing here - by airing it all out - I can move to being more open to talking. But I don’t think that I want that at all. I want to keep my words hidden, close to my chest where I can mull it over round and round again when writing it down feel so real, so concrete, too true.

I will keep my diary by my bedside tonight. I won’t write it down. Instead, I will stare, and imagine that with each toss and turn I am starting a new line where I can be honest. Even when I know I won’t.

- Em