Journal-ist

Reading really old diaries is weird. I've always been pretty much of the belief that fundamentally you don't change as a person, that your character is fairly fixed from a young age. Yet reading diaries from my childhood, I seem like a totally different person.

As an adult, I actively avoid conflict. I think the last proper row I had was when I was about 17, and even then, I remember just storming out the sixth form common room and walking it off around the quad. Not exactly violent or over-emotional. I am pretty difficult to rile, and even when I'm really upset about something, anger is rare. Unless I'm on a customer services call to Tiscali or Tower Hamlets Council. And I did once call Billy from the Carphone Warehouse a fuckwit. But, to be fair, he was being a fuckwit.

But reading old diaries from when I was a kid, I was an angry, angry child. I wonder if I perhaps wrote down the anger rather than venting it? I'm sure my parents will chip in and let me know whether or not I did have screaming tantrums and shout all the things I used to write. I have no memory of it. I remember storming up to my room a lot and writing furiously, but I don't remember screaming and shouting. Memory is unreliable though. For example, I have no recollection of this (apologies to all involved - though 20 years later it feels a bit redundant!):

19 November 1990

School was OK. I am upstairs. It is 6.27 p.m. Mum has told me I have to be in bed for 8. Because I said she was a fart. She isn't a fart. She's a fucking stinking smelly toad brain farting goose pimply zit brained butt headed, greasy skinned wombat with a stinking arse. I wish I was dead. I wish she was dead and I wish Jack was dead. Chris is going out with Susan again.

***

Got to love that juxtaposition at the end there. Made even better by the very next entry. For reference, Matthew was my boyfriend at the time. This mostly involved just telling people you were going out with each other and very little else:

22 November 1990

A lot of news today. At lunch time Susan asked Matthew if he fancied anyone else. He said yes but wouldn't say who so Liz asked him and she got it out of him. He fancied Susan. So I packed him in once and for all and now Susan is going out with him. I will never go out with him again. Here is a list of boys I would go out with:

John

Chris

Matthew (yes, the one my eleven-year-old self just dumped)

Alan

Paul

I am still Susan's friend but I HATE Matthew. I am going to kill him (I hope!). Had piano lesson today. It is cold outside. Also had violin lesson.

I hate Matthew. If he asked me out I might go out with him but probably not.

***

I wonder what a greasy-skinned wombat actually looks like. Pictures please.