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"If you found a diary and realized it was someone you knew, would you keep reading it? Would your answer be different depending on whose diary it was? If they had one of those "don't read this if you know me" disclaimers? What would change your answer?"
That�s the question posed today on Quoted today. Which is funny, because the Boyfriend and I were just talking about that. Not necessarily in connection with online journals, but with personal writing in general.
When I was in Ms. Dow�s 6th grade class, I had a Judy Blume Diary that I wrote in every night before I went to bed. It was held shut by an elaborate system of colored rubber bands, my theory being that if the elastics were out of order, I�d know someone else had been reading my diary. I poured my sixth grade heart into those pages, including my crush on Kenny Levine.
Kenny and I were in the same class. I�d had a crush on him since fourth grade. We had matching green Izod sweaters, which we sometimes wore to school on the same day. I was so in Luv I couldn�t speak when he was directly in front of me.
My crush on Kenny was the source of my most embarrassing moment ever, also, but that�s a topic for a different journal entry.
Anyway, in my 11-year-old way, I had the hots for Kenny Levine. I thought about kissing him. A lot. We were working through the sex ed. unit with Ms. Dow, too, which only made it worse. Imagine learning about sex with the object of your prepubescent lust sitting three chairs away. So I was working out some issues. And I wrote them all down in my diary.
One night, I went to pull it out of the official diary hiding place (between my mattress and box spring), and it wasn�t there. Panicked, I tore my room apart�I must have misplaced it somehow! There was no evidence of it anywhere. I searched the rest of the house, but found nothing. The diary was gone.
Mind you, I was an only child. I couldn�t imagine where the diary could have ended up. The only other people in my house were my mom and dad�what would they want with my diary?
A couple months later, I opened my dad�s dresser drawer to play an April Fool�s Day joke on him. Every year of my childhood, I went into his drawer and unmatched all his socks. Ha ha, Dad, April Fool�s. This year, though, the joke was on me. Under his socks, I found my diary, free of its elastic band lock.
I freaked out. Slamming the drawer shut, I ran from my parents� bedroom in tears. How DARE my father do that to me?
I didn�t take the diary, though. Not sure why, but I left it there. We never spoke of it, my dad and I, but I stopped telling him anything personal about me that afternoon. He�d lost the right to know. He�d lost my trust.
Many years later, Scott (the HSBF was alone in my bedroom in the house I nannied in. He picked up the book next to my bed (obviously a journal of sorts), and read through the details of my relationship with Brian (the 17-year-old Brian). Some of it he knew. Most of it was a surprise. None of it was information I�d intended to share with him, ever, under any circumstance. Unable to tell me he read it, and smart enough to know it would make me angry, he wrote a note on the second-to-last page of the book. It was months before I found it. By then, he�d moved to California and I couldn�t be directly angry with him. I was impressed, though, by his ability to read all of those things I had written, some of which must have made him very hurt and angry, and keep them to himself.
Which started me thinking about journals in general, and about the politics of reading someone else�s without permission.
And it�s something I�ve thought about a lot. I myself have been guilty of the same transgression. I read through the Artboy�s journal on several occasions, desperate to find out what was happening inside his head. And I�m not proud of that, but I knew what I was getting myself into before I opened the front cover.
See, the thing about diaries in general, even ones with an audience, is that they�re generally not written with the expectation that the people they�re about are going to read them. Otherwise, they�d be letters. So if that group of people who aren�t supposed to see them go ahead and read them, they have NO RIGHT, no matter what the contents, to call the author on what it says. If you can�t handle keeping it to yourself, don�t read it.
Sometimes, that can be really hard. But I think it�s a good rule. At least, it�s one I�ve gone by.
Not that I suggest betraying your beloved�s trust to take a peek in that carefully hidden notebook, but you get what I mean.
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