What I Learned From Reading My Old Diary Entries

I’ve kept an online diary on and off since I was a teenager.

While I’ve been neglecting the habit, I recently decided to reread old entries because I love to mentally torture myself with my past self’s stupidity.

And I wanted to see if I could learn anything from the angst of my early 20s.

Here’s what I concluded from taking a trip down memory lane.

Don’t ever underestimate your ability to delude yourself

Surprise, surprise, most of the entries revolve around the rollercoaster that was my love life. (Big emphasis on WAS.)

Like most people who struggle with self-abandonment, I’d ignore gigantic red flags and ulterior motives so I could enjoy a romantic fantasy that distracted me from deep-seated unhappiness.

One of the biggest (and to be fair, saddest) patterns that stand out is how much I lied to myself.

During a time when I was having intense anxiety attacks that were a result of my then-fling, I went so far as to write in one entry that “it was fun spending time with [this person]”… I just couldn’t seem to connect the dots.

And I’m pretty sure if I traveled back in time and tried to convince my past self of the reality of the situation, I would’ve ignored my own advice.

So don’t ever underestimate your ability to delude yourself. The human mind is capable of incredible trickery when it needs to justify mistreatment and staying involved with people who only cause you harm, just to get a modicum of affection in return.

This brings me to my next point… I so clearly didn’t love myself. And when you don’t love yourself, you’re desperate for others to love you.

But genuine love is a rare and beautiful thing, and it’s all too easy to project these feelings onto others when they’re simply not there.

I try not to have any regrets – it’s pointless. But reading my old diary entries, I can clearly see all the times when my gut was telling me the truth and I ignored those instincts.

Looking back, it’s hard not to feel sad for missing all those opportunities to finally start acting in a way that was in my best interest.

Betraying yourself leads to intense subconscious anger

When you people-please your way through life, intense anger accumulates beneath the surface.

Although I was doing an amazing job at lying to myself, this doesn’t mean that some hidden part of me wasn’t aware of what was really going on.

Over time, this made it difficult for me to let go of resentment – I was angry at the world and this manifested in all aspects of my life, from the way I dressed to how I approached conflict.

Often, I’d have intense dreams featuring people I had fallen out with long ago and wake up feeling so angry.

But instead of taking this as a cue to release the emotion using journaling prompts, meditation, or any other healing modality, I’d repress it and hope it wouldn’t come back. (And of course, it did.)

To put it simply, life is exhausting when you are unaware of the subconscious patterns that have you in a chokehold.

My whole life I had struggled with an intense emotional side (hello Scorpio stellium!) and it wasn’t about to go away just because my rational side decided I was now an emotionally unavailable Bad Bitch™.

It took me more than a quarter of my life to realize that feeling deeply isn’t a curse or something to be ashamed of.

While you shouldn’t let your emotions rule your life, ignoring them will only hurt you. They’re an important indicator of what’s brewing underneath the surface.

Holding them in might be a quick fix, but it’s temporary, and all your difficult feelings will manifest themselves in one way or another.

Why I’m no longer keeping a diary

I stopped writing in my diary around the same time when the self-discovery phase of my life began, and I slowly started growing out of my perpetual angst.

Since my diary entries were mostly fueled by anger, disappointment, or emotional pain, living a more peaceful life means that I have little writing ammo.

Now, I mostly journal about specific topics as a way to broaden my understanding of myself or get to the root of uncomfortable emotions when they do come up.

If I were to run all my old diary entries through a word frequency program, I’m sure that the phrases at the very top would be “confused” and “don’t know”.

This is the overarching theme of many entries, and even though I’m reading them years later, I can still feel the heavy, suffocating emotion of confusion.

That’s not to say that I have All The Answers Now, because I certainly don’t. But having finally found a sense of confidence, self-worth, and self-respect, it’s a hundred times easier for me to recognize unhealthy relationships and environments – and move the hell on when I do.

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