Mortified

A friend recently alerted me to the presence of a live event called Mortified (run by a friend of hers), in which adults share something from their youth (diaries, poetry, home movies) which would be mortifying to share in the public sphere. Given that I am pushing myself to make a daily go of publishing on here and inspiration is not always thick on the ground, I thought to myself, “Oho! I have some diaries from my teenage and university days. I could mine them for some cringe-inducing comedy gold and get myself a few days or more where I don’t have to write too much material. A lazy, recycling win-win scenario.”

So I dusted off the old notebooks and had a quick flick through to see if there were any immediate candidates for publishing. These wouldn't be completely unedited. I’d have to do some trimming to try and minimise any personally identifying information as much as possible (those in the know would probably still be able to work stuff out however).

I wasn’t expecting to cringe as much as I did. I knew that they would be largely unreadable but... oh boy. The writing is dreadful. Not even that amusing, just very poorly constructed and, in the vast number of cases, largely consisting of “i did/he said/she said” style banalities. It’s pretty boring too in most cases. A lot of the time, I was clearly just rushing to try and get stuff down on paper so that I can get it all out there.

I mean, I really get why these are called mortified. There is a part of me that wants to just chuck them on the fire as there is little worth to be gained from these things. The thing it has highlighted most starkly though is the fact that I don’t really recognise that person anymore. The things that he felt, thought and even did don’t really feel like the things I would think say or do anymore. It’s a little disorienting to have that spelled out to you. I genuinely can’t get into the mindset of the person that wrote most of those entries.

It does feel like a slightly trite observation (“hey, guess what, we change over time”) but it’s something that we all know but don’t really directly confront. If I met the seventeen to twenty one year old who wrote in those diaries, what would I think of him? Would I be surprised by the things he said and did, the way he behaved? Would I even particularly like him? 

I realise all of this is making it sound like there are juicy revelations in the diaries. There really aren’t - it’s all very mundane. It’s more the surprise of being confronted by the writings of someone who is ostensibly you and definitely has a certain number of similarities but isn’t really the you that you feel you are today. (Given the torturous nature of that last sentence, maybe my writing ability hasn’t increased at all over the years - to quote The Tick:- “I’m the you you always wanted to be. The only thing stopping you from being me is you.”)

In summary then, if you have some very old diaries, might well be best to just leave them be...