Dear Diary is where I dive into the mess and magic of relationships — with others, and with myself. I don’t have the answers, but I believe in connecting through words.
That’s why I keep writing.
🥤Grab a drink, take a 4-minute break, and enjoy the read 🔐
I just remembered when this ugly boy from 7th grade asked if I wanted to date him, and I said no. I was 11, he was 13. I had no idea what date meant, but even if I knew, my answer wouldn’t have changed. He started hating me the second before my negative answer and screamed in the school’s patio a loud FUCK YOU, TÁSSIA. It was so scary that I started trying to monitor where he and his friend were because I had to walk alone after school.
I started despising him back, but with a drop of guilt I couldn’t quite understand.
Until this day, whenever I said no to a man, the FUCK YOU, TÁSSIA echoes in my head — and suddenly I’m bending over backwards to soften the edges, trying to sugarcoat the rejection. Making the no as sweet as a no can possibly be. It’s automatic, pure damage control.
I also do my best not to attract the male gaze in the first place, for the same reason: fear of sudden, simmering aggression. Sadly, bleaching eyebrows wasn’t a thing back then. I’d love to try it now, just to see if it really works as a man-repellent.
I never told an adult about this story, but I did write it down in one of my little lock-and-key diaries. That’s how I learned to process things and, eventually, through teen magazines that thought sex tips were as essential as eyeliner tutorials. Not at 11, of course — only when I was 14 (I know, not much better). But it was the 90s tipping into the 2000s, a whole different era of awkward period. Maybe today is even worse with the internet?
My diaries weren’t just an outlet for expression, they were my closest friends — the only ones I trusted with the full truth (and the juiciest secrets). I’d love to flip through them now and laugh at the silly things I wrote as a teen — so naïve, so dramatic, so worried about nothing more than hiding them well so no one would ever find them. Without social media, aesthetics, handwriting, and consistency were never the point.
They’re all gone now, lost to the past, but I can still picture the colorful covers, the glittery stickers, the clumsy doodles. It was therapy before I even knew what therapy was. Turns out, research backs it up: regular journaling can cut cortisol (your stress hormone) levels by up to 23%! Elevated cortisol is linked to depression, anxiety, brain fog, and even a weaker immune system. That messy teenage scribbling was actually an antidote for teenage horrors.
I can’t think of an easier creative therapeutic activity than grabbing a pen and paper to write. You can do it everywhere. You don’t need to sit down straight (highly recommended, though), you don’t even need silence. If you only have your phone, it’s not the same thing, but also fine.
For incredible or awful days, I always had my diary with me.
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