This totally inspired me and I dug out my old journals. I’m deep into 1987. I’m 15. Highschool. Hairdye. Pointy boots. Fun. Depression. Best friends. Poetry. Cigarettes. Photobooths. Partys. Fights. Boys. Parents. Trouble. Concerts. Innocence. Heartache. Everything was so intense and emotionally charged.

I need to make time to read them thoroughly sometime rather than skipping about sticking my toes into my own old life.

How can this possibly have been 20 years ago? Cheers.

I used to keep a journal when I was about 16 years old. I remember my mother always asking me what I was writing in there. I would say, “stuff” I thought I hid my journal pretty good, (at least for back there, in between my matresses, duh.) i was seeing a boy seriously at the time and we had just become sexually active and I was writing about that. My mother was suspicious and curious and intrusive. I came home from school one day to find my mother in tears, sad that I had not shared any of what I had written in my diary with her. I was aghast that she had read it. I felt hurt and violated. My trust broken forever. I stopped writing in my diary, never picked up a pen to do so again until about 4 years ago when I left my husband and finally felt in a safe environment. My children have kept journals and I would never, ever in a million years think about reading them. I envy you both, that you have years of your life to look over, to ponder, to see how you have grown. I am happy that I will have this to look back on when I am 65 and see all that I have done. It is something to look forward to. Meanwhile, little Donna is going to have to deal with that memory of her mother and trust.