History
Even in the most clandestine of diaries, no one says everything.
I used to keep a diary - not the byte-sized binary bonanza I have here with idleThinK, but a proper paper journal, the kind I imagine that a mere score of Christmasses down the line will belong in museums and memories, and then, just in museums. In fact, I used to have many diaries: old schoolbooks that I'd refurbish by tearing out page after page of year 7 grammar until I came to a deliciously blank sheet; exciting new cosmetic journals I'd get for my birthday or convince myself that I absolutely needed; notebooks, notepads, sheets bound with string. I was a compulsive journalist before I even wrote a word.
There's just something so compelling about a blank page; like untouched snow. Put your pen to the paper, and it makes a small blemish, but keep it there for a while and you'll make literature.
I'd write like I knew the journal would be found. Every word I wrote, curled over my blank sheet spilling myself onto paper, would be tainted with the utter knowledge that someone was going to read it in the future. Even at young, I knew that nothing remained secret forever - if not my sister, my parents, my friends, then history would uncover these sanctified thoughts; history! the immutable judge of the past, from futures I can't even imagine. Even in my youthful naivete, I understood what history was: immortality.
And so I'd write to construct a historical personage. Not Stalin, not Anne Frank, not Churchill, but a Rachel that could be remembered...and to be remembered is to live indefinitely. In our minds, Mozart, Hitler, Jesus Christ, Ghandi: they are eternal, because they are not forgotten. Curled over that blank page, where blemishes and literature are equally permanent, what I was doing was making myself immortal.
I'd like to think I've progressed somewhat from then, but I'm forced to concede that there are realms of me that I conceal from this journal too, though perhaps for slightly different reasons. My progression through written history: the young naive me, sprawled on her bed writing that she is actually a princess in disguise; the slightly older me, sprawled on the floor writing that she's universally, tragically misunderstood; the me of now, sitting demurely here at this computer, telling the world that even in the most clandestine of diaries, no one says everything; but even in the most public of diaries, no one says nothing.