Dear Diary

I used to write diaries -- every night, if I wasn't too tired or sleepy. Shamefully, I wrote them principally for two reasons: 1) I thought my older self would enjoy reading my younger self's whining and daydreaming, and, 2) I thought somebody else, be it a future sociologist or my own descendant, would be interested in the records of a child of the nineties.

Now, my diaries remain lined across my shelf, collecting dust. I am afraid to read them. Because I still remember when my world revolved around a single person.

I remember when we read The Diary of Anne Frank back in eighth grade. I doubt she ever thought that someone would read her diary years and years after her death. It is almost disgraceful, really, how I used to amuse myself with the idea that future people would be interested in the nonsense I wrote back then. Anne Frank had a story to tell -- one that gave a face to a tragedy and one that moves people to understand and empathize.

I remember how our class was greatly amused and disturbed by Anne's musings on desire. I felt the same at the time, I suppose. But I think I understand her better now. Clearly, when she was hiding for her life, desire was a luxury thought. Would she have written those thoughts down if she knew people would be reading them all over the world, more than half a century after her death? I wonder.

And I suppose that's what set her apart from me. She bares everything in her diary. With me, it is difficult to know what I am telling and what I am hiding. When you know there is an audience, the filtering tends to be more discriminate.

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Running into another person from my past made me realize something crucial. When they end, either they cannot be erased because the seed was well-nourished to begin with... or they wither away and nothing is left.

I have a feeling that this case of ours is the latter. As fate would have it, the one from the past is of the former.

Remember how I mentioned the music-video-inspired idea I came up with a few weeks ago? Once I finish all my work, the first thing I am going to do is write the three-part short story. It's ironic how I set myself up for this back in my freshman year. That was when I started and discontinued a story titled "Static Valentine." Funny how accurate the name is now, only I'm changing it to "A Static Valentine."

I already know what I plan to do for the first two parts. Still debating on whether or not I want a happy or sad ending. Given my current attitude towards You, I am leaning towards tragic and, most importantly, open-ended. Why? Because I am tired of those clean-cut endings I read about all the time. Life never ends at Happily Ever After. Nor does it end like those soppy tragedies where the girl finds a letter from her lover before he died that reads, "I loved you. I've never stopped." Because people move on after death. How often do people still think of Iris, Elissa, or Marcus? The memory is still there, but it's harder to retrieve after the years pass by.

I am looking forward to this project. The ending is a reflection of what will happen to me by the end of the year. Should something drastically uncharacteristic happen, I may reconsider. But the chances of that are close to zero.