By Ariel Leve.

A few months ago I got a call from my mother. "I've found your journals," she said. "It's like discovering the diary of Anne Frank." She was calling from my grandmother's house, where they'd been excavated from a dusty crate in the basement. Naturally, she read them.

She told me she was surprised at how entertaining they were and that she was thinking of getting them published under an assumed name but decided she'd ask me first if I wanted them back. "Oh, they're just so tragic," she said. "You'll love them."

I couldn't wait. Who doesn't want to read all about their miserable childhood? It's not like I didn't live through it. There would be a feeling of victory. All the awkwardness and agony of adolescence would be in perspective. What could be better? I couldn't see them soon enough. Through the phone I could hear my mother flipping the pages. "There is so much great material here for your novel ..." Just then, she paused. "I never knew how much you hated me!"

"And that's only what made it into the journal," I said before realising that probably wasn't the best way to go. We made a plan to meet for lunch, at a restaurant near where I live in Manhattan, and she would bring them.

The day of the lunch I got there early and waited for her at the table. I was apprehensive. Like having a blind date with the past. But when my mother showed up, she was empty-handed.

"Where are the journals?" I asked. She told me they were in the reception area because they wouldn't allow her to wheel them through the restaurant. Wheel them? Apprehension turned to dread. I had assumed we were talking about a few notebooks, half a dozen at most. I'd assumed wrong.

My mother had "borrowed" a supermarket trolley cart to transport the load. So now, in front of me, were three huge shopping bags filled to the brim with misery. We just stood there for a few seconds staring at the bulk of my childhood, neither of us wanting to take ownership. Was it really worth it? It was becoming an ordeal. But my mother insisted I take them home; they were my responsibility, and I should accept them. So I did.

Pushing my past down Seventh Avenue, I couldn't help but wonder how I had grown up to be so un-prolific. These days, I write one paragraph a week and I'm thrilled. But 20 years ago, I was capable of producing the Magna Carta. So already, without even opening the journals, I was learning new things. Namely, that my work ethic peaked when I was 17.

When I finally got the journals upstairs and into my apartment, I was exhausted and fought the urge to throw them out. I barely care about the details of my life right now. Why would I be interested in my life 20 years ago, when I had much less insight? It would only depress me. Somewhere between hearing of the existence of these journals and having the mountain of melodrama in front of me, the allure of discovery had worn off. So I did what I always do when there's something I don't want to deal with: procrastinate.

Two months later, in no particular order, I began to sift through them. The first notebook I reached for said "1983"; I would have been 15. On the inside cover was my father's handwriting - he must have given it to me for my birthday, which is in January. It read: "Let's hope this year is filled with adventure ..." I opened it up. Blank. Except for one page that said "My Life." Nothing followed.

I moved on. The next one I picked out was an autobiography that was written at the world-weary age of nine. It had to have been for a school project because there's no way I would have taken that kind of initiative on my own. It charts my life from birth to Bangkok, which I visited with my father and where I played with elephants. It talks about living in New York with my mother and riding a bicycle and loving my fish. It says that I admired my Aunt Ellen "because she is nice to me". I was easy to please. But then, at the very end, is a line that foreshadows things to come. "I've had a nice life ... so far."

About a dozen notebooks were about boys, and I always seemed like a 16-year-old in them, even if they were from a few years ago. But that's probably because I wrote in them mostly when I was unhappy as a result of some old pattern I've been repeating ever since. As I read through page after page of worries and complaints, anxieties and anger, I could see how many times I had made excuses for people who weren't showing enough respect, interest and love. Each page was like another dose of radiation exposure. I'd skip ahead, but no matter where I picked up, it was still toxic.

Yet, despite wincing and with one eye shut, I read on, hooked by the expectation that in the future, it would be better. Was that hope? I think it was. There was the anticipation that when I "grew up" it would be different; everything good was up ahead. And what struck me is how little has changed.

After a while, I began to notice what wasn't being written about more than what was. It was missing the narrative. The experiences, the travels, the video directed by Andy Warhol. I'd had enough of the feelings. Where was the story?

The only story I could find was a journal I'd kept of an adventure course in the Teton Mountains of Wyoming that I'd been forced to go on for six weeks when I was 14. It was very descriptive - a day-by-day account of what happened ... and it read like the New England Journal of Medicine; every ailment told in extraordinary detail. Day 1, pain from the hiking increases and descriptions of the wilderness fade as descriptions of my blisters become more in depth. By day 2, I'm ready to give up. Day 3: "I'm going to die here. I know it." Day 4 and 5: "I'm still shaking but the rope burn has taken my mind off the migraines." Day 6: "It's a miracle I'm able to write." Day 8: "Today was the worst day yet." It goes on, each day worse than the last and, on day 9, I almost choke to death from a mosquito net over my face. On the 11th day, I discover that if I eat the poisonous berries, I could get out of there; so by day 14, I was in "walkout" - 27 miles in two days and "I hoped it was the end."

Within a few hours, I'd read through them all and felt relief, like a chore I'd gotten over with. I'd thought they might be a good reminder to stop myself from making the same mistakes or to gauge how much I've changed, but in the end they were neither. They were full of loneliness and despair and suffering and grief; it was unsettling, but a little bit comforting too.

I wouldn't have had it any other way.

<< Back to Guardian Articles