I recently flipped through the diary I kept sporadically from age 8 until I entered sixth grade. It’s the devastating tale of a pure-of-heart elementary school student who hated hand chimes (this is the depressing stepping stone to the glorious handbells of Christmas carol fame) and kept meticulous record of when she brushed her teeth, and how she grew into a nightmarish sixth grader who smiled on the outside but spewed sass in her diary and had dreams of her diary being as famous as Anne Frank’s while also confessing her deep and irrational fear of Anne Frank.

I spent the majority of the entries addressing the diary as one would a parole officer: sharing dutifully every single thing I did and apologizing if I listed them out of order or forgot to write one day, which of course I did, constantly. Every single entry contains an apology of some sort to this inanimate but oppressive diary, and this is totally, exactly how I am: enslaving myself to expectations no one else ever set, feeling terrible about it, and then eventually shaking my fist at the sky in resentment when I realize I can’t meet them. OH, HELP.

The scariest part about reading an old diary is not who you were, but who you STILL ARE. Have mercy. Here is what my diary taught me is (probably) eternally true about me: