I used to write in a journal every day, except I called it a diary. ‘Journal’ seemed too American. I, a stubborn an impressionable 16-year-old, was proudly aligned to British English after the influence of my crusading older brother and my Received Pronunciation-tinged mother. Both have either said or written the words ‘don’t forget your roots’ to me in the years since, usually in relation to a point of language.

(For some reason, ‘journal’ is acceptable to me now, and seems more appropriate than ‘diary’. Perhaps I have become Americanized, despite the best efforts of my kin.)

The storm of angst in my teenage head poured out into those Word documents at the end of each day. As I became more and more reliant on my journal to make sense of my thoughts, and of my burgeoning selfhood, I took to writing in it first thing in the morning, during free periods at school, and after dinner — whenever some frustration in my head demanded the indulgence of my complete attention.

The first few years of entries are often unreadable and fall largely into two categories: 1) angry screed against authority figure, or 2) hopeless pining for crush. Confrontation was too terrible to contemplate, and the idea of actually telling a girl how I felt about her was even more mortifying. Thank goodness I had my journal. Without it, I might have exploded and started a war by now.

I remember taking great pride in some of my entries, such that I wished I could share them with other people. But that was simply out of the question, as likely as walking down the street naked. I resigned myself to the fact that I would have to keep my journal all to myself; to revel privately in my finer paragraphs.

Sometimes, even early on, I would address my future self directly, and as an authority figure. Don’t fucking write this off as the stupid fucking ramblings of a fucking teenager, etc. (I swore as much as possible.) I have to admire my committed defence of my thoughts, just as I would admire a carefully considered rebuttal of climate change, no matter how blind it were to the truth. I seem to have known exactly how immature my thoughts were, and sought to preempt criticism by firmly stating that my experience was nonetheless valid: that there was order in the chaos of my mind.

*

When I got into my first proper relationship, aged 22 and living in a foreign country, my journal faded into the background of my life. For years it had provided me with a non-judgmental space in which to bash out how I really felt about something. Now I was spending a lot of my time with another person, and often confiding in her, rendering the journal obsolete — except when I wanted to analyse our stuttering relationship, which occasionally brought me back to the keyboard. Fuelled largely by the fear of losing her, these entries were laden with far more painful frustration and inadequacy than the pining of my teenage years.

But these occasions were irregular. I feared she would discover my journal, and that was unthinkable, so I kept away from it as much as possible, only returning when things got really bad. You could chart the good times in our years together by the gaps in my journal.

She did eventually read the journal — without my permission — and was aghast as the tide of negativity swamped her. It didn’t matter, though. The relationship was already lost.

*

Since meeting my current partner, my journal entries have become even more sporadic than they were during that earlier relationship. The main difference is that I have less time to write in it. She refuses to waste any opportunity for a new experience, leaping out of bed on sunny Saturdays and planning a hike or some other outing, or planning a minute-by-minute itinerary for our holidays.

After some initial resistance, I have been swept up in her zest for exploration. Weekend trips away often transpire in a chaotic flurry of activity: of last-minute packing; of wrangling other family members; of board games and large meals and swims in the sea. My participation began as a somewhat grudging attempt to connect with her, coming as it did at the cost of the hours I used to spend sitting at home, but I now go willingly. Getting out and doing things gives me more satisfaction than staying in and thinking about them.

But what of the difficult times? In my previous relationship, the worst of both of us was privately poured out and dissected in my journal. The openness I share with my partner makes that analysis redundant. We aren’t perfect communicators, but where possible, we figure things out together.

I remember it all much less clearly than I used to when I noted and discussed everything I did in my journal. But the moments themselves are more vivid, like a sheer curtain has been pulled away. It’s a trade-off I happily accept, and my hope is that as we grow older, we can keep our experiences alive by filling the gaps in each other’s memories.