Twenty Years of Diary: Part Two

My middle school years almost perfectly overlapped that weird era when the eighties ended and the nineties began, amplifying all the awkwardness of the times with my own dorky puberty.

From 1989 to 1992, I attended three different schools, and was bullied in all of them. I had friends and dates, but much of the preteen world felt closed to me. So I mostly withdrew, and turned to my own life.

A great deal of energy’s generated in those years of life, and most of mine went to imaginary pursuits. All the creativity in me slowly channeled itself into storytelling. During seventh and eighth grades especially, I wrote tons of short stories, centering on a cast of characters that stayed with me for years. I made up planets, drew maps, outlined novels, and used every doll and toy I still had from childhood as a prop in the endless, morphing tale I was telling myself.

The neighborhood in which I lived was a great place for an imaginative kid, with a lake and an island, a skating path, trees to climb, lots of deserted little corners to break into and explore. Within walking distace was a playground, a pool, a grocery store that sold cheap candy, a movie theater, a fancy beach hotel that never noticed quiet kids wandering through, and of course, the ocean itself.

It was a landscape custom-built for acting out inner stories. I lived half in the real world and half in the overlapping world of daydreams.

I kept a normal diary, but only filled two books in four years. It was during this time that my personal writing became more about my inner life than my outer one. The reality of school was stressful and alienating, so my descriptions of even the most eventful days are matter-of-fact and relatively dull. My inner world took precedence.

And even though it is more of a balance now, the “real world” and day-to-day events have never gained ascendancy in the course of twenty years. I write about who I am, not just what I’m doing. And that habit began during my lonely, nerdy days as a poor kid in Palm Beach.

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