A huge bucket of family drama was upended on me yesterday and when I sat down to write about it, I got all vague and glossed over it, even though I probably need to get it out somehow. I trust the people in my life not to read my journal but seemed like a risk or even a betrayal of confidence to put the words down.
Do you hold anything back, or is it all laid out bare? How did you get past the internal censor so you could write to clear your head?
I live with my spouse, and no one else, so I tend to be pretty honest. Anything I write, I’ve probably at least hinted at to her already and the only scenario where she’d actively read looking for data is one where e.g., I was unconscious and she needed to know when I last logged that I had taken some medicine or etc.
In other living scenarios, I’ve found it much more difficult to be that open and honest - not because I didn’t trust the people I lived with, but because if ever I accidentally walked away from a page without closing it, it might well be difficult for someone to avoid seeing.
As @Shurf116@lemmy.ml points out, languages and alternative scripts come in handy here as well. I don’t use it often, but I’m still passingly comfortable with a rune set I used way back in high school to pass notes with friends. It’s hardly ‘secure,’ but avoids legitimate accidental glances.
How the hell I remember that script thirty years later, I’ve not a clue, especially since I’m fairly certain we made part of it up from whole cloth way back when.
I tend not to commit to writing things that would be particularly indefensible, or at least to be circuitous about it if I do. Just because I haven’t anything particular to hide today does not mean that I won’t need to hide a thought or feeling in the foreseeable future.