It Happened To Me: My Mom Read My Diary — 32 Years Later I'm Still Pissed
She gave me what I thought was a locked journal I could pour my secrets into. Turns out, it was a trap my mother set so she could use my deepest feelings against me. I was 11 years old.
Oh, it's Friday. That’s so nice. I have very little that feels urgent to tell you about my current personal life before getting on with this piece today. Which is, I'll bet, even nicer for you.
I really really like the It Happened To Me below a lot. More eloquently presented than what I'm about to say, it did bring back memories of my grandmother reading my diary when I was about the same age as Molly was when this happened to her - and how I realized it was happening and started lying daily in my own journal to say things that would please her. What a shitty grandparent move. Then I also recalled something I haven't thought of in ages - that in the year following, my best friend's mom read her diary and subsequently, but without explaining why, banned us from going to the mall where we were vandalizing department stores by squeezing ketchup packets onto the pillows of those little short hard display beds. (I guess curbing that behavior might have been wise - thanks, Laura’s mom!)
Molly's case is unique and stunning and involves a whole other level of potentially destructive violation in my thinking (plus I was shocked when I got her submission that in 38 years of publishing this It Happened To Me column, I have never seen this topic proposed). So read it if you like and I do hope you get as much out of this gorgeously written account as I did. Then I am so curious to hear if you've been on the reading or being read side of this equation and what your feelings are about that and when/if it’s ever okay to do.
What a way to start your weekend off! I love you, and I hope yours is, in fact, a weekend off. Have fun either way!
See you in the comments!
Love love, Jane
By Molly Mogren Katt
As a kid, I knew exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted to be a teenager.
During a particularly bad bout of strep throat, I begged my dad to buy me a copy of Teen magazine along with my penicillin and 7-Up. I will never forget the blonde, all-American girl frolicking down the beach, her long, tousled blonde hair blowing in the wind, her tanned body in a hot pink bikini.
Though not quite a teen myself, I pored over the pages as though pursuing a master’s degree in growing up. I read the issue cover-to-cover, over and over again. From skincare routines, to saying the L-word, and what to expect on prom night, to “Does He Like You?” quizzes, there was just so much to know!
As an ambitious 10-year-old, I needed to start right then if I wanted to feel prepared for junior high, a mere two years away.
Flipping through that first magazine blossomed into an insatiable desire to learn everything it meant to grow up. The mailbox burst with subscriptions of Sassy, Seventeen, Teen and YM. [I fully forgive you for putting Sassy in that despicable company. -Jane] I’d create shopping lists, knowing that no teen girl could survive without her own pot of Noxzema or pair of Doc Martens.
“I was going to get a perm, get skinny, and get him!”
I wondered if I could ever be as pretty as the Barbizon girl advertised in the back of Seventeen magazine. YM’s “Say Anything” column, a collection of reader-submitted embarrassing moments, showed me just how traumatic the next few years would be. I prepared myself for my period inevitably leaking through my pants, getting busted picking a wedgie by my crush, or my ‘rents spilling the beans about the time I accidentally plugged the toilet on their friend’s boat.
Wow, being a teen was sure going to be full of embarrassing moments!
Aside from getting your period and buying your first bra, writing in a diary felt like a critical activity for anyone serious about being a teenager. Imagine my excitement when my mother bought me one for my 11th birthday.
Four-by-six inches, lined pages edged with gold, encapsulated in a white, shiny cardboard cover covered with small hearts. And then, the coolest part: an actual lock that came with keys. It was every emotional tween’s dream. A pretty, little perfect book for me to write my deepest, darkest secrets. My crushes! My grievances! My innermost thoughts—all protected with a teeny, tiny key that I would hide somewhere really secure. Like my underwear drawer or in a shoe in the back of my closet.
I started immediately, doing all the things I’d read about in the Bible. Oh, I’m sorry, I mean Teen magazine.
First, I wrote the date. July 1, 1992. Then, Dear Diary.