a deal with the fairy queen

(and my 2008 diary)

If the Fairy Queen appeared before me right now, resplendent in gold and green, to whisk me off to Elfland, and I only had time to grab one object, it would be my diary. Specifically the year 2008-2009.

Perhaps it’s strange to save this, the diary of a time I felt lost and lonely, above all else. Before novel drafts, before my laptop, or before The Silver Darlings, a book that I keep promising myself to read but never do.

At first glance, it’s an unassuming object. Small, slim, and sporting a chic flapper on the cover who encouraged me to “spill it, sister”. I bought it in a Waterstones bookshop one afternoon, seeking refuge from Dundee’s drizzly sky. I spent a lot of time in that bookshop, haunting the shelves between lectures. I’d yet to make any friends at university and felt doubtful I ever would. Those days, kindred spirits only came to me within the pages of a book.

Despite its humble appearance and origins, my diary of two-thousand-and-eight had an important task. On the first page, I wrote, “I don’t know who I am or where I’m going” but I had a deep-in-my-bones belief that writing this secret diary would help me find my life’s direction.

The first line, dated the seventeenth of September, reads:

This is it. The first diary that is truly private.

For my self-discovery mission to succeed, it had to be cloaked in secrecy. No one could know of its existence, only then could I write freely. A “thieving thought” apparently crossed my mind, but I reasoned that I was quite forgettable and that the cashier likely didn’t care what I wrote in the journal.

I vowed to write in its pages only when I was alone. Somehow the thought of others knowing that I kept a diary, or seeing me write within its pages, dampened my authentic voice. I felt there were things within me that I needed to express, things that would wilt and die if I couldn’t speak about them.

At the time I shared a bedroom with my sister. I used to hide my diary in my drawer, wrapped up in a t-shirt, and only took it out when I was alone. I wasn’t worried that she’d try to read it, I just felt strangely superstitious, as though any self-made future could be swept away by the cold gust of scrutiny.

The result was page after page of romanticism. Things I could worship in private—October mist and cold mornings, the promise of snow, and simple evenings spent with books. I furtively recorded wild geese ‘cutting a black V across the chill grey sky’, described my voice as ‘a spiderweb, breaking in the wind’, and penned pages to the ‘selkie-filled sea’.

I’m not sure why I felt I had to hide these secret longings.

Perhaps it’s because, at that time, it didn’t feel safe to be soft. To be feminine. To appreciate slow and simple things or to openly believe in magic. Whatever the reason, I cocooned myself in an invisible, impenetrable sealskin by day, and by night wrote my true feelings in my diary, where I felt safe from the scathing winds of a time and place inhospitable to whimsical dreamers.

Within these pages, I could surrender to beauty and over-feeling without being ridiculed or criticised. Bruises and thorns bloomed alongside the roses in a written portrait of the woman I was, and the woman I was becoming. The pages are littered with personal inspiration: a Polaroid photo I took of a snowy graveyard; a clipping of the ancient Yew tree at Fortingall; a newspaper cutting of a local father sending his seven sons to battle during World War One.

Current affairs, politics, or gossip are rarely featured in my diary. I saw my day as a folktale, where I might follow a breadcrumb trail to reward or ruin, hear riddles in the morning crow chorus, or encounter sloe-eyed strangers who maybe, just maybe, were sidhe in disguise.

I didn’t realise it at the time, but I was drawing a cloak of protection around myself and becoming stronger for it. It’s not something I could’ve done in plain sight. Like most significant transformations, it was achieved by sleight of hand.

The freedom of privacy is why I continue to keep a diary. I am the writer, but also the sole reader. I can speak without fear of reproach or dismissal. I can cry about situations I laughed off. I can wield a knife without wounding. And, if you’re a diary writer, I’m sure you already know that the hardest but most essential thing to write about is the truth. The truth about yourself.

No one else needs to know, but it’s vital that you do. Without accepting the truth of your current situation it’s impossible to change it.

When I write regularly in my diary, I find that I feel more and think less. I set free anxious thoughts that have taken up roost in my brain, seeing them for the illusions they often are. Recording my true thoughts and feelings helped me discover who I am, and that I’m not as bad as I think. Maybe I instinctively knew this when I bought that diary in Waterstones, all those years ago…maybe I felt the shadow of my older self, returning to its pages throughout the years for comfort and quiet strength?

One of my favourite writers, Anaïs Nin, was also a diarist. Her infamous journal, which she kept from eleven years old until her death at seventy-three, spans several volumes and decades of sensual, artistic life. One of her insights that stuck with me, and which sheds light on my own diary writing habit, is that “We write to taste life twice.”

Impressions, beauty, laughter, tears, dissolve in a passing moment, but within the pages of a diary, they are preserved forever. It is a little like looking back at old photos, only more intimate.

As a teenager, I used to pen an entry every evening. Unfortunately, I shredded four years’ worth of high school diaries in a fit of cringe a long time ago. So, although I’ve kept a diary since I was fourteen, 2007 is the earliest diary I have. Today I don’t hold myself to daily diary writing, but I start losing the thread of things if I don’t visit its pages once a week. And when I feel unsure about life I often reorientate myself by sifting through the earliest pages of my personal chronicle.

That’s why if I found myself making a deal with the Fairy Queen, disorientated and powerless, I’d want my old diary. The otherworld atmosphere might addle my brain and I’d wish for a reminder of my true self, a breadcrumb trail back. And then there’s the comfort of knowing the impossibility of anyone back home ever reading my diary!

I hope you enjoyed this week’s letter. It’s a little later than usual, as I’ve had one of those weeks where my brain won’t settle for longer than a second. I’d love to know what object you’d take with you to Fairy! xx