How do you start one of these? With "Dear Diary"? "Dear Blog"? Or maybe you just start writing. I still don't really know why I'm even doing this, but I guess if I'm just writing in a notebook that I keep hidden under my bed, then really, what's the use? Not that I need the validation of other people reading this (I'm certainly not going to send the link around to friends), and I definitely will not identify myself (I'd risk public humiliation and job loss, like some 22 year-old investment bank applicant on Facebook)... it's just the possibility that this may be read which makes this whole project feel slightly less insignificant.

For two years as a child, I kept a diary. A small, girly thing made of red shiny vinyl with a golden plastic lock on it. I hated school and didn't have friends, so this diary was for me both a confidant and a shrink, allowing me to pour out my heart to a best friend who unfortunately didn't exist, and teaching me to structure my thoughts in a way any Freudian would be proud of. I kept it between the ages of 10 and 12, a difficult time during which my thoughts and body changed immensely.

Just after my twelfth birthday and first menstral period, my brother stole the diary. I was in the sixth grade, he in the ninth, and we were in one building together as part of some hideous experiment combining grammer and middle schools. He always had a gaggle of girlfriends around him, and he tried desperately to impress them. I always thought they were trashy, and they always talked about sex. I never did. Of course they thought I was prude, and too young to have anything to do with, but they enjoyed taunting me nonetheless.

The morning that he stole the diary was typically hectic. He started earlier than I did, and our mother would hurry around trying to make our breakfasts and ensure everyone was dressed and that my lunch was ready (my brother had stopped bringing his years ago, because he thought it would be cooler to buy it at the cafeteria). I couldn't find my diary that morning and had a bad feeling, but my brother was already gone and I wouldn't have asked him about it anyway. In vain, I didn't want to put any ideas into his head.

By lunchtime his girlfriends had already thought of a nickname for me, which was a mix of the special word which I made up for my period, and of my first name. I won't tell you what they called me, because it's still just too painful, and I can't tell you my name anyway, so you'll just have to imagine. But it was awful. They also managed to make a name for my diary, which quite infelicitously happened to be red. They called it my blood book.

Sobbing and yelling, I managed to wrestle the diary back from him, or at least what remained of it after he and his friends tore through it. I could hardly go back to school, and was too traumatized to ever write in a diary again, and so I threw the thing out and haven't written down a single private thought until now.

By posting this on the internet, I hope to gain back the control I lost when my brother stole my diary. I will show self-control in what I post. I will be judicious in what I say about myself.