WRITERS ABROAD MAGAZINE: THE THIRD SPACE
JUDE’S OBSCURE DIARY
BY SUE BORGERSEN
Jude never kept a diary. Well, at least, not one of those in red leatherette with a
locking clasp. Where you hung the minuscule gold-tone key on a chain around
your neck. To lock your innermost thoughts and dark secrets.
Her mother gave her a pink one for her eleventh birthday. Not wanting to
appear ungrateful she gave one of her brief beams, fingered the cover and the
little clasp, and said, ‘Thank you.’
Jude wrote poems in it once in a while, always inspired or triggered by the day
or month. Like poems beginning: March tenth for those who care/enough to
quench the flow/or take out the garbage not leave it on the bench/again. When
she found the diary in the bottom of a box years later, she thought her abundant
writings weren’t bad for an eleven to sixteen year old. In fact, quite OK
considering she didn’t want the diary in the first place.
Over time she revisited this book of her past. Reading through aging adult
eyes she learned more about her young innermost thoughts than she would if
she’d made daily entries: whining about her mother, worrying about her weight,
complaining about siblings, bitching about school friends. Declaring her undying
love for Gary.
The diary sits in the county museum now, alongside the first editions of her
best selling published works. The diary’s little gold-toned clasp is well and truly
locked however. No-one has ever asked for the key.
15 | MAY 2017