Preface: This is not a diary
I am not writing this to be read.
I am writing it so I cannot be told I imagined it.
Andy gave me this diary because he thought I was acting all fidgety. He said I should start journaling and write about my feelings to slow down my thoughts. I am doing this to make him feel good so he won’t worry about the baby or me. He worries too much, and ever since we decided to start a new family, he has been worrying even more. I think it’s because he doesn’t want a repeat of what happened last time. Sometimes I make sure to scribble here when he is around and leave this diary on the bedside table where he can see it, as if that alone proves I am trying. He likes evidence of progress, a downside of being a criminal lawyer. He likes to know I am trying. He doesn’t read it. He says he won’t, and I trust him even more than I trust myself. I know it matters to him that I am writing in it and trying to be good for our family.
But all these entries are not going to be what he thinks. I am going to talk about my feelings, but not in a way he wants me to. I am writing because something has started to repeat itself, and I am no longer certain whether the repetition is a coincidence or a warning. If I wait until I am sure, I am afraid I may already be too late to be believed.
I am calling this documentation because calling it anything else would be a lie.
This is not a diary. I am not interested in recording my days or what I had for dinner. This is for my own sanity. If I am wrong, I want the evidence to exist somewhere outside my own head - before someone tells me, kindly, that nothing ever happened at all and I just imagined it with my writer’s brain. I want my words to make sense even when the reality doesn’t. I know this may well be a fool’s errand, but I need to write it anyway.
