Dear Diary, This Was Cathartic...
“My friends all tell me I should write a book,” she said, “because I’ve had so many experiences. But I’m really not interested in doing that.” “What I've found,” I told the person I’d just met, “is you kind of have to feel compelled to write. If you’re a writer, you can’t not write.” Please pardon the double negative. “I don’t understand why people put their personal lives out there. Why do you feel like you want to do that?” “Because I want people to know they’re not alone,” I said. “So if they’re going through something, they’ll know they’re not the only one. “Hmmm. Really? I don’t read things like that.” Sigh. Thankfully, not everyone feels that way, as judged by the likes of popular self-disclosers like David Sedaris, Joan Didion, Augusten Burroughs, Mary Karr, Anne Lamott, Cheryl Strayed, Dani Shapiro and, very recently, Tara Westover, whose memoir Educated was #1 on the New York Times bestseller list, to name a few. These au...