Dear Diary

As a kid, I knew exactly what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wanted to be a teenager.

During a bout of strep throat, I begged my dad to buy me Teen magazine along with my penicillin and 7-Up. I pored over the pages as though pursuing a master’s degree. I read the issue cover-to-cover, over and over again. From skincare routines to saying the L-word, what to expect on prom night and does-he-like-you quizzes, there was so much to know! An ambitious 10-year-old, I needed to start now; junior high a mere two years away.

Flipping through that first magazine blossomed into an insatiable desire to learn everything it meant to grow up. I’d create shopping lists, knowing that no teen girl could survive without a pot of Noxema, or Doc Martens. I’d wonder if I could ever be as pretty as the Barbizon girl advertised in the back of Seventeen magazine. YM’s “Say Anything” column, a collection of reader-submitted embarrassing moments, showed me just how traumatic the next few years would be. I prepared for my period leaking through my pants, or getting busted picking a wedgie by my crush. Wow, being a teen was sure going to be full of embarrassing moments!

Writing in a diary felt like a critical activity for any teenager. Imagine my excitement when my mother bought one for my 10th birthday.

Four-by-six inches with gold-trimmed pages, encapsulated by a shiny cardboard cover decked with pink hearts. And then, the coolest part: a lock and key. I’d hide it somewhere really secure, like my underwear drawer.

I started writing that very night.

July 1, 1992. Then, Dear Diary.

I bitched about my 5th grade teacher (coffee breath to the max!). I complained about warbled-voiced Cassie Nelson landing solos in every class musical. I wrote about my crushes. Andrew, the shy, adorable one; Mark, the bad boy whose shiny bowl cut cornered the market at Lily Lake Elementary. Joe was the funniest kid in our class. He used a lot of hair gel, and liked rap music with Parental Advisory warnings. Edgy!

Specifically, I recall lamenting how one of the boys I liked didn’t know I existed. I mean, of course he knew—there were only 25 kids in our class. But did he drift off to sleep to the sounds of Mariah Carey’s Music Box, thinking of me like I was thinking of him? Maybe, but I doubted it.

It was quite clear why he didn’t consider me his “Dream Lover” or “Hero” or the Mariah to his Tommy Mattola. I was hideous! I was fat, weird, and didn’t have a spiral perm, which is clearly what makes a 10-year-old boy’s heart palpitate. I slammed the door to my bedroom, plopped down at my desk, scribbling in blue erasable pen, “I’m going to get a perm, get skinny, and get him!”

I’m simultaneously embarrassed and heartbroken that pre-teen thought I needed to change everything about my body for boys to like me. Especially when the actual reason boys didn’t like me is because they were also 10 and only cared about playing Sega Genesis and whether or not their parents were going to get them a Starter jacket for Christmas.

A few weeks later, I hit up open skating at the local rink with my two best friends. Our moms sat in the bleachers, gossiping and drinking Diet Coke. I stepped off the ice to ask my mom for a snack from the concession stand. She and the other moms laughed, and I asked, What’s so funny?

Oh, we were just talking about which boy you like. Andrew, Mark or Joe!

Omg. Here it was. My YM “Say Anything” moment. And I wasn’t even an actual teen yet! How did she know? I couldn’t even bring myself to talk about my crushes to my friends.

That evening, I retreated to my room to work out my feelings. It was then I saw the gold button below the keyhole. All one needed to do to crack the code was slide the lock’s button down. My mom not only read it, but told everyone what I’d written.

Mortified didn’t scratch the surface.

At the time, I wanted to part the clothes in my closet and step into Narnia, praying the fart cloud of shame couldn’t follow me. I hated the moments my mom poked through the hard shell I’d built around my soft skin. For as long as I can remember, I never, ever cried in front of my mother, fearing it would expose the places that hurt me most. When I got my period at 12, I said nothing—instead, I used wadded-up toilet paper, then wrote letters to Tampax asking for free samples. I found their address in an issue of Teen magazine. With my secrets out in the open, she was locked and loaded with ammo to hurt me and wasted no time unleashing the bullets. 

Years later, my own father said my mom bragged about reading my diary, saying, you have to check this out! It’s hilarious! She’d started reading it immediately, as though it was the whole reason she bought it in the first place. I’ve read through my old notes, and they are, indeed, hysterical. However, in between the mortifying confessions, I’ve found ample proof of a troubled child, seeking love and validation. I cannot believe my mother read that I thought I was fat and ugly in my own handwriting and ignored it.

When faced with an opportunity to love me, she laughed at me.

There will come a time when my little girl loathes something about herself, and I can already feel hot tears streaming down my face. 

This is what it’s like to be raised by a Borderline mother. Instead of being uplifted, you’re shamed. Instead of being loved, you’re neglected. She’s not crushed by your low self-esteem. She loves it.

I never wrote in a diary again.

Molly Katt is a food and travel writer with bylines in Delta Sky, Minneapolis-St. Paul Magazine, and Experience Life. She has ghostwritten three books with Andrew Zimmern (Travel Channel/MSNBC)—two for Random House and one for MacMillan—and they have also co-hosted the award-winning podcast, Go Fork Yourself, for three years. Molly currently hosts Matriarch Digital Media’s A Mess in the Kitchen podcast. In addition to writing, keeping my kids alive and cooking, she’s a sucker for animal rescue and love fostering dogs. She and her husband are currently restoring a 1903 Victorian house in Minneapolis.