Mine are also cringy, ugh.

Burn or shred them

Mine are so cringy! I should probably read them one more time. Thank my lucky stars that I grew up. And burn them.

Anonymous wrote:Before you throw them away, please post some of your entries here so we can enjoy them together.

+1
We're anonymous here.

Long thrown out. No, I definitely don’t want my kids reading any of that.

Throw them away.

If those diaries are important to you, you can keep them and re-read them when you want. In other case you may toss it. It is up to you to decide of course

I wish I had held on to my adolescent diaries….‼️…..

Just to see how far I have come.

But yes, if you read them & are not happy w/the person you were then - it is best to dispose of them stat.

No one needs a proverbial dark cloud following them around in adulthood.

I left mine in the attic of my childhood home. I moved from there years ago. Maybe one day in the future it will be discovered and be of interest to someone. It might have already been discovered, I don't know.

I took out the pages and put them through a shredder.

I took pictures of pages worth saving and shredded everything. So many thoughts that should NOT have been written out lol. My diaries from when I was really young were pretty funny, especially since I had just learned cus words and called everyone the B word in it. I’ll find some and write them here.

Burn or shred

I read through mine about 8 years ago, at first it was a normal journal about feelings and goals etc. then it just became a weekly accounting of all the sex I was having and the boys I wanted to have sex with.
Shredded!

I love saving and reading them or I used to because my most recent reread made me decide I’d be better off tossing them in a bin. I was just an idiot in high school and I’m surprised anyone could bear to be around me for longer than a few minutes.

I threw mine away as they described all my young sexual awakening (and drug use and self harm) in graphic detail and the idea of my kids reading this one day when i was dead terrified me . So in the trash it went. BUT i am kind of sad about it still.

I'm in the minority here, but I generally vote to keep diaries. At least some of them. I treasure mine even though, yes, things I wrote in them do not reflect the person I am today. I love being able to flip to a date 10, 15, 20 years ago and see what I was thinking about. It has given me so much perspective and peace of mind to reread old passages and think "Wow, I was so convinced X meant my life was over...and now I can't even remember that person's last name, etc." It reassures me that most of the things I worry about are going to be okay in the end.

All that said, if you don't get any value from them then purge baby!