Dear Diary,

To be writing this feels kind of weird, cause I haven't done it in a while. I stopped using a diary 5 years ago to be precise.

Yesterday evening I was looking for my old diaries and I found them at the bottom of a box I keep memories in. Both of them were locked up, lying there untouched for quite a long time. At first I couldn't remember where I put the keys to open them up but it eventually crossed my mind. I put my diaries in one of the drawers of my nightstand and went to bed with the thought to read some old entries the next day.

Today is that next day. It is Monday, the first of August (Swiss National Day so Happy Birthday Switzerland). I'm sitting on my balcony, my fingers gliding over the keyboard of my laptop, the diaries next to me on the table. I just finished reading through them and now I'm typing this because a year ago I found an exciting new way to follow my passion for writing & even share it with other people. I'm pretty sure 8 years old me couldn't even imagine that I would be doing this one day.

That's how old I was when I wrote my first diary entry back in 2006. The first few pages are full of spelling mistakes and I can't help but laugh when I go through them now. Still, I'm glad to have the possibility to look back on these entries, even if I basically just wrote about what I was playing that day, what we ate and how my brother annoyed me.

As the months & years went on and the dates at the top of a new entry changed, my writing changed with it. Not only the quality of it, which definitely improved as I got older, but also the content, how I wrote and what I wrote about.

I read about boys I thought I was madly in love with, there's a new name mentioned like every other page (lol). I read about friends I still have in my life now and about others that aren't part of it anymore. I read about things and events I totally forgot about and others that are still so present, it seems like they only just happened yesterday.  

I look back on these pages filled with words I wrote 5 years ago or longer - I know that those are my words, I know that she's me & I am her but at the same time it feels like we're completely different people. I changed too, I grew up.

5 years have passed since my very last diary entry. I was thirteen back then, I'm eighteen years old now. In two weeks, I'm about to start my last semester of school ever, I'll be graduating at the end of the year (hopefully). I still can't quite believe that it will be over soon but I can't wait. I can't wait to figure out what life has in store for me next, I can't wait to start working on my dreams and I can't wait to have more time for blogging.

It's kind of crazy to me what a huge part of my life blogging has become this past year. This one as well as my personal blog, those are my diaries now. This is where I share my writing and my thoughts, this is where I capture things. Every blogpost is like a new page in a diary - in 5 years I'll hopefully be able to look back on them just like I did with all these old entries today.

5 years from now I'll be 23. I'll probably be thinking the same thing I am now: wow, I've definitely changed. Did I really write this? Cause that's life. We get older, we grow up, we change.