The journal was a gift to the girl. Her best friend had embellished the simple composition notebook with photos and poetry glued to its wide ruled pages, bells strung to the binding, and enough glitter shellacked on it to make a pixie puke. The girl loved the journal. She wrote in it nearly every day about school, boys, friends, and, occasionally, her parents. Writing in her journal was the girl’s way to understand who she was and how others saw her, her own looking glass.

For a Korean American girl adopted to white parents, her entries were more than just teenage ramblings. When she felt she was drowning in a sea of white faces, her journal was a lifeline. Sometimes she struggled to put words to the uncomfortable feelings she didn’t know what to do with. Sometimes she read her past entries, shaking with humiliation and rage. Sometimes she wondered if her parents would find her journal when she was gone. 

In the upper-right hand corner of the page, the girl carefully dated each entry, often taking a second to consider the passing of time. She tried to capture the moment by noting what she was eating, wearing, or what song she was listening to. She made lists, so many lists, of all the places she went, who was there, and every stupid New Year’s resolution she ever had. Who was she documenting all these things for? Did she know, decades later, she would pull the worn journals from her parents’ attic and read them with fresh, compassionate eyes? 

Like a message in a bottle, these notebooks were the girl’s wish—my wish—to be found and rescued. This year, I broke open the glass bottle and read nearly 10 years of journal entries compiled in eight composition notebooks. From unrelenting crushes to the overwhelming shame of being Korean and adopted, it’s all there in its rawest, messiest form. Today I’m grateful to that sad, angry girl who ultimately wrote her heart out for no one but herself. If only she had known then how much I love her.