I started writing diaries at the age of eleven.

I still recall the very first day I scribbled my first words. I struggled to distort my handwriting to appear somewhat decent. I remember looking at the colored pages with small "Hello Kitty" images all over and awkwardly trying to find the pithy words the pretty pages deserved.

I kept a diary for every single day of my adolescent life. Every single day from eleven years old to eighteen. Any friend from back then could easily tell the stories of how I would never go anywhere without my overflowing diary and a can of Diet Coke. If that's not enough, my eighteen diaries are the proof of my obsession.

By the fourth one, I'd developed a pattern for ending a diary and starting a new one. One of the private ceremonies I held at the start of a diary was naming.

If you were to open any of the pages of my diaries, you wouldn't see any real names. Every single person in my life had a nickname that would only be used in my diaries. Most of the names were quite stupid and generally referred to a characteristic of the person. So at the beginning of each diary, I would pick the person that symbolized my mood best and name my diary after him or her.

For the rest of the diary, I would start each entry with "Dear Such-and-Such" and actually write in a tone as if I were speaking to the actual person. The things I wrote, the feelings I conveyed were possibly more honest or deep than I'd necessarily tell to the person's face, but the attitude was right on. With each new entry, the person's face would flash before my eyes and make me smile. She or he was my audience for the duration of that diary.

Earlier this week I started thinking about my audience for this site. Who would I have used for its nickname if it had one? Whose image flashes before my eyes as I type these entries?

I'm not sure of the answers. Certain entries definitely feel like I'm talking to a specific someone and others are mostly talking to myself.

What about you?

Previously? Beauty.