i know they’re her private journals, and shouldn’t necessarily be used as a rule book of any sort to live by; but being 19 myself, i thought i could gain knowledge from a girl who i assumed would most definitely have more common sense than i do.
i’m almost 200 pages in and am actually growing quickly tired of trying to track the different dates and men and boys. maybe the absence of her father plays a big part in this, but whatever enchantment sylvia has worked up in me is quickly made dull by the beginning of her next entry, which is a complete 180 from the last, in the span of a day (i love him, never mind i hate him, and there’s this other guy).
one day she’s accepted in mademoiselle, eating caviar, drinking champagne staying out late and the next (for no apparent reason) she’s dejected, hopeless. and she says it herself, she has everything and more. and i’m unfortunately not seeing it as “no matter how much you have you’re still empty”, rather than as “this girl has absolutely zero foresight”.
these journals have served only to paint sylvia as an extremely ungrateful person, and unfortunately i’ve gained no insight or found any knowledge to superimpose onto my own life (other than observe how childish and unappreciative one of your favorite authors realistically is)
So you started reading published private diaries of someone who is also young at the time they were written, someone with severe enough mental issues that she later dies because of them, and you’ve added the expectation that they should be a roadmap to insights?
That is just not how this works.
And frankly the vast majority of the insights I have into life come from just living life, and reading books can sometimes help illuminate experiences in a more elegant manner for me to reflect upon.
OP seems to completely ignore her age at the time of writing which is just wild to me. Why is she expected to be more mature and moral? As you said, insights come from living and gaining experience. When I was in my teens and 20s, my bipolar was out of control. I was not someone to look up to. I did dangerous things and had a lot of sexual partners in questionable situations. I was also just young and young people can be jerks just like anyone else. If someone published my diary they would see a severely messed up person. I’m not her anymore, though, and I’ve learned to view myself and others with grace and understanding. Part of that was my experiences and part of it was reading about others.