The Secret Habit I’ve Hidden for 10 Years

For a decade, I’ve carried a secret no one knows about—not my family, not my closest friends, not even the people I swore I would tell everything to. It started small, harmless even, but it grew into something I kept locked away because I was terrified of being judged.

I never set out to become someone who hid pieces of themselves. But secrets have a way of attaching themselves to you, like shadows that refuse to leave.

It began when I was sixteen. At the time, I was drowning in expectations—grades, appearances, friendships, all the things that seemed to matter more than breathing. I didn’t know how to process the noise inside my head, so I found an escape.

That escape was compulsive journaling.

I know, it doesn’t sound dramatic. But it wasn’t the kind of journaling people brag about on social media. My notebooks weren’t filled with inspirational quotes or bucket lists. They were messy, chaotic, and sometimes disturbing. I wrote everything I couldn’t say out loud—the anger, the jealousy, the fears, the late-night confessions about people I loved but couldn’t admit to, the lies I told, the mistakes I made.

Every page was a version of me that no one else was allowed to see.

At first, it was comforting. But slowly, the habit grew into an obsession. I couldn’t go a day without it. If I went to a party, I’d sneak away to scribble a few lines. If I had an exam, I’d write paragraphs instead of studying. I wasn’t living life; I was documenting it like I was afraid the truth would slip away if I didn’t trap it on paper.

And because of that, I never let anyone near those notebooks.

By the time I turned twenty, I had nearly thirty of them. They were hidden in boxes, buried under clothes, shoved in the back of closets. I moved houses twice, and each time, the first thing I packed wasn’t my clothes or books—it was my journals.

The fear of someone finding them consumed me. I imagined my parents flipping through the pages and realizing how much I had hidden from them. I pictured friends discovering the bitterness I’d once written about them in anger, words I never meant to last.

So I kept the secret alive.

Ten years later, I’m twenty-six, and the habit hasn’t died. The boxes have grown heavier, and sometimes I sit on the floor with them spread around me, feeling like I’m staring at a museum of my own broken pieces.

Sometimes I open an old journal and cringe at the person I used to be—the one who thought the world was ending because of a bad grade or a broken friendship. Other times, I read passages that are so raw and honest that I hardly recognize myself. It’s like I’ve been carrying around different versions of me, stacked one on top of the other, waiting for someone to peel them back.

There are moments I wonder if I should burn them. I imagine the flames swallowing the secrets I’ve carried, leaving me lighter, freer. But then another thought stops me: what if those notebooks are the truest version of me that exists?

The me that’s unfiltered. The me that doesn’t pretend.

I’ve built a life where I smile at the right times, answer politely, and look composed. But inside those pages, I am messy, angry, confused, passionate, lost, and brutally honest.

It scares me to think that if I threw them away, I’d be erasing a decade of myself.

So I keep writing. I don’t know if I’ll ever let anyone read those journals. Maybe one day, long after I’m gone, someone will stumble across them and finally see me—not the version I presented to the world, but the one I kept locked away.

And maybe that’s what I’ve wanted all along.

Not to be understood while I’m here, but to be remembered for who I really was when I thought no one was watching.