Freedom Looks Different

How do I start? The last few days felt like a roller coaster of emotions. Not the fun amusement park one, but the kind where you scream a little and laugh a little and question your life choices somewhere in the middle. I felt like writing every single day in the past week. Extreme emotions have a strange side effect: they push you toward a pen. Or a keyboard. Or at least toward opening a notes app and staring at the blinking cursor like it owes you an explanation.

It felt like the perfect time to resume writing a daily diary. I am a little insecure about using the word resume here. I should probably say I could have started again. Because truthfully, I have always failed at keeping up this habit.

Every year on the 1st of January, I take up a brand-new diary with dramatic determination. The first page always smells like discipline and new beginnings. This year I didn’t even manage that on January 1st. But in the past, when I did start, I would last for a month or two. After that, the diary would quietly disappear from my routine, like it never existed before.

By now, I know why this happens. Whenever I sit to write in a diary, especially at the end of the day, I mostly rant. I pour out all my frustrations like someone emptying a heavy bag after a long journey. I do write happy things too, but they usually take up three polite sentences. Then the ranting resumes for the next three pages. By the time I close the diary, I feel emotionally exhausted, as if I've attended a very long meeting with my own thoughts.

And the real problem begins later. After a few days, when I read those pages again, everything suddenly feels smaller than it did while writing. I start feeling embarrassed about the emotional tornado I had recorded. That is when the diary slowly gets hidden in some corner of my cupboard, like a witness to my dramatic phases. I have tried to avoid this pattern many times. But whenever I see a blank page and hold a pen, something happens. My thoughts start spilling out without any filter.

Actually, now that I think about it, maybe it is not the blank paper and the pen. Maybe it is the freedom.

A diary gives a kind of freedom that nothing else does. A strange, quiet, private freedom. The freedom to complain without explaining. The freedom to exaggerate your feelings without being fact-checked. The freedom to write sentences that would never survive in daylight. People read my blog posts. These words travel outside my room. They meet other people's eyes, interpretations, and sometimes their judgments. So naturally, there are filters. Not fake filters, but thoughtful ones. Oh but a diary?! A diary doesn’t care. A diary simply opens its pages like a loved one saying, "Go on, say it all." And suddenly you realize how powerful freedom can feel when nobody is watching.

Everybody enjoys freedom. Some people show it loudly. Some people keep it folded quietly inside their routines. A lion has it naturally —roaring, running, claiming its space. A cow, on the other hand, might have to beg and plead for it. But the joy of freedom is real for both. Interestingly, society celebrates the lion's freedom. But the moment the cow enjoys freedom, people get uncomfortable.

The same thing happens with our emotions too. Anger can walk proudly into a room, but sadness must knock politely. Confidence is applauded, but vulnerability is often asked to lower its voice. Freedom, it seems, comes with invisible conditions.

Maybe that is why the blank pages of a diary feel so generous. They allow a kind of freedom that life sometimes hesitates to give us.
Freedom to be dramatic.
Freedom to be confused.
Freedom to complain about very small things.
Freedom to celebrate very small joys.
And sometimes, freedom to contradict yourself completely the next day.

But while I was thinking about freedom on a blank diary page, another thought slipped in. Freedom looks very different depending on who holds it. For many girls, freedom is still measured in tiny permissions!! How late we can stay out, how loudly we can laugh, how much of our opinions we can reveal without being labelled "too much." Sometimes freedom is as simple as walking alone without glancing back every few steps. Sometimes it is the freedom to say no without explaining the entire history of our decision. And sometimes it is the quiet freedom of being completely ourselves without shrinking a little to make others comfortable.

So maybe the diary is not the only place where I crave freedom. Maybe every girl carries a few unwritten pages inside her— thoughts she edits before speaking, choices she postpones, dreams she keeps folded carefully in a corner. One day, I hope those pages feel as free as a blank notebook. And when that day comes, I think our voices will sound a little louder, our laughter a little longer, and our stories a little braver. Perhaps this was the thought I had when I saw all the Women's Day posts filling our stories this Sunday:)

See you next Wednesday, hopefully with another thought that refuses to stay quiet.