A Childhood Possession That Shaped Who I Am Today

Describe an item you were incredibly attached to as a youth. What became of it?

The One Thing I Could Never Let Go Of

As a child, attachment didn’t come from value or price—it came from emotion. For me, that attachment lived in one simple item: my old school diary.

It wasn’t just a notebook. It was my world.

More Than Just Pages

That diary followed me everywhere. Inside it were badly written poems, half-drawn dreams, exam stress scribbles, and tiny notes I never intended anyone to read. Every page held a version of me I was too young to understand but brave enough to express.

Whenever I felt misunderstood or overwhelmed, I opened that diary. It listened without judgment. It kept my secrets safe when the world felt too loud. In many ways, it became my first friend—the one who never interrupted.

Why I Was So Attached

What made me incredibly attached to it wasn’t how it looked, but what it carried. It held my first ambitions, my first heartbreak, my first belief that I could become something more. Writing in it felt like talking to my future self, hoping that someday I would understand the chaos I was feeling then.

Losing it felt unimaginable.

What Became of It

Time, however, has a quiet way of taking things from us.

During one of many house shifts, the diary disappeared. No grand farewell, no last page—just gone. At first, it hurt deeply. It felt like losing a part of my childhood, a piece of my identity.

But as years passed, I realized something important.

I didn’t lose those memories.

The Lesson It Left Behind

The diary may be gone, but what it gave me stayed. It taught me how to express myself, how to sit with my thoughts, and how to dream without limits. That habit of writing—of reflecting—still lives on in me today, just in a different form.

Some items leave us physically, but their impact becomes permanent.

Closing Thoughts

That old diary was never meant to last forever. It did its job. It held me together when I was growing, changing, and learning who I was. And maybe that’s the purpose of the things we love most in our youth—not to stay with us forever, but to shape who we become.

And in that way, I never really lost it.