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My mother recently found some loose diary pages I wrote in my first year of boarding school, aged eleven, whilst she was clearing out her house The pages are titled ‘ME’, ‘Boys’, and ‘School’ Reading them now, it’s clear I was lonely ‘As I have said before,’ I wrote, on the page titled ‘School’, which implies that I wrote more often than I remember, ‘there is no one I can talk to here’ My theory appears to be that no one can take me seriously ‘because I am so small’: ‘People only listen to me when they ask how big my feet are All they can do is measure them up to me’ I recall a time from ‘my old school’, when I was measured by the other pupils in my class to see if I was a metre tall ‘I felt like an object,’ I wrote, ‘being used to play jokes on’ On the page titled ‘Boys’, I seem to have anticipated being ‘left out’ in social situations, seemingly without putting myself into them in the first place, and make excuses for not doing things ‘I am on bed rest any way most of the time’, I wrote, which is also why I am ‘so behind with my work’   I had kept a diary for a short time when I was around nine or ten and already knew better In it, I wrote about my frustration with my mother, along the lines of, ‘Why can’t she be like everyone else?’ She had come out as bisexual My parents were separated She was ill in bed all the time I left the diary at my grandmother’s house She found it, and read it, and then my mother read it I’m sure my childish spite proved something to my grandmother I’m sure my mother was furious I had betrayed her From then on, if I ever wanted to write something down, I wrote on loose sheets of A4 paper, as if they were just notes, or a draft, and could be easily disposed of   The ‘ME’ page of my school diary details