Updated Jan 26, 2026 • ~9 min read
I found the fourth diary by accident.
Two days after Juni and I agreed to try being family, I was working on the bathroom renovation. The sink had a slow leak, and when I pulled away the access panel to check the pipes, I saw it.
Another leather journal. This one wedged so far back in the wall cavity that it was clear Juni had really, truly wanted it hidden.
The cover was plain black. No decorations. No warnings. Just her initials: J.R.
I should have learned my lesson. Should have texted her immediately: Found another diary. Want to pick it up?
But my hands were already opening the cover before my conscience fully formed the objection.
October 15th, 2014 (Age 16)
I don’t know why I’m still writing in these. Maybe because it’s the only place I can be completely honest. The only place where I don’t have to pretend everything is fine.
Started junior year today. Everyone was excited about college prep and SATs and planning their futures. I pretended to be excited too.
But the truth is, I don’t know what I want. Everyone asks “where do you see yourself in five years?” and I can’t answer because I can’t imagine a future where I’m not just… waiting.
Waiting for the other shoe to drop. Waiting for people to leave. Waiting to prove I was right all along about being unlovable.
Is this what the rest of my life looks like? Just waiting for pain?
God, Juni.
I sat on the bathroom floor, pipes dripping behind me, and fell into sixteen-year-old Juni’s world.
She wrote about school with sharp observation—which teachers showed favorites, which kids were cruel, how she’d learned to make herself invisible to avoid becoming a target. She wrote about her first real attempt at a novel, a fantasy about a girl searching for her lost family.
The irony isn’t lost on me, she’d written. Writing about someone finding family when I can’t even keep the one I have.
She wrote about Grammy with fierce, protective love—but also with the dawning awareness that Grammy was aging, that someday she’d be alone again.
November 3rd, 2014
Grammy had to take off work today because her back was hurting too much. She tried to hide it but I saw her wincing when she thought I wasn’t looking.
She’s getting old. That’s normal. People age.
But what happens when she’s gone? What happens when it’s just me?
Everyone leaves eventually. Even Grammy will leave, even though she doesn’t want to. Death doesn’t care about wanting.
And then I’ll really be alone. No parents, no grandmother, just me and this house.
At least I’ll have the house.
At least I’ll have the house. The line that explained everything. Juni had been preparing for abandonment even then, at sixteen, already deciding that walls were more reliable than people.
I kept reading, unable to stop even though every entry made my chest ache worse.
December 20th, 2014
Thorne asked me to winter formal. I said yes before I could stop myself.
Mars says this is good. That I should give him a chance. That not every boy is going to be like my father.
But what if they are? What if I let myself like him and he realizes I’m too much—too intense, too damaged, too desperate for someone to stay?
What if he sees all the broken parts and leaves like everyone else?
Maybe I should cancel. Safer to be alone than rejected.
The formal entry came two weeks later:
January 10th, 2015
I was right to be scared.
The dance was fine. Thorne was nice. We danced, talked, he bought me punch that tasted like chemicals.
Then Kayla Miller came up and whispered something to him. He looked at me differently after. Like he’d just realized something.
He drove me home early. Said he had a headache. Didn’t kiss me goodnight.
Found out Monday that Kayla told him about my parents. About how they abandoned me. About how I was “the charity case living with her grandmother.”
He hasn’t talked to me since. Avoids me in the halls.
I’m not surprised. Who wants to date the girl whose own parents didn’t want her?
I knew better than to hope. Hope is the thing that hurts you.
I wanted to reach through time and tell Thorne he was an idiot. Wanted to tell sixteen-year-old Juni that someone would see her pain and choose her anyway. That being abandoned didn’t make her unlovable.
But I couldn’t. Because she was right—hope had hurt her. Over and over. Until she’d stopped hoping entirely.
February 14th, 2015 (Valentine’s Day)
Everyone at school had flowers or chocolates or cards. I had nothing.
That’s fine. I don’t need Valentine’s Day to validate me. I don’t need romance or relationships or any of that.
At least that’s what I tell myself.
Truth? I’m lonely. So lonely it physically hurts sometimes. Like there’s a weight on my chest that won’t lift.
But being lonely is better than being left. At least loneliness is predictable.
At least when you’re alone, no one can disappoint you.
By March, she’d convinced herself she was better off isolated:
March 22nd, 2015
Mars says I’m pushing people away. That I’m using my parents as an excuse to not try.
Maybe they’re right.
But trying means risking. And I’ve already lost everyone who mattered once. I don’t think I can survive it again.
So yes, I’m pushing people away. I’m building walls. I’m making myself untouchable.
Because untouchable means unscarable. And I’m tired of collecting scars.
I read through her junior year—watching her systematically isolate herself, convince herself she was choosing independence when really she was choosing safety. Watching her become the woman I’d met: guarded, fierce, terrified of vulnerability.
But there were moments of brightness too. Entries about Mars, about Grammy, about books that made her cry in the best way. Entries about her writing, how creating stories felt like the only time she had control.
May 8th, 2015
Sold my first short story! A literary magazine is publishing it. They’re paying me $50.
Grammy cried when I told her. Said she always knew I’d be a writer. That words were my superpower.
Maybe she’s right. Maybe I can build a life from words instead of people. Words don’t leave. Stories stay.
Maybe that’s enough.
Then, near the end of junior year, an entry that broke my heart completely:
June 1st, 2015
I think something is wrong with me.
Not physically. Emotionally. Fundamentally.
Normal people can love other people. Can let people in. Can form attachments without constant fear.
But I can’t. Every time someone gets close, I panic. I find reasons to push them away. I convince myself they’re going to leave, so I leave first.
It’s like I’m hardwired for abandonment. Like my brain learned at six years old that people don’t stay, and now I can’t unlearn it no matter how hard I try.
I wonder if this is permanent. If I’m always going to be like this—alone, scared, convinced I’m unlovable.
I wonder if my parents were right to leave. Maybe they saw something in me that proved I wasn’t worth staying for.
Maybe I really am too broken to love.
I couldn’t read anymore. Had to put the diary down and breathe through the crushing weight in my chest.
Juni at sixteen had believed she was fundamentally unlovable. Had internalized her parents’ abandonment so completely that she’d made it her identity.
And twenty-eight-year-old Juni still carried that wound. Still pushed people away. Still chose walls over vulnerability.
Still believed, deep down, that she was too broken for love.
My phone buzzed. Text from Juni: How’s the bathroom coming? Need my expert consultation yet?
She was joking. Friendly. Trying to build the family connection Grammy had wanted for us.
And here I was, reading her most private pain without permission. Again.
I was the worst kind of person. The kind who violated boundaries and called it understanding. Who stole intimacy instead of earning it.
I typed back: All good. Might have questions tomorrow though.
Her response: I’ll bring coffee. Fair trade for my brilliant insights.
Tomorrow I’d see her. Work beside her. Pretend I didn’t know that at sixteen she’d believed something was fundamentally wrong with her. That she’d spent years convinced she was hardwired for abandonment.
That she was still trying to unlearn what her parents had taught her: that love was conditional and she didn’t meet the conditions.
I should confess. Should tell her what I’d found and read. Should accept the consequences of my invasion.
Instead, I hid the diary with the others in my closet. Added it to my collection of stolen truths.
Because I’d learned something about Juni that she’d never willingly share: she thought she was too broken to love.
And I was falling in love with her anyway. Maybe because of those broken parts, not despite them.
Because broken recognized broken. And sometimes the only people who could understand your pain were the ones carrying similar scars.
But I was broken in the worst way. The way that made you take what didn’t belong to you. The way that prioritized your needs over someone else’s privacy.
The way that destroyed the very thing you were trying to love.
I went back to the bathroom renovation on autopilot, fixing pipes and replacing fixtures while my mind stayed trapped in Juni’s sixteen-year-old pain.
By the time I finished, it was past midnight. The house was quiet except for the familiar creaks and settles of old wood.
I walked through the rooms Juni had grown up in, touching the walls she’d touched, standing in spaces she’d claimed as her own.
This house held all her secrets now. Hidden in floorboards and wall cavities and spaces only she knew about. And I was finding them one by one, collecting her pain like currency I had no right to spend.
Tomorrow she’d show up with coffee and brilliant insights about restoration. Tomorrow we’d work side by side, building toward something Grammy had wanted for us.
Tomorrow I’d be the worst kind of liar: the kind who loved you while stealing your secrets.
But tonight, I let myself sit in Juni’s childhood bathroom with her diary in my hands, crying for the girl who’d believed she was too broken to love.
The girl I’d prove wrong, even if proving her wrong meant destroying her trust entirely.
Even if being right meant losing everything.
Because sometimes love required terrible choices.
And I’d already made mine.
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