The Diary of a Young Girl_ The Definitive Edition - Anne Frank [134]
I’m afraid that people who know me as I usually am will discover I have another side, a better and finer side. I’m afraid they’ll mock me, think I’m ridiculous and sentimental and not take me seriously. I’m used to not being taken seriously, but only the “lighthearted” Anne is used to it and can put up with it; the “deeper” Anne is too weak. If I force the good Anne into the spotlight for even fifteen minutes, she shuts up like a clam the moment she’s called upon to speak, and lets Anne number one do the talking. Before I realize it, she’s disappeared.
So the nice Anne is never seen in company. She’s never made a single appearance, though she almost always takes the stage when I’m alone. I know exactly how I’d like to be, how I am … on the inside. But unfortunately I’m only like that with myself. And perhaps that’s why—no, I’m sure that’s the reason why—I think of myself as happy on the inside and other people think I’m happy on the outside. I’m guided by the pure Anne within, but on the outside I’m nothing but a frolicsome little goat tugging at its tether.
As I’ve told you, what I say is not what I feel, which is why I have a reputation for being boy-crazy as well as a flirt, a smart aleck and a reader of romances. The happy-go-lucky Anne laughs, gives a flippant reply, shrugs her shoulders and pretends she doesn’t give a darn. The quiet Anne reacts in just the opposite way. If I’m being completely honest, I’ll have to admit that it does matter to me, that I’m trying very hard to change myself, but that I’m always up against a more powerful enemy.
A voice within me is sobbing, “You see, that’s what’s become of you. You’re surrounded by negative opinions, dismayed looks and mocking faces, people who dislike you, and all because you don’t listen to the advice of your own better half.” Believe me, I’d like to listen, but it doesn’t work, because if I’m quiet and serious, everyone thinks I’m putting on a new act and I have to save myself with a joke, and then I’m not even talking about my own family, who assume I must be sick, stuff me with aspirins and sedatives, feel my neck and forehead to see if I have a temperature, ask about my bowel movements and berate me for being in a bad mood, until I just can’t keep it up anymore, because when everybody starts hovering over me, I get cross, then sad, and finally end up turning my heart inside out, the bad part on the outside and the good part on the inside, and keep trying to find a way to become what I’d like to be and what I could be if … if only there were no other people in the world.
Yours, Anne M. Frank
ANNE’S DIARY ENDS HERE.
1 Initials have been assigned at random to those persons who prefer to remain anonymous.
2 Anne’s cousins Bernhard (Bernd) and Stephan Elias.
3 Nervous.
4 After Dussel arrived, Margot slept in her parents’ bedroom.
5 Now you’re splashing!
6 Mommy.
7 For crying out loud!
8 When the clock strikes half past eight.
9 A well-known expression: “The spirit of the man is great, / How puny are his deeds.”
10 By way of exception.
11 A famous line from Goethe: “On top of the world, or in the depths of despair.”
12 Anne’s grandmother was terminally ill.
13 Grammy is Anne’s grandmother on her father’s side, and Grandma her grandmother on her mother’s side.
14 The last four paragraphs of this entry have never been published before. For a further explanation, see page vii of the Foreword.
15 Oh, you are cruel.
16 I’ll decide that.
17 Thank you, God, for all that is good and dear and beautiful.
18 Should be Präservativmitteln: prophylactics.
19 Anne’s second home.
20 Cervix.
21 Oh, for heaven’s sake.
22 Gerrit Bolkestein was the Minister of Education and Pieter Gerbrandy was the Prime Minister of the Dutch government in exile