Hi , Recently, I decided to start writing a journal to keep my thoughts under control. Before, I used to be somewhat crazy, ruminating over thoughts about being bi all the time. It wasted so much of my time that I decided to put all my thoughts into a journal and that seemed to be working fine. However, yesterday I had a party at my house and after the party I found that my journal had been read by someone. Although, I don't know who actually read my journal, I have a strong suspicion of a person (call him X) who I know might want to particularly read my journal. I have mentioned throughout the journal that I am bisexual/questioning and I am not ready to come out to all my family and friends yet, so I am seriously worried that I might be ousted out to everyone by the X. It is made worse by the fact that the majority of my family is homophobic and the X's dad hates anyone who even sympathises with "gays". I don't see X very often and my mum says the next time I see him will probably be at the end of March. There is no way that I can communicate to him so I wont even know how many people he has told by the time I see him next. I don't want anyone to suspect me being bi and to add to the confusion, I'm not even 100% certain that X was the person who read my journal. (I'm about 70% sure though) What do I do? Has anyone else been in a similar position to me?
How'd you know that your journal was read or know that it was that person? And do you really think X would just go and tell everybody about it? Especially as you weren't clear in your journal, just writing that you were confused/bi, should he really tell people about it, does he even know the same people as you do if you only see him once a month and have no way of contacting him? The only solution is to either contact him some way like if he has facebook or whatever and if not just hope he doesn't tell. Good luck
I think contacting this person X would be counterproductive and possibly even outright dangerous. If you show that the information in it damaging to you it might encourage black mailing or extortion. There is a fairly good chance that whoever read your journal will keep their mouth shut because reading someone's journal without permission is unethical and in order to out you the person would have to either lie about the source of the info or confess unethical act. However, if I were you I would build a damage control plan if outing would be bad thing for you. If you are confronted by someone you better be prepared. I assume you want to deny everything and that is still entirely possible. Think what they could say to you or ask you and think a good response in advance. Countering questions with other questions is a good strategy. If someone ask you if you are gay you can ask why do they think so etc. If you fear your parents might hear about this and inspect your journal you may want to write a second fake journal which has the safe stuff from your true journal but leaves out the uncomfortable parts. Then if coerced you could present the fake journal.
Thanks for the advice, its really useful having an external opinion The thing is... although I don't really talk to X very much, my mum and X's mum are very close and talk to each other daily so it is easy for X to just tell his mum and my mum would soon find out. Also, X is fairly young, 12ish to be more precise, so I don't know for certain whether he understands how important keeping a secret, being bi, is for me. Also, 'cause he is quite small, he doesn't have FB yet so it will be hard for me to contact him anyway, without going through my mother, which is really risky anyway. Thanks for the advice though, I think I will just have to hope that X doesn't out me to my parents, otherwise I'm doomed. :icon_sad: Thanks, I never thought about creating a second fake journal to put of my parents. Although, it might seem to be taking it a step too far, I think I would need to do it considering what is at stake (my parents are serious homophobes) Also, I don't need to worry about not contacting X as it is pretty much impossible to contact him anyway. Hopefully he doesn't tell my parents but I wouldn't put too much trust in his morals as he is quite young and immature. Thanks for the advice though, I really appreciate it
