(#2) Dear Diary...

Dear Diary,

I am in the depth of despair.

I cannot acknowledge to you why, because the burden, the shame and the disaster lays too heavy on my bosom. If I would write down the reason for this, the shame would lie even heavier, and I feel, at the moment that that would probably make an end to my life, because I can’t imagine any shame heavier than the mortification and indignity I am trying hard to endure as bravely as possible now. I could not even tell Diana, who is my very dearest friend and consolation in trouble. Diana could not console me now, chocolate caramels could not console me either and even puffed sleeves could not console me.

Oh, Diary- dear, unashamed, sweet diary! I don’t want to tell you, because I don’t want to read what I will write, because I know I couldn’t bear to see, on paper, reaffirmed, the thing I have just done to myself. But, diary, I have to tell you, and read it all over, as a punishment for myself which I most heartily deserve.

Thus, I have decided I should tell you, as a punishment: I have dyed my hair, and the colour in which I have dyed it is green.

There. It wasn’t half as bad as I had imagined. It was a real mortification though, when I had to tell Marilla, because, you see, she could answer back, and you don’t do that. Oh diary! I’ve got green hair! It’s all bronzy, greeny- and I look like a perfect scarecrow, as Josie Pye will assuredly tell me next week- oh dear! How shall I find the gumption to go to school in this unpardonable, wretched state! I am in a state of unconquerable consolation and I feel as though I have been flung to the very end of the ocean, where it is dark and eerie and where no-one but the little, teasing bubbles wish to near me. Oh, Diary! I have never imagined anything could be worse than red hair, but this is! Green hair is far more unromantic and ugly and horrible than I had ever imagined possible.

How I hate that gentleman who sold me the hair-colourer! I wonder if he knew it was green, and not shimmering black, like he told me. I had so much looked forward to black hair – I was imagining how charming it would be to have me and Diana with the same hair-colour. I decided I would dye my hair and then run to Barry’s farm to call Diana, who’d then run to me, who was all pretty and changed, looking dazzlingly beautiful on the bridge of the Lake of Shining Waters, and she’d cry, ‘Oh Cordelia! How beautiful you are!’

Green in such a miserable, miserable degradation. I’m sure you understand why I spent the next hours scrunched up in bed, crying like a baby. I tell you, I was so unhappy I couldn’t even imagine things.

I cannot be consoled. This day had been the worst day in my entire life up till now, and I have had lot's of bad days so that says a lot. I wish there was a more poetic way to say this, but currently I have more important things to worry about than that. What shall I do? What does one do when one is amidst woe and tribulations?

Yours cordially,

Anne Shirley,

(Or Cordelia FitzGerald)