Dear Kitty, or Mirror, Mirror?

Life was difficult for everyone in the Secret Annex. They all had to deal with cramped quarters, lack of fresh air, limited food, and the constant fear of being found and arrested—something that eventually came to pass. In some ways, though, life was especially difficult for Anne, a young teenager who went through puberty while living in the Annex and therefore had to deal with intense, sometimes confusing feelings. Anne's dearest companion through all these trials was an imaginary friend named Kitty to whom she poured out her heart in a diary. In addressing Kitty, however, Anne was really writing to and for herself. "Kitty" didn't just allow Anne to express her feelings; the diary also helped Anne better understand herself and her situation.

The entries that Anne wrote between March 16 and 22, 1944, when she was 14, provide one of the best examples of Kitty's role in Anne's life. In February of that year, Anne and Peter Van Daan, who was a bit older than Anne, began to spend more time together and to confide in each other. As they talked about their thoughts and feelings, Anne realized that she felt a romantic attraction to Peter. She suspected—but didn't know for sure—that he shared these feelings. It seemed like a tricky situation, and Anne worried about several things. She felt vulnerable and was afraid of Peter's rejection. She worried that she might annoy Peter by seeking out his company too often. And she also wondered if her sister Margot, who was closer to Peter's age, would feel jealous and hurt if Anne and Peter spent time together without her.

On March 16, 1944, Anne wrote "But, still, the brightest spot of all is that at least I can write down my thoughts and feelings, otherwise I would be absolutely stifled!" Later in that same entry, Anne added: "If only I could write to him, then at least I would know that he would grasp what I want to say, because it's so terribly difficult to put into words!" Anne had realized that talking to oneself, in a diary, is much easier than explaining strong and complicated to feelings to another person.

Hidden in the Secret Annex, Anne had none of her usual childhood friends to confide in—only Kitty. And in some ways, Kitty was the perfect confidant: She could not judge Anne, nor betray her. Likewise, Kitty could not be hurt or annoyed by anything that Anne said or did. This sense of privacy and safety gave Anne the freedom to explore her feelings.

Some might argue that Anne's sister, Margot, was or should have been a source of comfort and wisdom for Anne. However, Margot was not someone Anne felt she could confide in. In her March 20 diary entry, Anne shared a letter from Margot, in which Margot reassures her and encourages her younger sister's friendship with Peter. Anne was grateful for the letter, but still uncertain about how she should behave. In a letter to Margot, which Anne copied into her diary, she wrote, "You don't know how much I admire you, and I only hope that I may yet acquire some of the goodness that you and Daddy have."

Anne often compared herself to Margot and worried that her own character fell short. Her letters to Margot are more formally and carefully worded than her "letters" to Kitty. In other passages of the diary, Anne admits that she hides her real feelings from her family out of fear of being misunderstood or, worst of all, pitied or laughed at. Trapped in the Secret Annex with people who don't seem to understand or fully appreciate her, Anne's heart was clearly on the line—she felt that she had much to lose by expressing who she was or who she was becoming.

In contrast, Kitty existed only to contain Anne's thoughts and feelings and, when Anne was ready, to reflect them back to her. On January 2, 1944, Anne looked back at some of her earlier diary entries and was "quite shocked" by what she saw. She felt bad about the "brimful rage" she had directed at her mother and the hateful tone with which she described her. Anne wrote to Kitty: "I have been trying to understand the Anne of a year ago and to excuse her."She is so ashamed of the hate that she directed at her mother that feels the need to understand how it happened, writing "I suffer now—and suffered then—from moods which . . . only allowed me to see things subjectively without enabling me to consider quietly the words of the other side."

Next, Anne explained what Kitty had meant to her these past two years: "This diary is of great value to me, because it has become a book of memoirs in many places, but on a good many pages I could certainly put 'past and done with.'" In other words, because she had written so much and so honestly to Kitty, Anne was able to see how much she herself had changed and grown. She was also able to see that her moods—while painful at the time—wouldn't last forever. They would change, and she would feel and behave more like the person she wanted to be.

Of course, teenagers have confided in their diaries for centuries. Anne's "Dear Kitty" diary is more poignant than most because we know the difficulty of her life and the terrible tragedy of its end. However, Anne's honesty and insight—and perhaps all the time she had to write and study herself—also make her published diary an unusually open portrayal of what it's like to grow up, and to grow into oneself. For all of these reasons, The Diary of Young Girl provides a triumphant tale of emotional survival and personal growth in a situation that might have completely broken anyone else.