anne frank last diary entry
Two years into hiding, Anne Frank was finally looking ahead to the future and how she planned to readjust back in the world. Of the many things she was looking forward to, returning to school that fall “is making me too happy to be logical,” she told Kitty on July 21, 1944. With freedom now a real possibility, Anne hoped to also liberate her true personality in her post-Secret Annex life. In her next diary entry, dated Aug. 1, the 15-year-old opened up about her desire to be “the good Anne” after the war. Little did she know it would be the last time she would put pen to paper. Picking up where she left off as “a bundle of contradictions,” Anne expanded on her conflicting feelings-and personalities.
“I’m split in two,” she explained. “One side contains my exuberant cheerfulness, my flippancy, my joy in life and, above all, my ability to appreciate the lighter side of things. By that I mean not finding anything wrong with flirtations, a kiss, an embrace, an off-color joke. This side of me is usually lying in wait to ambush the other one, which is much purer, deeper and finer. No one knows Anne’s better side… Oh, | can be an amusing clown for an afternoon, but after that everyone’s had enough of me to last a month’ Who did she want to be? Exactly how she was on the inside, which unfortunately no one ever got to meet, despite her best attempts. As she strived to evolve from her “superficial” side, as she explained it, the weaker “deeper Anne” would clam up the moment the spotlight shined on her-and as Anne No.1 piped up in her place, Anne No. 2 would just fade away. “I’m guided by the pure Anne within,” she insisted, “büt on the outside I’m nothing but a frolicsome little goat tugging at its tether.”
Admitting all this to Kitty was difficult for her, but it was the truth, and she felt it was important to express. The teenager also lamented the fact that because “what I say is not what i feel,” she’d been wrongly labeled boy-crazy and a smart aleck, even though the true “quiet Anne” was the complete opposite. “I’m trying very hard to change myself,” she admitted. One thing holding her back was how her parents would react to this “new” version of their youngest daughter. They might think she was putting on an act or assume she was sick-forcing her to revert to “Anne number one” just so they’d stop worrying. And with the final words ever written in her diary, Anne expressed frustration that she may never be able to truly change her persona: “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.” And with that, she signed the entry, “Yours, Anne M. Frank”
