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The Obsessive Diary

The diary of a literary obsessive

I write a diary and publish it. What could possible go wrong... eleanoranstruther.substack.com

society & culture books

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5:06

The Handbook on 18-25

The Obsessive Diary ·

2026/01/04

“Small children, small problems. Big children, big problems,” said my friend on the phone last night. We’re in the era of 18 - 25 when they’re not kids anymore that can be reined in and put to bed, when they have the reins themselves and are learning to use them. You wouldn’t hand a new driver the keys to a Ferrari, would you? They have to start on a moped at best, “a Reliant Robin” as Margaret commented when I had the same conversation with her later. But these young people in our lives are off

3:04

Thank you

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/12/31

Dear Everyone,These last three months have been hail stones, this diary an entry of sorrows and however much I’ve wanted to turn up with ta dah! a break in the clouds it wasn’t possible. (Isn’t the urge to please crazy?) But I can turn up with thanks. I know what I’ve been going through is the same as everyone else. I know my hurts have matched yours. I’ve been expressing it all here and people have said it’s helped them to see it articulated, which is gratifying and a relief because god knows

2:42

And so it goes

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/12/29

And so it goes. I seem to have drawn to a halt. It’s winter. Hibernation is obvious. Christmas was incredibly loving in the arms of my Somerset family. They filled me with the good stuff. I’m grateful for them. I love them so much. Me and Margaret cooked up a storm, everything was delicious. We talked and walked and opened presents. We put on glad rags and toasted our fortune and love for one another. I missed J&B but there it is. I stayed at The Chapel which was luxury and white cotton, silently

5:22

Happy Christmas, everyone

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/12/22

Throughout the funeral I saw her swooping over fields, laughing, arms outstretched, doing double backflips; that was the Jeanetta I knew. Elegant and social. In jeans, outside, hair tousled. It was supposed to be a private gathering, just her family and her closest friends but then it grew and I got the call and my Friday which was supposed to be have been in London with Beth, and lunch at my brother’s changed shape. As did theirs, also by death. Beth flew to New Orleans for two funerals and my

3:04

Oh Christmas

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/12/18

I’m not sure when my dislike of Christmas set in. Was it as a child? I don’t think so. I remember the excitement and routine, the stockings and tinsel on my parent’s bed, the marble run set up in the upstairs hall, the chairs we were allocated, the annual argument over whether to eat lunch before or after presents. I have happy memories of Christmas. And yet. Everyone in my family is the same. We view it as a chore, a bore, an inescapable thing to get through. It depresses us and makes us want to

1:34

Tendrils

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/12/13

I have the sensation of roots being pulled from my heart, dead roots that have been cut off from their source, no longer alive roots but tangled entanglements that no longer pump the drug. It’s visceral, the sensation of withdrawal. I’ve been putting out fires for decades; crystal meth, cocaine, alcohol, nicotine, sugar, needles, anger but this is the smouldering heart of the matter. If I were a twelve step person, SLAA is the group I’d go to.I’ve often wondered what it is I’m really addicted to

5:24

Longing

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/12/09

When I was a very small child I witnessed a terrible violence. Its flashback was the domino which set off all the others, it was the key waiting to be fitted in the lock, and when that happened, when the black box opened in my head, all that had been crazy-making made sense. This week I’ve been drawn again to that moment, it’s been present, and it’s helped me make sense of something else.In the vast space that’s opened up since the end of one relationship and the repositioning of others, longing has

64:08

Writing courses with Kit de Waal

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/12/05

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

5:18

Enough

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/12/05

I’ve been thinking about necessary family estrangement and what happens when relationships breakdown. I’ve been thinking about last chapters and what they look like. I’ve been thinking about endings. Yesterday I heard the news that a friend’s sister had died. It was completely unexpected and very sudden; they’d had dinner the week before, she was on a jolly visiting friends, her heart gave way, no one saw it coming. I knew her, too. We’d holiday with her when the children were small, Easters in

61:02

LIVE with Heather Bartos

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/12/01

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

3:43

Numbers

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/12/01

First off, thank you all for showing up with such incredible kindness, generosity and love since I published “Shattered”. I was conscious of the delicate line between asking for witness and flinging a dead cat on the table, and I hovered over the need to speak for sometime before pressing publish. The threat of indulgence is a constant in my British mind, as are the dysfunctions of story as identity and pretending there’s no hole in my bucket; I recognise the latter particularly, that however much

5:56

Shattered

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/11/28

It’s been useful having the memoir to republish over the last month because in that time two relationships have shattered. That makes three this year, if death can be called a shattering, although my relationship to my mother now, six months on since she left, feels more whole than it ever did. So I don’t count it, except if the frame is a fundamental repositioning of foundational connections, in which case I very much do. So that makes three.My mother died. Fine. It was always going to happen and

68:00

LIVE with Abby Ross

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/11/26

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

3:22

65. Recovery Is For Another Book

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/11/22

It’s funny to think that within days of the black box opening I headed off to the Venice Biennale, that most surreal and picturesque of places which on a normal day is like walking into a dream, but which during the festival is beyond Alice in Wonderland. The missing pieces of the jigsaw had come tumbling out, I had a seen a picture awful but whole, ugly but a thousand times better than the jumbled nonsense I had lived with; memories that made no sense, feelings that had no grounding, behaviour at

3:20

64. A Matter Of Survival

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/11/21

Bad things happened in the basement of that house. It’s taken a long time for me to say that. The pictures of my childhood never made sense, why I was so frightened and unhappy, why I built an armour and ran away and kept running. We had such plenty, enormous wealth, a revolving door of parties, artists, cocktails in the drawing room; These spoilt children, our mother would say, Don’t you know how lucky you are? Yet at its heart was something dark that left us splintered. The woman who escaped the

63:10

LIVE with Annie Macmanus

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/11/20

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

2:57

63. Gremlins

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/11/20

I’m going to tell you a fairy story. Once upon a time there was a little girl who saw something. She happened upon a woman in a bath who was drinking a glass of wine and the woman’s expression said she saw it too but she carried on drinking her wine. The little girl knew she was going to die so she took what was most precious inside her and gave it to the Gremlins who lived in the hollow of roots beneath the trees that grew on steep cliffs behind her father’s house. And then the bad things happened

69:58

LIVE with Marlon Weems

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/11/19

This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit eleanoranstruther.substack.com/subscribe

3:09

62. We Drove Them Wild

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/11/19

At the heart of addiction lies trauma. It’s an answer to the question, How can I live with such pain? My love affair with needles was a problem-solver and like all dysfunctional relationships it began with the explosive belief that I’d found the one, and ended with my world reduced to a pinprick. For three years I travelled back and forth to Australia using crystal meth and cocaine to make life feel better and for a while it worked. I was stick thin and unapproachable but to a degree I was happy. My

3:14

61. When Crazy Met Crazy

The Obsessive Diary ·

2025/11/18

It’s now that the shaman overplays his hand. You’d think cutting the brakes on my car and locking me out of my house would have done it. Or throwing a party while I was away called Going Ape that he’d advertised with fliers all over the local town. Or his misogyny. Or megalomania but don’t forget context; I’d come out of India, Israel, commune, cult, and Centro Maya was just another chapter in an already overloaded book. And he’d got inside my head because even the most poundshop shaman knows enough

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