"It was in 1973 that Barrett read a newspaper article about Dr. Beatrice Sparks, a Utah adolescent psychologist who’d found a successful career as an editor of adolescent books after the publication of Go Ask Alice in 1970. Barrett was convinced Sparks was “an answer to her prayers."

Dr. Sparks, from the account of Alden Barrett(Jay) 's mother Marcella, was entrusted with the personal journals of her deceased son in order to create a dignified memorial and cautionary tale of a depressed teenage outsider.
Much to Barrett's distress her son's writings were turned into a fictional account of Alden (Jay)'s life including his descent into Satanism, the occult and subsquent suicide, resembling little to nothing of her child's actual life.
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"Go Ask Alice" and "Jay's Journal" with their well worn pages and torn covers, were given to me in church because I suppose to them I looked like an "at risk youth" who had to be saved (or had the potential to be).Reading these I was simultaneously excited and scared. Thus began my facination with both documentation and living to actually have things to write about.
I have since meticulously kept journals,detailing every pain and joy.
They begin July 4th 1998,making me 16 years old , the same age as Alden at the time of his death.On the 10 year anniversary, July 4th, 2008, I plan to start destroying them. Documenting the undocumenting.


cited:
1. http://www.slweekly.com/index.cfm?do=article.details&id=1CA81E52- 2BF4-55D0-F1F453565FA53A27

2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jay's_Journal

3.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beatrice_Sparks