Well, Secret Diary, you've been a good vehicle, and I've enjoyed the ride.  But now you're weak... and full of holes... like when you contain entries after the actual date of Laura's death.  WTF, diary?  It's almost nearly time to shuffle off to Buffalo!

Have at it, kids.

it's pileated, isn't it?

I read this when I was 13, and I remember thinking how tough and hard Laura was at this point and aspiring to that.

It seems amazing that she's become so cold and bitter and full of self hatred yet she keeps the facade up. Really bad things happen and ripped out pages imply that worse things happen.

But how could Laura have been saved?  On p. 155 BOB concedes with LP that she's an experiment. This conversation is curious. He says she had a chance, that she's falling into darkness and she must walk through fire, and then that she was never good and innocent.  Should we presume it's "in" the pages ripped out?

idk, this part is the saddest. The nightmares are very bizarre, and the abortion along with the mention of something that happened that even embarrassed her (!!!) let us know she has reached an all time low.  The father of the baby is a mystery, and it makes me wonder if that was a clue to readers of the killer's identity...

She quits OEJ's and then starts seeing James at the beginning of the undated entries (definitely showing an impairment of judgement there! j/k, but really, Donna and James shouldn't have felt guilty about hooking up. Laura even says he was her "last chance." 

Well, we tried, geoff.  Just to be a pain in the ass, here's a completely random Ray Wise interview (he dances)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiBGOqm_Vw0

"I stood there in awe.  Maddy had heard my calling to her.  In that same moment, I was aware of Mom's stare--- pure jealousy at my back."

That's a telling observation on Laura's part.  Not only do we have the three "spooky" Palmer women brought together over distance, but Laura senses a hostility from Sarah.  It begs the question whether Sarah sensed what was going on in the house or maybe resented Laura on some level.  Leland covets her and even takes up with a virtual double of her in the form of Teresa Banks.  Did Sarah envy her own daughter for alienating her husband's affection?

Maddy's immersion into the household ends up being trouble for everyone.  Prior to Laura's death, the horror in the Palmer home seems largely contained to her own bedroom.  After her death, the boundaries start to break down.  The stairs and the ceiling fan are markers of that former border.  Both Sarah and Maddy see BOB in the livingroom, the family room that was once brightly-lit and clean.  Maddy's decision to leave is the final straw.  A drugged Sarah is no longer confined to the bedroom.  She crawls down the stairs and this time sees the pale horse in the center of the livingroom.  Maddy dies in the exact same spot and Leland is driven to all-out possessive rage.  The substitute daughter can't cure the family (and the town at large) of its evils.  Her presence only brings the horror to light.

Got up early, found something's missing/ My only name/ No one else sees but I got stuck/ And soon forever came

"I think that in order to ensure my privacy I will need to start a second diary, one that if found will give the intruder 'the Laura' that everyone thinks lives inside me.  I will have to spend time filling its pages.  I wonder if life is still something I can make up."

This may've been brought up previously, but I wonder if at times Laura could be considered an unreliable narrator.  It's not so much that she's deceptive, but it may be that there are portions of even her secret diary that have an element of wish fulfillment or personal fantasy.  She's such a fragmentary person who no one really knew entirely.  Watching Fire Walk With Me shows her family life to be much more strained and threatening than it's often related in her diary.  There's none of the closeness with her mother depicted in her writings.  The two seem chilly and remote, the Palmer home not so brightly lit.  Early on in the diary the adolescent Laura writes of a dream in which a "strange man" sings with the voice of her mother.  Maybe Sarah as an ineffectual and possibly enabling mother (her chain smoking seems compulsive and evidence of some deeper problem; she lights up every time tensions between Leland and Laura come to the fore) is just as much a source of terror for Laura as her father.

Got up early, found something's missing/ My only name/ No one else sees but I got stuck/ And soon forever came

I had to quit reading for a few days so I never came to those parts and I will do it tommorrow on my way to work I suppose.

But I must admit that reading the Diary and watching the series (and I am doing both at the time, and both without concentrating on it too much), I find that the Secret Dairy moves me much more now!

Bobi 1 Kenobi

B. Beware
O. Of
B. BOB 

Yesterday I have finished re-reading The Secret Diary. I am devastated and can't help thinking about Laura all over again... I must repeat what I said before: in this very time of my life The Secret Diary makes a bigger impression on me and has more meanings than the series.

I am sure I wil be coming back to those threads from time to time even if no further discussion takes place.

For the moment one thing:

What do you think, were there any real chances of bringing Laura back? Her sick mind seems to be toying with this idea as if it perfectly realised that all hope for her was lost.
But it was the sick mind of hers that did so - perhaps in fact a chance existed?

Could James have been such a chance?

Not her home, even if we take it that she had a good relationship with her Mum.
By the way it's very interesting what 12 rainbow wrote about:

That's true but remember FWWM showed the last days and they could have been different, worse, like silence before the storm - threatening.

I would not think that the closeness between Laura and Sarah from the Diary was not real, I think it did exist! Only nothing could be normal in that home - even if some things were indeed normal and some things were good, everything was undergoing corruption, like warmth and love seen in a broken mirror.
That's why I think nothing in Laura's home could have saved her.

Could the baby be a chance for her to get away from the world that was killing her or even from BOB? 
But why did she fail in her attempt to give up cocaine? Was this attempt bound to fail from the very beginning?
What part did BOB's play in this failure? She saw him twice on August 20, a very important day for her future.

Bobi 1 Kenobi

B. Beware
O. Of
B. BOB 

 I don't even want to think about what would have happened to that poor baby (crib rape, anyone?) 

The Diary suggests James was a false hope. How much faith to save you could you put in someone you thought was dumb?  She had to save herself, and he just wasn't reason enough to do that.

I think what BOB was saying on 155 about her having a chance was very very long ago.  It could even have been dependent upon Leland's resistance.   Again, he says she was never good and innocent. 

Remember that BOB was her childhood imaginary "friend" before the abuse started?  I'm pretty sure this means she was damned from the first time she saw him.

Wow, crib rape... oh boy, that's an EVIL idea.

But then again - one thing I am sure about is that Laura having a child would arouse BOB's fury and so he could make Leland do terrible things even more.
However, on the other hand I am pretty sure, too, that it would indeed be BOB's failure from the point of view of his main goal: possessing Laura. I'd expect the child would stand between the two of them and I do tend to think that it was the real chance she had.

And well, you don't want to think about what would have happened to the child once it got born - but how is even getting crib-raped (brr) worse than getting killed?

ad. 1 But he is lying!

ad.2 hmm, damned or not damned... in FWWM we see that she was indeed saved.
 

Bobi 1 Kenobi

B. Beware
O. Of
B. BOB