But someone reading my journal for the sake of it would make me feel really invaded.
Me too.
I once had a teacher who told me that anything written was intended to be read. She said that even diaries can/should be read by someone eventually. For example, many of us have read Anne Frank's diaries and there's some controversy about whether or not that should've been made public. It's a great piece of history, but it was HER diary...and the world knows all those thoughts and feelings.
I really don't think that what I write in my journals is anyone else's business, though, lol.
That's a good point, about Anne Frank. Apparently, her family edited when she was wondering about how sex worked and stuff like that. I'm kind of torn between, "Hey, don't censor that because people need to really grasp that she was an ordinary human being" and "Nobody had the right to publish this at all, even the parts that wouldn't be awkward and were all about the war" and "But this is an important historical document that's also inspirational". (Also, "she's dead and can't stop us; if you don't want it read
ever then don't write it down.")
If I get run over by a car or struck by lightning tomorrow, there would be some immensely embarrassing things in my diary that I don't want the world to remember, but I can't discard it while I'm alive and still think that I'm going to still be alive to look back on those records and make it mean something important privately. So, I'm definitely torn on how private it should be if the diary-keeper is deceased.