For Keeps

Lately I've been going back through all my old stuff, which basically means last year.

Even looking at my handwriting, you can tell so much has changed.

But it's still cool to connect with the person I was. Go through my old math homework. My old English assignments, my old hangman games with Greni, letters from Kahler and Danica, and I even found ungiven thank-you cards from my thirteenth birthday party that I hadn't realized I still had. 

It's like how sometimes people change and things change and you're not sure where you were but all you can figure out is where you are right now. That's how I feel lately, like I'm not so sure about the future but I'm sure about my past. Maybe that's why I'm a writer, and why I write about my life sometimes: because I'm a dreamer but you need stuff to anchor you down.

Seattle will talk to me but sometimes he'll talk to someone else, and sometimes things seem hopeless between us because he'll catch my eye and look away but it's not like I care, because there are things like this morning when we walked past each other in the hallway then both looked back at the exact same time ...

So I've been going back through my old stuff, as I said before. And there are the things that make me wanna cry, but there are things like old assignments I worked with Seattle on that are so purposefully stupid I laughed my head off re-reading them and I'm bringing them to school tomorrow, like those thank-you cards, because if you don't know if you can share your future, at least you can share the past.

And I say thank you.