I have been writing in a journal on an almost-daily basis since I was 17 years old. This is a record of me going through each entry from the beginning, and commenting on the me from fifteen years ago.

After she’s gone for only 6 or 10 hours, now that’s she’s fresh in my mind. Now I realize I loe her. I’m crying for her pain, I’m jealous of her others, I wish she were here. Love. But still, I’ve never looked into her eyes, have trouble looking her to the face. Were she here now, though, I’d love her. I remember her face, her smell, her embrace, and it’s pain. It’s all part of the game.

So this is what I wrote after I met Sarah and her class at the zoo during the field trip. I remember it all quite clearly, and how I was feeling - so I find this entry interesting because it shows that I was emotionally lying to my journal and myself.

The visit wasn’t what I expected. For some reason I thought we’d get to tour the zoo on our own, but of course I had to stay with her class and her teachers. This caused Sarah to act kinda weird, like she was acting goofy the whole time. It’s no surprise considering she’s four years younger than me (at this writing I’m 18, she’s 14), but at the time I just didn’t get it.

So we had no time where we weren’t around some of her classmates, and we really didn’t have any moments. At the end, she hugged me quickly then ran off to her bus. I recall driving home with an empty feeling. A kind of ‘that’s it?’

It was the last time I would see Sarah in person, but not quite the last time I would hear from her.