Dear Self, As of today, I am nineteen years old. Each year I sit and write one of these diary entries on my birthday, and each year something new and meaningful has happened in my life to make me view things differently from the year prior. This couldn’t be any more accurate for this year’s entry. My thoughts are messed, but I’ll be as...well, as organized as I can be. *laughs* I never really thought there would be a big transition from eighteen to nineteen. It never seemed all that huge to me, the idea of it - seventeen to eighteen, I always thought, was a turning point. Man, had I known that this year would be waiting for me, that probably would have brought me a good chuckle or two. So much has happened since a year ago today. For every joy there has been a grand heartbreak, and for every laugh there has been about a gallon of saltwater sadness. My health took a turn, first with a lot of problems with a medication, and anemia, then with sickness, and an inflamed lung. And here I am, with a cold again, as I’m writing this. There’s something about this year that makes me feel a very overwhelming sense of loss. Which makes no sense to me, as there hasn’t been much to lose. I mean, in theory, there has been, but...that’s about it. Just in theory. Between my relationship problems, which I still don’t quite understand, and family matters, and trying to be there for my little family of friends as much as I can, my plate has been full. Toppling over with fullness, actually. And it leaves me very little time for myself. Even when there’s a lot of time to spare, there never really is, since I’m always thinking about what I have to do - or what CAN be done to make things better. Seems like the last few months I’ve been chasing my tail on the whole matter, but hey, isn’t that just like me to do that? Another thing that has seriously gotten to me this year is my friend Chris leaving to Afghanistan. He came for the 4th of July, and seeing him leave...it broke my heart to pieces. He officially deployed on the 10th, and it’ll be a long time before we see each other again. It’s always extremely hard saying goodbye to someone who means so much to you. Chris has a very special place in my heart, which is something that few people in my life can understand, and if anything happened to him - even though nothing will - it would wreck me. Having to say goodbye to him, even just over the phone before his plane took off, so close to my birthday...well. There’s a sense of an empty spot knowing I won’t get a call this year. I miss him dearly already, and it’s only been two days. Even so, it’s been a part of my life without the best friend to know I can confide in. Fifteen months to go. In a sense there has been an even bigger loss in my life this past year, and that loss has been my self-respect, to a degree. I’ve let people say and do things to me that wouldn’t have even been reasonably okay last year. But that, all in all, is a short matter. Since it won’t be happening anymore. A good thing about moving back home is that it gives me a lot of time and space to really figure out who I am, and what I do and don’t want. Moving home. Oh, it left me with a broken heart to be without the people I love for as long as I was. My family means so much to me, and to be back home on my birthday is the greatest gift that I ever could have gotten this year. There’s my Cancer nature showing up again. *blush* My only hope is that the following year will be better than this one has been, and that - unlike this one - I’ll have a chance to enjoy my age. It’s weird. Turning nineteen, and it seems like I haven’t really had the opportunity to enjoy being eighteen. But oh well, such is life. Even despite the events that brought me to this moment, I’m happy. And that in itself is a very gratifying feeling. I close this year’s entry with a departing thought: my favourite quote from The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde. "Out of the unreal shadows of the night comes back the real life that we had known. We have to resume it where we had left off ... a world in which things would have fresh shapes and colours, and be changed, or have other secrets, a world in which the past would have little or no place, or survive, at any rate, in no conscious form of obligation or regret, the remembrance even of joy having its bitterness and the memories of pleasure their pain." Happy Birthday, Self. Make this one a year to remember, yeah? -Summer, age 19