This is an excerpt from one of the journals I kept throughout middle and high school.
I grew up across the street from the girl I’m writing about in this partial 1992 entry, until we moved away when I was seven. Every time we’d go back to visit friends and family, I’d fall in love with her. Summer after summer, year after year. It took me months to move on each time we’d leave and drive half a country away, back to Oklahoma.
She was my idea of perfection as a teenager, and I’m grateful to still call her a friend, decades later. She’s a strong, determined woman whose perseverance through excessive hardship I find inspiring. Just thought I’d share this vintage piece of youthful innocence.
Patrick Walts 