I am seventeen today, and trying to be honest with myself. I don’t like being honest with myself anymore, because I don’t think I’m putting in the effort sometimes. Last year when I wrote this I was looking forward to new things and determination, this year I’m just scared.

In exactly a month I will move into college, and leave my room once so charmingly decorated. My new place is the size of a jail cell, literally, and I will share it. This is not the truth I’m dreading. I have pretty linens that will make it bearable, and even with my grab bag roommate I’m sure I’ll survive. I won’t succumb to the tantalizing terrors of drugs and alcohol, I’ve studied the brain too much. I won’t succumb to the crazy and fun world of casual sex, partly because of dignity and common sense, and partly because at this point I’m still jail bait.

Those are not the truths I fear, the truth I fear is that my writing has already become less fluent and elegant. That although I can still turn out a sentence and a great essay, maybe I’ve lost the charm and subtle style I once carried with pride, maybe I’ll lose more.

To be honest with myself, I haven’t written fiction for at least a month. This hurts, because I used to write fiction almost every day, and even if it was bad horrific fiction I would write it. Its my own fault of course, I never buy into the I’m busy excuse, but I do buy into the laziness one. I simply haven’t been motivated. I’m not sure what changed, I still love the act of writing, still love the act of creating, and I still got a 4.0 in the creative writing class I took last quarter (although I don’t think grades coming from some people mean much), but here I am. Confessing.

I don’t even know who I’m confessing to anymore. My writing friends have dwindled. A few contact me only when they want something of theirs read, and I hate to point this out to them, even though it seems so glaringly obvious to me. I still have a few, but as I enter into a place where I’ll actually have to work for once in my life, whose to say I won’t lose them all?

Last year I was worried about my impact on the World. The way I figure it, interactions have already made a difference, even if a small one. Writing is a selfish thing, a desire to live forever. This year I’m willing to admit that, I’m prepared to understand that what I’m doing may be just as vain as what I scoff for other people doing to their appearance. In the end, it all boils down to how we present ourselves.

I’m wearing a black dress today. It isn’t gothic, its pretty, a summer dress with silver lining. I am not having a party to celebrate this year. Sometimes I wonder if this year has been anything to celebrate. Academically, I’ve gone so far above and beyond. I have graduated early, gotten into all the colleges I applied to, one with a scholarship, and then got a full ride from the State. That is success.

But emotionally? Where the hell am I? The best I’ve done is got farther on my novel than ever before, and still like t. Gone are princesses and pirates, here to stay are class issues and pedophiles. Not a charming thought really. Maybe I’ve become more cynical, maybe I’ve just come into my own. I don’t know where I am, and that scares me. It scares me a lot.

I’m on a Vonnegut kick right now, and my appetite for reading hasn’t diminished. He is such an apathetic man, having seen the world’s terrors and I don’t want to be the kind of person who just says “So it goes” throughout life. I want to still care in twenty years. Maybe I won’t.

I’m 17 and never been kissed, but I’m closer if that means anything. Several casual one on one get together with just one guy, its probably closer to real dating than the kids at school who just call each other their significant others and hold hands. But then again, it doesn’t really matter.

I read last years entry, and I wonder at my nonchalance. I was so proud of my reading list, and I still am. The last book I finished was about Human Cadavers, Stiff by Mary Roach, but I no longer get books for presents. Everyone expects me to have become more assimilated into teenage life. Music players, R-rated movies (several of which I had already snuck into), those are supposed to be my new life. And sometimes I want to give in, but I won’t give in today. Maybe over the year I’ll sink into something else, but for right, I’m gripping the last of my dreams, however false I wonder that they are.

Today I am baking my own birthday cake. Chocolate, with vanilla frosting. There won’t be birthday candles dripping wax, there won’t be a ceremony. It will be me and my family, eating cake after dinner, and part of me can’t help but wonder if that’s all that should happen. I’m an ungrateful child, and I know this, but even I don’t mind the simplicity. I just wish I didn’t miss the passion.

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Author's Note: Someone asked if I was going to write another chapter, and to be honest I wasn't going to do. But then I re-read the first and decided that a reflection, however pitiful it was, might be nice. So here you go.