It's summer and it's 2 in the morning and I'm just sitting here thinking about how everything is over. There's a time in your life when you have so much fun and the days seem to go by and weigh nothing and you listen to all these songs that sound better in the summer and meet people that you'll never keep in touch with when school starts. There's a time when nothing matters and you can get up late and go to bed late and the air is full of crickets and heat. But it's over now, it seems like everything is over.

I can't believe I ever lived through it, this summer. It started out in the city, and I still can't believe I went through that. It seems like such a long time ago, like it happened to someone else. It makes me so sad to think about it, to know that at one time I was on my own and I'd never been happier. I was truly happy there, and when I think about the way it felt to be truly at peace with myself it makes me sad because I know I'm not that way anymore. The glow of the city only lasted a few days and then it was back to everything again. All the same people and the same shit and wondering what they all think of me. But those 6 weeks are like a taste of something bigger and better and I am so fucking thankful I got to be a part of it. Sometimes I wonder what it would be like if I never went and I can't even imagine it. Those nights I spent walking the city streets absorbing everything and knowing I'd never see it again as it was this very moment only to come home to a hard mattress in a tiny room where I had a view of a fern in the office across the street, that was the absolute best time of my life, and I wouldn't trade it in for anything.

Claudia leaves tomorrow. The person I spent my middle school career with only to lose her to drugs, she's leaving now, and this summer I got to know her again, we made all new memories and jokes and we were together like there had never been an absence. Tonight as I said goodbye to her it was so weird. It was just like we were saying good bye for the night but this time it was for good and I know I'll never see her again. When she moves a part of me will go with her. The part of me that was young and stupid and made fun of people and never really grew up, that childish part of me, the part that allowed me to sit in the diner and laugh for hours with her about the oddest things, that part is gone and I know it. I hope she's had the time of her life.

School will be here soon and then the cycle will start all over again. I'm glad to be hanging out with Tim, it's a lot of fun, and I'm also glad I got to talk to Shaun for the first time in awhile. I like him but I don't want to push anything, whatever happens, happens. I've learned not to worry about things so much and to take them one day at a time. This is it, though. This is the last year of school, and then I'll say goodbye again and move on. I remember the first day of freshman year when I was sitting in science and my teacher told me that it would go by so fast. And it did. I'm almost done. One day I will be old and wonder where it all went. Freaky.

I hate using the phrase, "best time of my life." It sounds so corny and everyone says it. But this summer was kind of like a different life for me. Kind of like I was given a second chance or something. I don't know. But I loved every day of it, and i only wish it could have lasted longer. I still miss all my friends from the city, and I already miss Claudia. I even miss those shitheads from Franklin. I miss all the people at the diner, and when I stop going there, I will miss Tony. i miss a lot of things. I wish they could stay the same forever. But they can't and I should go to bed, and I promise myself to make the most of my last year here.