I was going through boxes in the bedroom, which was once an attic and so still feels and is therefore treated like one in some ways, and I found two of my old journals, circa 1985-1990. Some days they were diaries, more often they were bits of stories to save for later. I picked these two out today, one from April 1988 and one from July. I would have been seventeen.

“The highway flew along beside us, yellow lines and streetlights racing in the early morning hours as we fled further west into the Rockies. I lay in the back seat, watching the shifting shadows as the sun came up behind me.”

-and-

“It was growing dark. Someone had turned up the lamp, and a soft light shone across the room, touching each of the worn out bodies now fast asleep and scattered around the room. The stereo was still playing from the bedroom, and the cat had disturbed a pile of empty beer cans, bringing them crashing to the floor. But no one woke. Even the bodies spread across the hardwood floors looked comfortable, although curled up close together, as if to keep warm.”

Both were my way of lightly fictionalizing things that were really happening. Thumbing through those journals I realize I did a lot of that. I still do.