Dear Diary,
Dear Hope, dear Soul, dear Friendship,


Dear Happiness,

I’ve had an amazing exchange. With a friend of mine I sat and spoke. And it was nothing but comradery, but friendship, the likes of which I haven’t felt in many a day. We talked and we laughed, about bad movies and silly things, about things to come, which we will share, and things we missed the other for. And then we parted, and as I walked home, when we were getting too far to yell to each other anymore, I thought. I didn’t want him to go away over the summer, because I wanted to do this then too, and I wondered if he thought that as well. As I walked back to my home, I saw a little bird, perched on the tiniest of branches, so far up in the tree that that alone must have felt like flying. It began as a silhouette against a slowly darkening sky, blue morphing into orange in it’s confusion of self. The closer I got to the bird, the more detail stood out, until finally I was close enough to the tree that the bird flew away, becoming ever distant in it’s safe little arcs, until it was too far off to see clearly. I saw a bug flying through the air, and I smiled at it. I knew I must have been insane, because who smiles at a bug? But I did, and my insanity only fed my joy even more. When I entered my home, my nose and cheeks feeling the gentle sort of sting from the cold, my parents were both in the front room, my father doing taxes online, and my mother sorting through school supplies that I may or may not ever need. It was somehow so menial, and that they didn’t smile in their work upset me, but I was already too far up for them to bring me down. All of a sudden I wanted to say “Mom, me and Nick just switched horror stories,” because in a way we had, though I knew she would have taken it literally and not ever question the meaning of the words, ask what exactly I meant. And I never said it, because stronger than the want to share this joy was the want to keep it for myself. To cherish it alone, my secret, and my friend’s. Our’s.

This sort of happiness so rarely and randomly strikes me that I had to put it down. Today, I laughed so hard that I cried. Twice. This almost never happens to me, and lately I’ve been down anyway, so it came as more of a savior than anything else. As I’m so fond of saying “It made my soul happy”. And today, I think my soul could have smiled.

I won’t lie, I rewrote this. Over and over in my head before placing it on paper, trapped in it’s ink prison for always and forevermore, but one line always remained the same. I’ve had an amazing exchange. Because that’s the truest thing here. The most concrete. And somehow the most personal. I won’t end up showing this to my friend, and if you know him, I hope that you won’t either, because I feel that he wouldn’t understand these emotions. I doubt if he could relate, and I would rather be living in ignorance than to find out he couldn’t, to have that kind of wall built between us. Too much of my heart is bared here for me to be comfortable with him reading it, anyway, but I’m glad I wrote it still. Even if it means that somehow, somewhere he’ll come across it. That a mutual acquaintance will spite me and show it to him. I’m glad I put these words down on paper, so that anytime I may ever doubt our friendship, I can look here, and find our bond again, never having to look too far. I’m glad I bared my heart and soul today. God forbid I take this peace of mind for granted.