packing isn't fun

I'm afraid I'm bringing too much stuff to school with me.  Almost done packing.  It's kind of overwhelming, because I'm so afraid I'll forget something, and I think this is part of why I'm bringing so much stuff.  And I don't know when I'll be done.  There are flashes of it feeling real, but somehow my room looks pretty much the same, so it doesn't feel real that I'm leaving tomorrow.  How is my room still so messy after I packed up all my crap?  What is even left?  I don't know what to do with anything.  My dad said that he wanted my room to be clean before I left, but there's no way that's happening.  Not because I don't want it to be clean, but because I don't even know how to clean it at this point. But I can't write anymore, I have to finish.

I've been writing a lot lately on paper instead of here.  I missed paper more than I realized. The thing is, whenever I'm packing I come across my Harry Potter diary that I've written in sporadically since I was around seven or eight, and I always feel so overwhelmed that I need to write. I think I started abandoning it when I realized it had become the place where I pined over boys, and I didn't want to be that girl who always talked about the boy she liked. The thing is, there are so many qualities that I don't mind and even enjoy in other people that I would hate for myself to have.  I guess talking about stuff like that is one of them.  I like it when my friends talk about their boy problems or whatever, because I like listening to them.  Maybe I'm a good listener because I don't talk...


I always imagined someone finding my diary in the future and reading it, a la Anne Frank.  But I really hope that doesn't happen, because I think that I didn't sound totally vapid only about twenty-five percent of the time.  Whenever I go back and read my diary, it really embarrasses me.  It's like I'm reading the words of an entirely different person.  But it really makes me think about how I'm constantly changing, becoming more myself each day. 


I'm still not done packing though.

Whenever I think of August, I think of old creaking porch swings, but not on porches, on verandas.  There is a wrinkled old man sipping iced tea or mint juleps or lemonade and he tells stories sometimes, but only if you stop and listen.  He whispers to himself all day, his brown hands fluttering.  There are road maps on his hands and face that show ghosts of labor and smiles and pain, and sometimes he'll tell you what they mean but not why, you have to figure out why for yourself, maybe the humming cicadas know.  At night the stars weave uncertainly down to the earth and children catch them in jars, and the old man watches and smiles.  But he warns the children to let the stars go, because otherwise they'll die, and then nobody else can see them.


Not that I spend my summers in the deep South or anything.  That's just what I feel like August is, or should be.