the "good" old days

I'm taking a break from writing my college essays. It's too exhausting. I'm writing about when I was ten, how I would sneak into the basement and read snatches of pages of my mother's copy of Foxfire by Joyce Carol Oates, and how it caused me to stay sane during a time when everything was insane; about how those girls could be powerful even when I could not be, and how those fragments of a novel saved my life. I'm worried that it's too personal-it's probably not what anybody is looking for. I'm pretty sure it counts for something though, even though I'm not writing about how the book wanted me to save pandas or attain world peace.

Thinking about those days brought up a lot of memories that I had forgotten, or at least tried to forget, but I feel like this Foxfire essay has to be written, it's been whispering in my ear, asking me to write it for years, and now I have the opportunity. Even if I don't send it out, even if it's not perfect, it will be written for myself, so that I can never forget that Foxfire burns and burns.