I was doing well in school but general quite depressed, mostly about two things, friends and girls.  When it came to my friends, several had moved away, some were still going to GHS but with 3,000 students, almost 900 being seniors, I didn’t often see any of them.  My best friend Bill started to drift away, busy with his new hippie friends, he let his hair grow long and started wearing a green army jacket like his hippy friend.  It didn’t help that I worked weekday afternoons.   The situation with girls, well I was hopeless.  Although I talked to Ginny every day in physics class, I could not tell her how I felt. Each day when I talked to her, I hope she would say something, anything to express that she felt something towards me. Other than the look in her eyes, there was only our usual conversation.

In May there was a huge demonstration in Washington, against the Vietnam War, it was in the Gainesville Sun and Walter Cronkite talked about it on the news when he reported on the number of boys that had died in Vietnam that week.  I had just turned eighteen and received my draft card, but it didn’t even occur to me that I could be drafted after I graduated in June.  

Floating

Floating high in the sky
Coming down do die
Do you see the other side
The side that I hide.  

Its lonely up here
Nothing to do
Nothing to see
I am alone

Lonely are those above
with nothing but thoughts
of others long past
that I hide so well

Within this flesh
I cannot express
the feeling I have
for you.

From Journal entry.

Updated: 11-10-2022

Dark and Gloomy