Nearly Halfway through the first month of the year.  Nearly Halfway through the last year of high school.  I'm not sure of the specific significance, but I can't help but feel as though it's there.  Maybe "nearly halfway" makes it seem as if we're just waiting, trying to hold on untill truely halfway, and the end.  So often that's what it seems like.  So often I wish I could have graduated last year.  But there were "fun" classes I wanted to take which would not have happened.  Now I know that optimism can be a curse.  Just because you pick the class doesn't make the teacher intelligent.
     Driving home yesterday from an early-morning swim meet and noon-time team pizza outing, I looked out the window at the flat brown land.  It was not truely flat, but empty, desolate, with the long dead grasses making it seem as if it were fraying, little pieces, fragile, sticking out at odd angles.  So long dead, but not yet buried in peaceful white.  It was sad, so sad, and lonely.  Perhaps more lonely than anything else.   Empty, stretching flat but not flat, and falling apart.
     And later, something hoped did not happen, though I should have known it wouldn't, should know it never will.  And nosy family is no help, so I think of nearly halfway and empty roadsides, and wonder where that optimism went.