Note:This part is not the full paper journal from this period...what follows is what has survived.

I have just finished reading the first few entries of this journal. It sure has been a long time since I last wrote anything, and, in a way, I feel I am blaspemizing this journal by picking the story of my life back up now, so much later. I guess better late than never again.

Catastrophic changes have occured since May 8, 1993, changes in me and my life. I hardly know where to begin. The first is my senior year, I guess. It came and went like jumping jack flash. I never knew how short life was, until I looked back, at graduat ion time, and realized my life, as I knew it, was over. All the years I had worked through, all the trials and tribulations I had endurred had propelled me to the end of high school. And they were numerous. Let me recap some of the events of my last year of high school:

Band went extremely well last year. At the Newman Classic, we took showmanship sweeps, and only one point seperated the band from grand sweeps. Antioch again lost the pitt game, etc. etc. I am not in a marching band this year, only concert. LMC doesn't h ave a marc band.

Academically speaking, I had a good year. I had AP Calculus and AP English, passing both AP tests with 3's. This year, however, Pernish Kanteseria, Rachell Jepson, and especially April Brown were a big part of my life. We had a study group for Calculus, every Tuesday, until complications with April's mother stopped them. April was not well, she had a sugar disorder within her body, either too much or too little, we're not sure. Her mother thought she knew what was wrong, and wouldn't let April see a doct or, or didn't listen to him when she did. I found myself growing close to April, but I did nothing about it then. I was afraid-mostly because I didn't understand what I was feeling for her. It was unlike anything I'd ever felt for any girl before. Wheneve r I talked to her, I felt happy, but not when I just looked at her. She is pretty, I think, but I can't explain it. It's as if I fell in love with her voice and mind and not the rest of her. I couldn't see us dating, or kissing. It was odd. I haven't seen her, now, since graduation, and don't know if I will over Christmas break, but I'm getting ahead of myself. One night, at a study session, we were talking about the Senior Ball. Pernish and Rachelle had already decided to go together, earlier.

About Rachelle: At the beginning of the year, she was dating a man named Jeremy Kent Gover. He was an adopted child, and, like me, very interested in writing. That is how we met and became friends-in Creative Writing. I took it again because I had to fil l a class period. Jeremy was not such a great poet or author, his main talents and interest laid in journalism. Well, in this class was a flag girl named April (not Brown!). She and Jeremy became good friends, and the rest of us began to think they were h aving affairs with each other (April had a boyfriend). I confronted Jeremy about it, and he denied it, earnestly, telling me thank-you, I'll try to work out the problems with Shelly. I now think he lied. Then, however, I believed him. As time passed thoug h, I thought he lied. So does everyone else, including shell. April told us once, in confidentiality, that Rachelle had confided in her that she thought she was pregnant, something like two or three times. Eventually, she and Jeremy, after fighting to sta y together, broke up, and she and Pernosh gradually began to date one another.

Getting back to the ball, we were all discussing it, and, it was then that I asked April if she would go with me. I really wanted her to, really wanted her to. I think Rachelle might have thought I asked only because April didn't look like she would have a date, but I wanted her to go with me. Months later, at the dance, April would thank me for going with her, nearly tearfully, saying she didn't think she would ever go to her senior ball. Before our senior year, April had been much of a recluse, with no real friends. I was much the same way, although I had friends in class, and had also wondered, several times, if I would have a date to my Senior Ball. The night of the Senior Ball was the shortest in all my life. It was also the most rewarding. I will n ev er forget the joy I felt with April in my arms, as we danced the slow songs, or the adrenalin I felt as I made a fool of myself on the fast songs. There were two or three conga-lines as well. That night, though, little did I know, would be the first time I saw Joseph and April kind of together. It had all started on the Acadmeic Decathalon's trip to Long Beach, for Model UN, they had fallen asleep with their hands together, while sitting on the train, apparently, and from all who saw, were absolutlely ado rable together.

Towards the end of the year, everyone else started pairing off, getting together as couples, and one thing that hurt me more than anything I can remember was when April and Joseph Sarmiento kind of paired off. I could barely look at them together without crying. I never said a word, still unsure of myself and my feelings. April retreated from me, and we never really talked with one-another. I got the feeling she felt bad about feelings she might have had for me, and knew about the feelings I had had for her.

When April left for CSU Humboldt, I did not wish her off. I have not written a letter either. I will know during Christmas Break if she wants to see me or not, and, if not then, when I transfer there next Fall. I sent my application in a couple of weeks ago, and should get it back, if things happen like last year, by the end of this month.

An interesting thing that popped up a few days ago was the realization that Tosco, where my dad works, is offering a 4 year scholarship to Manhattan College. I looked the school up; It's a small private school, catholic in nature. There are about 3000 or so students, a student-teacher ratio of 13-1, and the average SAT is 480 verbal, 540 math, (or vice-versa), for graduation, there are required theocracy classes. The scholaship is open to all children of Tosco employees, and dad estimated about 3000-4000 Tosco employees, here and on the East Coast and management taken together. That means I have a very good chance at this scholarship. I sent a letter to the college asking for an admission application, and a scholarship application. I don't know if the sc holarship covers housing and tuition, of just tuition. I it is just tuition, then it would cost mom and dad only a couple thousand less than Humboldt, especially since I would have to fly there and back. If this is so, and I win the scholarship, I don't k now if I will take it. If I do, I will never transfer to Humboldt, and nothing will be resolved between April and myself. However, I do kind of like the idea of going to school on the East Coast, for I have never been there before. Because of the large aw ard the scholarship offers, however, I don't think I will win it. Also, if the college asks my religious background, I will tell them, truthfully, that I am an atheist. If they cannot deal with that, and still admit me, then there is my out if I win the s cholarship and don't want to go. I will see what I will see. I still plan on Humboldt.

Today I read some of the letters I've written to Amy Ryan and Ian Prowell (while he was an exchange student in Japan). Again, I was drawn into the letters I had written, just as I always seem to be when I read something I wrote that I've haven't read for a while. It made me realize I should make another entry into this journal of mine, intended for a daily account of my life and thoughts, now defunct, becoming a occasional thing, updates every couple of months. So much has happened since December 3, like always happens when I neglect this computer file and it's subsequent journal. Just thinking about what to write conjures up images of the richness of life, particually mine-everything I've done and seen and heard, knowing that there is no way to reproduc e everything, knowing I'll forget something before I finally get back to this file once again.

Just now, at this exact moment, I think I pinned why I like so much to read these letters and other things I've written about myself. Besides just the joy of reading what I wrote, seeing how beautiful I think it is, whether another would agree, it's the truthfullness of it, the actial depiction of my life, the struggles, the joys, the triumph, the defeats, everything personafied in little more than words. I cannot express how wonderful it feels to read this stuff, knowing that that constituted me at that point in time, especially my subconsious, since that is where my words arise from when I write. It is the fact that what I read is fact, an actual person's depiction of fact, and that that viewer is me, myself, none else. It is that I see myself from my w ords, see myself looking out upon the world, go back in time, relive what once was, feeling the pain, the longing. Knowing what it is like to question my love? for April Brown, my excitement at graduation, my joy at writing...What is life? For me, seeing these words, reading them. once more becoming the person these words personified, that is life. That is what makes writing this worth it, that is why I do this thing.

So much to tell, I can't think of where to begin. I know it's an oft used phrase, but I can think of none better to say, none better to relate to you, Glen Vomacka, whoever you are now, when you read this, no knowing where you are, hoe old you are, or if this is even you, perhaps it is so historian, discovering a computer or disk clutching this file to it's proverbial chest of technology. Who knows? For all, it can mean something, a glimpse into the past, of how things really were for at least one person , and in a world where the individual is meant to count, that must mean the world to everyone. Not being bravado or self riteous, or whatever, but that is how I see it, that is how I want it to be seen.

December 94, I remember nothing of that month, save some school bits, and winter break. Finals were fine. Upon leaving my Philosophy and Government classes, for the last time, I was called by the teacher. Myself, I recall, did not realize at the time it would be the last I saw of those two women, at least in that class, timeframe, or perhaps ever again. Now I look back, as I did a week or so after, and realized the look in their eyes, as they thanked me for being in the class, and tried to say more as I left-at least Lucy Dagget I am sure wanted too, I think maybe Linda Collins (Gov't) said all she needed-a acknowledgment that I could come to her for any reccamendations. I would later need such, but got it from Martin Houser(Math 60, Calc II), but that c omes much later from here, holds no place now. Christmas break saw the visitation of Amy Ryan, my farewell to Erin Rybolt, and my farewell to Sarah McAdam. This is the first I have thought of those two wonderful, nay, beautiful individuals, since then. Erin went back to South Dekota, I believe, with her fiance, and Sarah moved to the east coast with her family-either Virginia or Pennsylvania, I can't recall which she said, one was a visit, the other her new home. I knew Sarah ever since junior high, and now feeling of sorrow washes over me, as I realize, for the first time, that yet another friend has left me, most likely forever. High School was the most incredibly wonderful time of life, yet graduation was most possibly the culmination of that time, i t was also the declination point of my life. Ever since that night, life was different, people left, and, now, once again, those same feelings of something good being lost forever washes over my poor heart, and I grieve, yes, most definitely to I grieve, fo r the past is done, as it is always, but this past is a circle, yesterday a new circle from the past four years, even the past 18 or so. Graduation marked the beginning of a new circle, ending when I leave LMC, but overlapping my parents lifespan, my siste r's love, my sisters recent marriage, and all other major plot-line of my life that shall not end with my leaving Antioch, with simply my moving to a new place, for these are the circles that matter most, the ones of substantial feeling of affection, of l ove, of joy and togeetherness, of completeness. Those are the pasts that count, that truly matter. Now, one of those pasts is long gone, and I shall forever regret high school, even as much as I cherish it and the memories and the friends. It is not my pl a ce to mourn the past, however, only to live the life I see before me, and to build and embelish the path my feet set upon. Still, I cannot help mourn at least some, without it, I make this part of my lige frivilous, superfulous, meaningless, and that I r efuse to do. I give evidence with my writings of it even now, here, today at this panel of letters, numbers and symbols that make up my language and methods of thought. Yes, the past I love, but the present and the future I live.

December 25th, 1994, I did something I waited a long time for, a joyride in a golf cart late at night, completely unauthorized. I took Erin and Amy, my Christmas gift to them, and we drove a cart around the course one time. I had left the cart house unlo cked before closing the day before Christmas, opening it and taking out a cart. Amy brought her camera, and she recently sent me pictures back. This note and pictures she sent prompted my letter to her, and eventually led to my reading the other letters t o her and Ian. After that adventure, we went out and I bought the two desert at Lions restaurant, my treat. "The night started on me, and it shall end on me," I said to their protests over my wallet. I won out, and they thanked me.

Erin would leave not much more than a week and a half later, and so would I. I spent New Years Eve with Amy, who happened to call me that night, asking if I was doing anything. I told her I wasn't, since I didn't see the day as any special thing. It was simply another day, and I already try to squeeze the most from each day, most of the time, anyways. The passing of a year is no big deal to me, just the transgression to another day. I was just going to go to bed, not staying up to watch the ball drop or any of the shows, or anything like that. However, Amy wanted to do something, so I picked her up, and we came back to my house. We played cards and talked and just were friends again for awhile-something we never even did a whole lot in high school. The n ight passed pleasantly, and we both had a farely good time.

I had nothing I had, or wanted, to do over break, so Amy invited me up to Wahington, to see her at college. I think at first it might have been a joke, uttered before we went to see a movie together upon her returning for break. Later that night we went by to see Erin, and about 10PM or so, I hadn't seen her for such a long time-she'd been in North Platte with her fiance all since graduation. We all the went out to the Coffee Cavcery, a coffee shop next to Target made to look like a cave. With Amy's invi t ation, however, I took it seriously, whether it was meant that way or not, and she carried out the idea, whether serious at first or not. So it was that I found myself changing the oil and engine coolant in my car for the trip. My oil was coming up on it' s 5 000 mark, and needed changing. My coolant would not withstand the frigid, freezing whether. Despite my parents reluctance to allow me to go, in the winter, by myself, and several others "wisdom" that I should not go, I left. I drove straight to Spokane on the way there, a straight 15 hour trek, through central Oregon. I arrived at 10, in Spokane, wolfed down some grub at a McDonalds. Funny side note-there was another guy there who initiated a conversation. I told him I was tired, and he agreed. Long day a t work I think he said, I said a long day of driving. He asked from where, and when I said San Fransisco area, I either gained respect or his belief that I was crazy.

I spent four days, five nights at Whitworth College, and I really enjoyed my time. I ate at the cafeteria, Amy graciously paying for me on her much inflated meal plan(she had like 60 meals left over). I stayed in "Mac" hall, the all guy dorm, with Amy's ex-boyfriend, her only second such. They had fallen into disfavor, and, even with my full