"As of today – I have decided to keep a diary again – just a place where I can write my thoughts and opinions when I have a moment. Somehow I have to keep and hold the rapture of being 17. Every day is so precious. I feel so sad of all this time melting farther and farther away from me as I grow older. Now is the perfect time of my life. Now. I Still do not know myself. Perhaps I never will. But I feel free … I can still come up to my own private room, with my drawings on the walls, and pictures over my bureau … a room suited to me, uncluttered and peaceful. I love the lines of the furniture, the bookcases filled with poetry books and fairy tales saved from childhood. Always I want to be an observer. I want to be affected by life deeply, but never so blinded that I can’t see my existence in a wry humorous light. I am afraid of getting older. I am afraid of getting married. Spare me from cooking three meals a day, spare me from the cage of routine. I want to be free to know people … free to move to different parts of the world. I want to be omniscient. I would like to call myself “the girl who wanted to be god”. Perhaps I am destined to be classified and qualified. But I cry out against it. I am I. I love my flesh, my face, my limbs. I have created an image of myself, idealistic and beautiful. Is not that image, free from blemish, the true self, the true perfection? I glance back on what I have written … how foolish and dramatic it sounds. Never, never, never, will I reach the perfection I long for with all my soul. There will come a time when I must face myself. I dread the big choices which loom up my life. I am afraid. I feel uncertain. I’m not as wise as I have thought. I can now see the roads lying open for me, but I cannot see the end, the consequences. Oh, I love the present with all my fears and forebodings, for now, I am not completely moulded. I am strong. My life is still just beginning."