I miss so many moments in my life… I miss the hugs from my siblings…the little joys of childhood…I miss everything… All the years that will never return to me again…All the days that will never come back…I am suddenly weak…Teardrops… I miss everyone, my house, my room… How can anyone understand…What it’s like to leave everything behind, to leave a country that you once thought was yours forever…

Some days it’s hard not to notice the emptiness of our house. My room is filled with pictures and memories, this way I never feel alone. But inside I feel really alone sometimes. The memories of Iran and my childhood, and all the other things that are just pieces of memory for me. I remember some things vividly as though they happened yesterday. Other things, I remember vaguely; sometimes I wish I could go back, re-visit the memory, and keep it locked in my head so I won’t forget it. No matter how happy I am here, how optimistic, how jolly, my heart aches when I think of those who still suffer across the ocean, where my heart belongs… I am such a fool, thinking I can just change the world, push the ocean away, and bring my people some peace …
I am such a fool, thinking I can just change the world, push the ocean away, and bring my people some peace… I am such a fool to think that it is possible to erase the inhumanity that our world is filled with. But I am not a fool to think that there is something we can all do, together, there has to be a way… My room is a gallery of all my life, all the people who gave me their unconditional love, their support, their smile, and their encouragement… I am not alone, though I feel empty within… I have a world of opportunities and I have people who will support me for the rest of my life. I wish things could be easy, life and all. Somewhere in the back of my mind I see those happy days that fled from me so fast, the days when I thought the world was beautiful and no one ever did any harm to anyone else, I was just a child, and those days were beautiful…I hope one day our world could be beautiful again …

A new year is arriving once again. We’ve all been through so much. We’ve been through a long war, dozens of earthquakes and hurricanes, birthdays (I turned 17 by the way), elections, re-elections, weddings, deaths, births, and so on…
But here is the thing, we have another chance, another year to make things right. Well of course not everything will go right, things don’t always go right, but we can try… maybe for a start we won’t start another war across the sea, lets hope not…
I don’t know… I’m just suddenly so excited you know… I think this will be a great year, so welcome 2005. And the year after that I will graduate! Finally break free from all this high school nonsense; actually it wasn’t all nonsense, some of it surprisingly made sense…
Anyway, I am a new person, I am 17, I am excited, and well… I just want to go for it…so we all might as well go for it… Happy new year everyone and don’t forget to smile… Life is just a game, just a funny game…