self worth.

i've been thinking a lot lately about whether or not i'm wasting my parents money right now. i already failed fitness and conditioning. i've missed too many days, and it's a pass/fail class. there's no use going anymore. i'm probably going to fail astronomy and ceramics. i'm way too far behind to catch up. i'm not really sure how i'm doing in band. i've skipped... twice now? i think that's it. we have a concert coming up. it's either tomorrow or next wednesday. i'm not really sure. the only classes i really have hope for are math, spanish and animal behavior.

is it worth it that i learned a lot about my me though? is it worth almost the $20,000 my parents dished out for me to have figured out a lot about life? i'm not really sure. but i'm so grateful they gave me this year.

it's weird to think what i could possibly be like if i had stayed at home and gone to cgcc or asu. i really can't imagine. on one hand, i might have learned everything i learned from being at nau, but i don't think i would have appreciated it as much.

this semester and my time at nau are almost up, and i really wanted to wait to start reflecting on this past year, but i'm going to do it now (even though i really have to pee and would really like to take a nap. ha)

this time last year i was a lone senior at hamilton. i had very few friends, and the friends i didn't have didn't feel like my true friends. there were just there because they had no where else to be. i walked through the halls without happiness, but i thought i would miss high school so much. now i can say that i didn't have very many friends, but then i thought i did. i thought those people who were just there, but not really "there for me" were my friends, but i was wrong. those are people that i don't talk to any more, and have no interest in talking to anymore. i'm not really sure why they kept this front up, why they kept pretending to be my friend. but for my sake at the time, i'm glad they did. i graduated with one best friend who was pretty much the only person i thought of as a friend. every one else said they loved me and they'd see miss this summer, but they didn't mean it or follow through with that. the summer started with me seeing all of my "friends" laughing and taking pictures together and having an amazing time while i searched for my mom, not being able to find her in the hot, over populated asu campus. we were both frustrated that we couldn't find each other, and by the time we did, half of my family left without saying goodbye. that night we had senior night, where i saw what was once "my group" of friends, all in their tie dye shirts and their inside jokes. i walked around with some of my "friends" and had a horrible time. that night marked the last time i saw most of them until the end of summer, which even then didn't mean much to me.

last summer all i did was work and sit at home. the only person i ever hung out with was evan, who really saved me from going insane. he was the first person i learned to open up to, like real friends do with each other. i learned to trust him, and we were best friends. but i could feel myself slipping. slipping into depression, and hurt. i grew scared to leave my mom and my family for college, but at the same time, i knew that i needed to leave. besides my family, i had nothing left in chandler. since evan was also going to nau, i had no friends left for me in chandler.

the only good memory i have from summer though, was when, out of the blue, i got a text. i'm not sure who it was from, either trey, stephen, alex or randy, but one of them texted me and asked what i was doing. they told me to come outside and sure enough, there they all were. it was about ten pm and i was already in my pajamas, getting ready to watch tv for a few hours like i did every night that summer. we sat outside talking for a while until we realized there was... crap. i can't remember what was happening. something astronomy related... i can't remember what it's called. anyways, we wanted to watch it. so we drove for about two hours listening to music and just talking. somewhere in there we realized it was too cloudy to see anything in the sky and we drove back, but i had so much fun in the process.

i left for school and pretty much had to start over. i had realized over the summer that the reason i kept losing my friends was because i didn't trust people. so i decided when i got to nau i decided to trust. i decided to just be who i thought i was. i started saying what i thought, cursing, and going for things i never thought i could do before because i knew that i didn't have much to lose. at first, i really only made one friend, and that was mike. but i trusted him. i could talk to him for hours and hours at a time. he was the only person i hung out with, got food with, talked to. it feels our relationship (which wasn't really a relationship) lasted for so long, but looking back, it was really only a few weeks. he always encouraged me to go out and meet people and try new things. he himself was going to rush for KA, a fraternity. i got invited to a kkpsi rush event. he encouraged me to go when we couldn't hang out one night. this ended up being my first experience with kkpsi, and not my last. soon enough, things ended with mike, but right after i made a few new good friends, friends that i know will be here for me for years to come. i already knew halonna, but i hung out with her for the first time a few days after everything with mike happened. i also met maggie right after mike. these two girls became my best friends, and my source for trust and happiness. i hung out with them all the time. through them and band, i also made other friends. some who i'm not very good friends with anymore, but i would never regret being friends with them last semester.

in general, last semester i learned a lot about myself. i went through a bit of a rough time with mike, but overall, i was so much happier. i went home for the first time in mid october. i went to a band competition and saw some of my old friends, a lot of them said they didn't even recognize me, one said that she had never seen me look so happy, and that i was glowing. if there is one thing last semester taught me, it's how to let loose (not too loose, ha) and to be happy. don't worry about what people think about you, just trust them to know that they aren't thinking anything bad. and if they are, then they aren't worth your time.

i had so many great memories from last semester, but one of them was definitely black friday. i was happy to be going home for four days, but also nervous, because i thought i would just be sitting at home the entire time not doing anything. in college i had really learned to just go out and hang with friends, rather than sitting at home every night. about a week or so before i went home, stephen roy invited me to go over to his house on black friday. he went away to texas for college, and wanted to have a little reunion. i was so nervous to go, because i hadn't seen any of the people going since the summer, and i thought it would be the old "group" that they had formed at the end of senior year that i had not become a part of. i was the first one there, and soon after everyone else showed up. it was only me, hunter, alex, randy, trey and danielle. i was pretty happy with that, because the only one i didn't know was danielle. i was still a little skeptical and didn't know if i would feel left out, but i realized that they were still the same people i had always been friends with. i was the different one, and they loved me for who i used to be, and who i was now. i soon found out the reasons we had stopped being good friends in the first place, and we all became good friends again. i hung out with these people all weekend and realized what i had left behind in chandler, and for the first time, i looked forward to coming home for winter break.

i had a good reason to be excited to come home for winter break. because it was absolutely the most amazing break ever. i didn't spend my nights alone, i didn't spend days at work. i spent time with my old friends, and spent time making a new friend. i have so many good memories from winter break, including our mini road trip to payson. going back up to flagstaff for second semester, i couldn't help but miss my new "family" that i had created at home. i cried when i saw all the snow and realized i wouldn't see all of them for a long time.

i was wrong of course, because i've seen all of them (except stephen) many times throughout this semester. with drumline i was in phoenix every weekend, and ended up driving home most of those weekends to go and say hi. throughout this semester and just talking and trusting, i became best friends with danielle and always have a family of the most amazing friends to go home to. they have taught me so much about myself. i've never had a best friend like danielle. i mean, i've always had best friends that i could relate to, but never in ways that i can relate to danielle. she's the only one i feel i can tell everything to, even things that at first i thought i'd always keep to myself. i guess i have told my other best friends about things that happened at home, but they don't know anyone from my life in chandler, it's less of a risk telling them. telling danielle my secrets from high school and before are so much more personal because she knows or knows of every single person i talk about. she also gives me a lot of hope. she's so strong in most of her life, and when i read her blogs and listen to her talk, i have so much hope for my life. she's the one who gave me the strength to decide on mcc next year. not because she's going there too, but because she made this huge decision that will help her with accomplishing her dreams. after reading her blog, i signed up for classes at mcc. i did start to change my mind a few weeks later, but after my mom decided for me that i am indeed going to mcc, i started to get excited for it, i'm still excited for it :)

i think the reason i had doubts in the first place was because how much nau did for me. i changed so much while i was up here, and i thought that if i left i would go back to who i was. but i can never be that person again, that sad, depressed, lonely, untrusting person. i have a family in chandler now, i have a boyfriend in tempe, and i have so many opportunities. and yes, i have a lot of people up here that i will miss SO much, but i know i'll be able to visit them. and tj is going to midwestern university in glendale in the fall of 2011 (hopefully), which will be a lot closer to me than nau.

i'm so excited to see where this summer and next semester take me. i know i'll stay in contact with my friends from nau, and i'm so excited to be closer to my friends from chandler. i sure will miss nau, but i'm going to take this next semester as another learning experience, and hope that it's just as "worth" my time and money as this past year has been :)