Monday, August 15, 2011

it's been a while

i can't believe it's been so long since i posted on this blog. on a whim, i opened it up today, had to sign in (proving that it's been a long time since i've been on, since it always just remembers me...), and then looked at my feedjit live thing. a lot of people have been on my blog lately? haha more than normal at least. i even got another follower... hi by the way :D

anyways, i've been using tumblr so much lately that i've forgotten about pretty much everything else in my life. i don't really use facebook anymore, i obviously haven't been on here in a long time. but, i felt it was time to come back to my blogger, at least for a little bit, to write everything out like i used to. i'm not the best writer, so i'm sure this isn't what everyone wants to read, but writing helps me get everything out, helps me feel better about different situations, and i feel like it's been a while since i sat down and wrote out an extremely long rant.

first off, i saw this picture on tumblr,



and thought about how this is so wrong for me. some of my summers have stories, but most of them are completely boring and can be told in a couple of words. last summer... was horrible for me. a summer filled with nothing but misery and longing to be somewhere else, someone else.

the story of this summer, kind of starts in november of 2010. i stopped going to school and was focussing on work and rushing for my fraternity, kappa kappa psi. there was some drama, but all in all i was pretty happy. i thought i had grown so much in the year coming up to then, and i had. but i had no idea what would come in the next few months for me.

i got into my fraternity, i signed up for classes for the next semester, i came to terms with the fact that i would not be doing drumline for the first time since 2006. i was in flagstaff and i was happy.

but then for some reason, i started to change my mind. i wanted to do drumline so badly, but i knew i shouldn't. all the growing up i had done didn't seem to make it okay for me to stop marching. i had so many dreams for myself, and i felt like taking the season off would completely squash any hopes for a future in the marching world. i emailed a few people, i started weighing my options.

my options were these: 1. do drumline in chandler, live in flagstaff, work about 60 hours in 4 days so that i can afford everything. 2. stay in flagstaff, not do drumline. 3. do drumline in chandler, move home to save money.

i chose number 3. even though i had offers from my friends to let me live with them for extremely cheap, there just seemed like no way out of being able to afford drumline. i had already told the director i would be there. i had already committed myself. there was no going back on my word to him.

i spent my last month in flagstaff, being miserable. my roommates moved out, my friends were all away on winter vacation, my big brother was too busy to see me most days. i left right after the semester started and didn't get to see many of my friends.

moving home after living on your own is the weirdest thing. my brother and sister were used to having me gone. i guess it was worse last summer, because when i left for college i was quiet, unconfident, and untrusting of anyone and came back confident, loud, sarcastic and with a new understanding of love and trust. coming home this time was different though, it wasn't just for the summer, or just until i realized what i wanted to do, it was in the middle of the school year and it was for an indefinite amount of time. i had a purpose though, to save money and get ready for the next season of drumline.

i was always thinking of my future, always am thinking of the future. i dealt with some of my issues when i got home, and wasn't as miserable as i thought i would be. i got a job and had friends in drumline, no matter how much i hated some of the people in it. i could have been happier, but my plans for the future, the few friends i had, and the fact that i was finally making money kept me going.

when drumline ended, my first free weekend was spent in flagstaff. i told everyone how chandler wasn't actually as bad as i thought it would, that i was actually happy there for the first time. as soon as i went home though, a wave of depression hit me and i couldn't help but feel like i was alone in the world.

i stopped spending time with people. i went to work, the one thing that made me somewhat happy. i spent all of my free time in my room, alone. my mom noticed because i wouldn't even spend time with my family. i didn't eat with them, i didn't sit around with, i preferred to spend my time by myself.

i started working about 40 hours a week around this time. i took any shift anyone ever asked me to cover and i finally started to really bond with my coworkers. i felt like work was where i belonged, because no matter who i worked with, i always had fun. sometimes i never wanted to leave work because i knew i'd be going home to sit in my room and do nothing. i got tired of being so lonely. i got tired of spending every night alone. i tried to reach out to my friends from high school. i even tried hanging out with new people, only for it to happen once, and not again.

my twentieth birthday came. in all honesty, it was pretty bad. i was so excited in the days leading up to it. i made plans with my friends and my family. when the day finally came i tried so hard to be optimistic, but i was let down all day. all of my friends cancelled on me, except for my big brother, who only came to dinner with my family because i guilted him into it. i felt like crying all day long. i'm still convinced that birthdays will always be horrible for me.

when i got home i decided to start doing more towards my drumline goals. i started running. three days after my birthday i went running for the first time with two of my coworkers. we started slow, only running for a minute at a time, and then walking for 2 minutes and repeating that 7 times, but i had so much fun. i started going running about 3 times a week with my coworker kelli, and we've been going ever since then.

i'm not sure when it happened, but my coworkers became more than that at some point, they became my friends. i hang out with them, talk to them, and work with them on a daily basis. i'm not supposed to work today, but i'm going in just to see my friends because they asked me to. i don't need a ton of friends in my life to be happy, just a few good friends, and i finally feel like i have that.

on a different note, a couple days ago i officially lost 10 pounds. i know it's probably been more than that, but i've also been gaining muscle. i don't know if anything i've been doing is good enough to make a world line, but i've had a number of people tell me i look really good lately. i've been taking care of myself in a way i never have before. i care about my health for the first time, i care about how i feel. i'm trying to tell myself not to care about my weight, but not only do i want to care about the way i look, but the way i feel. eating the way i used to makes me feel so shitty, i get a stomachache in the worst way.

i've been trying to see beauty in everything lately. every person, every object, every situation. i've been trying not to let things get to me the way they used to. and it's been working, because i've been so happy lately.

i took a super long break from writing this... anyways.

i was going to go teach nau's cymbal line during their band camp which is next week. i emailed their section leader and she sounded really happy that i still wanted to do it. today she emailed me saying that the band director doesn't think the drumline needs any outside help. i almost started crying. i already asked for the week off, i really wanted to see my friends, and above everything, this is my first year not doing marching band, and i wanted to feel like i was at least a part of something...

it's been a couple hours, so the initial shock has warn off, but i still feel slightly sad. i'm trying not to let it get to me. i was put back on the schedule, so i can't go up to flagstaff anyways. i was supposed to make time to hang out with t.j., but it'll have to wait.



this is a super long story of what my summer has been... i'm sure no one will take the time out to read the whole thing, and i'm sure that if they do, it probably wouldn't make any sense... it's more of just a ramble. but i guess the one important thing that happened this summer is that i learned to be happy with what i have.

i've changed this summer. i've grown. i didn't realize it was happening until a couple days ago, but i've finally learned how to accept what life has given to you, and to focus on the positive. to stop worrying so much about the future, and live in the present.

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