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dragonpiango · 4 years

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My review of 2019

January:

So I recently graduated from community college in the previous December, and I started university at HT with a scholarship for piano performance. Honestly I thought going to a HBCU was going to be weird, but turns out I’m not much of an outcast. It was a nice transition to a new setting and new people and a breath of fresh air! It was amazing having a practice room to myself and the mental thought of “getting to know my music” became a reality although my first piano lesson with my new professor was strange. His impression of me was way different than what I thought. Although he is a outstanding teacher, he might have overthought what I was capable of.... him assigning me my pieces and they consisted of Bach French suite No. 5 in G Major, Mozart sonata K.332 in F Major, Chopin Nocturne in D-flat Major, Chopin Scherzo No.2 in b-flat minor, and the most memorable piece IMHO Ravel’s Une Barque Sur L’Ocean from Miroirs.

February:

So still settling into a new university and meeting new people (although I just stayed in the music building bc that’s where all my classes were) it was Black History Month. Being apart of the choir at school and the only ensemble they offered, we were pretty busy with a lot of performances BUT it was enlightening too. Everyone has been so welcoming and coming from a background in classical music I’ve been introduced to Gospel music not only for voice, but piano. From accompanying spirituals to gospel it really has opened my eyes that music doesn’t have to be so strict. It is a way of expressing emotions and from then on I took my repertoire more seriously in the sense each piece had its own “character.”

March:

This month is a crucial one, not only did I find my “clique” at school, but they only consisted of two people. Ant and KayP. Not going to use their names but these two were the only two that understood who I was and I understood who they were. We might have drifted a little bit since one has graduated but in the mean time, during these few months, have been my shoulder to cry on. They were very talented vocalist who taught me a lot in the sense of accompanying and vice versa. Since our school is small, our “accompanist” was my piano teacher, so every rehearsal was around his schedule, until I came into the picture. They really pushed me to get out of my comfort zone and really get me to where I need to be. During this time, I was still working retail and I have a true appreciation for those who commit full time to retail because lemme tell y’all. That shit is a lot of work. Especially around holidays. Balancing out school and work was a struggle, but I managed through especially when I don’t have a piano at home. I have to go to school to practice and with retail, all my extra time would be working.

April:

By this time, everyone is stressing because of finals, but luckily since I grabbed an associates degree from COmmunity college, I didn’t have to take my core classes and cry. Music classes were all my focuses were on especially performance. I had a few performances in between for our seminar where we perform in front of all the music students, and for me, being a pianist, I didn’t have to rely on my teacher for rehearsals and accompanying. I just focused on me and this got me ready for our benefit concert that I was honored to be a part of. KayP being the current Miss HBCU and queen of the school, decided to raise money for students of troubled pasts who have really turned their lives around in college and made a great GPA would be rewarded with scholarship money that we raised. I was the one who got to close the whole show out and it truly was an amazing experience. Being able to perform for a great cause is always heart warming and I will cherish that moment forever.

May:

So the semester comes to an end and I have juries (where we perform our pieces in front of the faculty and get graded ) what I did not know is that since our school is so small, they invite and pay other professors from the biggest university next to us UT Austin and have them come sit and grade us as well. That to me was a shock moment, because coming from a university in a small town before we had enough people and knew everyone. Community college DIDNT have juries for piano which was odd, but this was a perfect opportunity to really put my hard work into good use. After juries, I did splendid with a few mistakes that I was able to recover from, and lemme tell y’all. No performance is perfect. And I have accepted that. My piano teacher hooked me up with one of his good friends who owns and directs her own music school and I became a piano teacher there. Oddly, I’m the youngest teacher there with no doctoral degree and am working on a BA still..... but none the less, this transition really opened my eyes.

June:

School is finally out, and I reduced my retail job to just Saturday. I finally got my reputation as a teacher at my new job and gained students rather quickly to where I was almost booked up Monday through Friday. With little to no teaching experience it was a trial and error process. I was taking over a studio of a former teacher who had visa issues. So all his students were a tad skeptical with me more so their parents. But after observing lessons and learning their names it was only a matter of time that I was teaching them and really became someone they look up to. It started off rocky because I wasn’t used to a build your own schedule, from what I’ve experienced with teaching at a music school is that someone does the schedule for you. Not in this case, so having to communicate and try to accommodate every students schedule was a tough start, but once I got used to it, the ride was easy from there. Unfortunately, most students were gone on vacation so I had to work with only a few who stayed in town and accommodate those who were in town for that week. That aside, my communication improved after constantly talking with parents 24/7.

July:

This is where life gets exciting. My boyfriend had surprised me with tickets to go to Chicago. I would go back because the city is amazing and food is delicious and it’s easy to get around in Chicago. It was a nice break from work and really helped me bond with my partner. During this time we had two cats. One names Roger and the other Gladys. So a little back story, when I moved in with my partner, his cats basically adopted me. Gladys was a daddy’s girl and kept to Todd mostly but she was very seeet with me and made adorable monkey noises when you picked her up and cuddled with her. She was diagnosed with cancer and the year before that we made the decision to remove her tumor and hope that she would live a healthy life. Well this is where the tumor came back full force and in Chicago, I was a wreck because I felt bad enjoying my time away and leaving her at home. My partner (who is the mature one in our relationship) had a sit down with me about what to do with her and I lost it. He didn’t want to put her down either, but it was for the best. We agreed to keep her comfortable until we knew it was time. Before the month ends tho, we are back home and my sisters boyfriend sends me a text saying he is serious about her and wants to marry her. The retail I work for is a jewelry store and he had asked me to help pick out a diamond for my sister since he knew what she wanted. So this was the good news. We find the diamond, and have it set in her favorite setting and my boyfriend who is full of surprises gets me a ticket to visit her in LA.

August:

So my birthday month is here, and I fly out to LA to deliver the ring to my now sisters fiancé and they fly out to Italy and he does the deed and she says yes. Happy note. But as school starts back up for the new semester, my partner had a issue to where he would be in a state to where he couldn’t move much due to a unusual circumstance. And before that we decided to put Gladys down. It was a tough decision but we gave her the best life we could ever had hoped for her and I was emotionally drained from everything. Having to keep a positive attitude for my students and going to school and being an adult in general. The only way I got thru this period is from my best friend and coworker who knows what it’s like to go through life and it’s always better to have an open mind and ear to talk to. I call her my mamma because she’s like a mother figure to me but also a amazing friend. Without her, I probably wouldn’t have been mentally there at all for anyone. In the time of summer until now I haven’t had a chance to practice because I forgot to mention that i had a Jr recital coming up which is why my repertoire was so big.

September:

After everything passed and I’m in a better mental state, I proceed to my schedule of school and work and find a time to practice in between. What’s great about this month is that since the semester just started, I had plenty of time to catch up on my practice and really get my lessons to become productive in shaping and understanding different musical styles. My partner is all better and life is great because I was in the best part of my life. Doing well in school, amazing texting job, and a best friend who is there for me and most importantly my partner. He’s been my rock since we first met and I can always rely on him and vice versa. He understood that with my free day off that I needed to spend it practicing and told me to go for it and be as productive as I can. I honestly wasn’t used to that kind of support but I am grateful.

October:

This is where reality hits and my recital is next month. I get very crazy about everything. I had all my music learned but because of my indecisiveness, I kept changing how I shaped everything and my mind goes blank. Probably a dark time for me because I didn’t know how to handle this kind of stress. I’ve put on hour long recitals before and the only thing different this time is that I’m getting graded and want to make such a great impression to further my education to a dictator degree. The dress was eating me alive and on top of that, one of my students decided he wants to enter in a competition and I say why not. Let’s do it. Getting him ready for that and keeping my sanity was hard to do but I managed. He did well, but not well enough to get a medal but his parents were very impressed with how quickly he progressed with me. That’s always a plus, right?

November:

The month has come for me to have my big recital and I invited all my friends and coworkers and they all made it. I was truly nervous but if you don’t get nervous, are you even human? It turned out wonderful although the first piece (Bach French suite) was shaky, I had to tell my self that I was having fun and everyone here is here to support me and want me to do well. That little talk was a confidence booster and ended the recital flawlessly. After my recital, my job has their student recitals so my focus was all on my students doing the best they can and having fun. This month was fun because I was selected to do masterclasses for piano students through out my job and it was very enlightening to see how talented the new generation of musicians are! Only positive comments because I couldn’t honestly find anything wrong with any of the students performances and their teachers are amazing.

December:

So getting all my students ready for their recital was a big time investment but totally worth it because they all performed so well and I honestly cried bc I felt like a proud parent LOL. But after that was time for the semester to end up and one class was making me go crazy. Everything ended well and I had ALL A’s and one B but I know what to expect for next semester and everything will be great. Honestly this year has me all sorts of fucked up with emotions and I proved to myself that when I stay committed, I can really achieve what I want. This year was a great year for me and a way to end a decade because when 2020 starts, I know what I need to do and where I need to be.

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aleatoryalarmalligator · 7 years

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Life Story, Part 37

I couldn't stand anyone I knew anymore after 2003/2004. I wanted to be taken away somehow, to leave my old skin behind so to speak, but it didn't seem like that was something I could simply do as a fourteen year old. I muddled through the rest of the school year somehow. I was still very much in love with Zack. The sight of him walking down the hallway still made my heart race, I still looked for his approval, but it was hard for me to feel very much hope or positive feeling about him anymore. I knew now that he was a flawed person, and that all of this lead to disappointment. There was a growing recognition that feeling and knowing are sometimes two different things, and I was the tortured fool in the middle of both, unable to make sense of it.

At least now didn't feel the burden of needing to act. Zack had started to talk about Melissa with me. He started writing love letters to Melissa – to me for some reason. It was hard for me to read them and emotionally stay balanced. I forced myself to read these letters, and I forced myself not to be jealous. I pushed myself into some radical state of acceptance. He was also very upset that his sister Whitney was now dating Melissa's brother Josh, so now they were in this strange love square. I was beginning to feel demeaned. My heart was broken, and yet there was no space to go away. My friends did not care that my best friend had just casually had sex with the love of my life, a guy who had been leading me on with every ounce of energy he spent in the day, only to find out that he already had a girlfriend and that his interest in me had no clarity at all. And I was starting to feel like he really didn't actually care about me either. Yes, he thought I was a magical special creature here to make the world a better place. He seemed sort of obsessed with me, and maybe there had been something between us. But he didn't care about the version of me who was simply a girl trying to get by in the world who had feelings and aspirations. It's better to be hated for who you are than loved for who you aren't.

I just felt demeaned somehow. Honestly, it had been a rough fucking year for me. With this whole thing with him, my father's abuse, losing trust in everyone and everything, losing my best friends really and now realizing that they were more mindless and untrustworthy than I had imagined, I felt like I had been projected so far into a state of nothingness that there was no turning back. There would never be a time going forward where I could continue being the person I had been. That naive girl was dead. How had I gotten to this place? I kind of knew that this was me now, and this was the world. I had been blind before, and now I saw the world for what it was, much as I might have liked to have put all this behind me and proceeded as if nothing had changed. It left me feeling empty and sick inside.

We had this very dumb teacher named Mrs. Brammer. She had been my teacher clear back and fourth grade, and she didn't like me any more now that I was older. Really, what was horrible about her though was the fact that she actually didn't understand English and had no business teaching it whatsoever to high school students. This is a typical thing for small towns, since the budget is very small. We started reading Fahrenheit 451, and she had no idea what was going on in the story, or why it mattered. She had us skip several chapters because she couldn't understand them. If I deserved an F, so be it, but so did she.

For the last part of our English class, she wanted us all to write poems. I had been writing a lot of poetry at that time, after the miserable situation I had gone through, I was now able to be the kind of person who could express themselves in the abstract. Thankfully, almost none of it exists today. Most of it wasn't very good, terrible if I am going to be honest, and related to working through and trying to understand my place in the world, and what was going on with me emotionally at the time. It was contrived, self absorbed and embarrassing – what you might expect from a slightly foolish broken hearted teenage girl who thought that freemasons ran the government and had just lost everything she held dear. I would type out three or four poems a day, print them out, and put it in this book that I had pasted a picture of David Bowie as the goblin king in the Labyrinth on the front of. I picked some less personal poems from my collection for this particular school project, and I actually was able to get some kind of grade for her class, though I would not read them in front of anyone so my grade was docked. I remember all the boys in my class had written poems about football. One of them went something like 1,2, kicked football with my shoe … ecetera. At the end, the closing line was “touchdown”. It was hard not to laugh. I know it's not nice to laugh at other people's poetry, but it was hard to not watch this crude ignorant ass read this with all seriousness in their dim little eyes. For these young men, for most people I went to school with, this is as complex as any emotion could ever be. Kicking a ball around. And Ava ended up plagiarizing her poems from various lyrics, she was praised for her creativity. I have no idea how she didn't get caught.

I had somehow been able to hide the chair I busted from my dad by taking the pieces and hiding them in a dumpster downtown. Later I think David told him, but he didn't do or say much to me about it to me strangely enough. Maybe an act of violence was something my father might actually be able to understand. After I broke the chair, I laid on the floor all night and didn't think of anything, only this swirling feeling of my own reality, not even due to my circumstances, just this strange sense that I was simultaneously alone in the universe, that I was sentient, temporary, and at the same time interconnected with everything else. I had never ever seen myself this way. I had more or less been like a small rodent who finds things they like and takes them in. I had not questioned my place in the world, or the meaning behind it up till now. I wondered honestly if anything had ever actually been real. It is strange how pain can do that to a person.

I woke up that morning still on the floor and I felt like a completely different person. I didn't feel good, or bad anymore. Like some old ancient wisdom had simply been found, and I was bigger than the young lass I had been before, pining for the attention of a boy, which was all that had ever really mattered until then. I felt my own existence differently than I had previously. My eyes saw color differently, my skin felt different. It was almost indistinguishable from my previous self, but with added awareness. I didn't believe in God anymore, or at least one that I thought might have some personal relationship to my well being. And I didn't think that was a bad thing or a good thing. It just felt settled. I had never been a person of faith mind you, but I had always assumed there had been one on some level, as well as a sort of order to our lives on earth that would culminate into something heavenly later on and might protect me from evil if I had asked. It wasn't a belief, as much as it had been a notion.

Now, I just didn't think so. I was now ready to embrace atheism. I was also able to recognize this big vacant emptiness that was at the middle of everything that we all know about and try to hide from, and that we should accept and try to embrace that void rather than fill it up manically. So, though I was now discarding my belief in a higher power, at least one that I could logically contemplate the existence of, I also really felt like I was embracing a greater spiritual understanding.

I had started listening to a lot of Radiohead. Pop music had lost it's grip of me completely. It felt played out and dead. People on the television didn't hold their previous glamour. I was not interested in being pacified anymore. I wanted to embrace things that connected with death, love, and might even make me feel uncomfortable. I didn't think that being happy really mattered anymore. Happiness chooses you, and comes and goes. The harder you try to be happy, the more it alludes you. This isn't to say that self care has no purpose, or you shouldn't strive to be productive or lead a good life. But happiness is not the culmination of those things exactly. When you find yourself in a state of bliss, you consider yourself lucky, and know that it will not last. Nothing lasts, and it's okay. For just about everyone I had ever known, everyone had gone about the business of wanting to feel good immediately, to get what they want. But I was now aware that there was something to be said for not getting what you want. Happiness was not the goal.

Ava was no longer someone I looked forward to seeing. She was selfish and mean spirited. I think what she had done to me actually was causing her to embrace her full on hedonistic asshole self more fully. If she let herself feel remorse, then all her insecurities would come spilling out. And honestly, I think Ava was mentally ill back then. They would have diagnosed her with borderline or something. I am not trying to excuse her behavior, but in the long run, she was ultimately her own worst enemy. I was the best friend she ever had. She admitted this, and she knew it was true. I stuck by her when she was being unpleasant and mildly abusive. I actually cared about Ava. Most people were enchanted by her when her moods were up and she was outrageously hilarious and glowingly gorgeous, but as soon as she became moody, ego maniac, an attention whore and a manipulative unstable wreck, people left. I didn't however. You have to accept people's low points as well as their good.

I was getting fed up though. I was getting to this point where I was not emotionally strong enough to balance what she had done and give her ego so much of a boost while trying to figure out my own bleeding wounds that had not even begun to heal. I think in a way it almost made her angrier that I had accepted what she had done as well as I had. She would have felt better had I lashed out. She wanted some kind of punishment. I wasn't taking the situation easy at all, but I wasn't blaming her as much as I was changing my perspective a lot. I was going home and thinking about death for eight hours before finally going to sleep. My skin hurt, I felt like I was choking half the time. And Ava did nothing to be there for me. Nobody wanted to listen to what I had to say.

So, there was this day where Ava used my home phone to call Tyeson. She had gotten to this point where she simply was losing her mind with frustration at not having had much success in getting with him. She had had Zack, and now she wanted to fix that in her mind I think by getting with someone she actually wanted. She called him from my house, and she forgot to block the number. She had actually been prank calling him for a few months to hear his voice. Today, he called my number back and was not having it. I answered, and he went into a big angry thing about how I needed to leave him alone. I tried to play dumb, but he didn't want to hear it.

Ava broke down right about then, and I hung up on Tyeson. She started screaming and crying and saying that she was a stupid ugly bitch and that she had the worst life of any of us and none of us understood her. She started hitting herself in the face lightly and looking around at Sarah (who was also present) and I in her typical attention seeking routine. I might have had more compassion, except I had literally had to talk myself out of suicide because she had made decisions based on her sex drive and her drive to dominate everyone. She had kind of ruined my life. So I instead I just watched her and she threw herself on the floor and began kicking and screaming like a baby. I was cold about it because of the bigger picture. Sarah was colder about it because she is far more composed by nature. We both just stood there. I then told her, if anything, she was the one who fucked me over, she was the one who wanted to prank call Tyeson, and if anything, I was the one who should be angry at her, and I wasn't.

She suddenly got up off the floor in a blind rage. She told me to shut the fuck up, and then she ran outside. She grabbed a large granite rock from the garden and I watched her through the front living room window as she aggressively yelled that she was going to take this rock and throw it through the front window. As if I didn't already have enough troubles. I knew there was nothing I could do if she had decided to go through with it. I just sighed and let her threaten. She then took the rock and threatened to bash my father's RX7 in with it. I was really annoyed. She then didn't do this, and instead she threw the rock back into the garden, came in and took the phone to call her mom to come pick her up.

The next week, as I was sitting in my English class, I got a call from the office saying I was needed in the counseling room. So I got my books and shuffled into the counselor's office, and there was Ava. She was acting extremely formal and talking in a very clear 'adults love me' voice with the principal about me. I think in an act of revenge or something, she had decided to go to the counselor and tell them that I was acting insane and was being a terrible friend. This was so ludicrous and insulting that if I had the self respect I had today, I would have just laughed and gone back to class. But I sat in. It was extremely uncomfortable and completely insulting to me in every way. The counselor and Ava both were nodding their heads to one another as they spoke about what a poor student I was, how I had a sick obsession with death that was 'hurting Ava's positive outlook and affecting her grades'. I wanted to explain how she had fucked (actually fooled around, but it's not really so different in a sense) the one person I had loved more than anyone, as well as everything else she had gotten away with, but I didn't go there. I got defensive and nervous and shifty, and in every way probably behaved as though I was hiding the very poor qualities they were attributing to me. I felt like I was in a no win situation.

Had I explained the depths of what I was going through, the school would have ruled me insane for other reasons, for being too much in love, for being too interested in the meaning of life. And the counselor talked to people in the office, and the office people told other students all the dirt. So if I talked about my life, it would have been all over the school. The hypocrisy in the room was extremely thick. I acted like an aloof punk, I got passively reprimanded, Ava pointing this out like this was what I did all the time 'See what I mean??!' she would say to counselor, who would nod in agreement. Basically, they came to the conclusion that I was delusional and insane. As soon as I got out of the small horrible room, I had to sit in the bathroom for awhile to let the rage and absolute frustration fade away. It was moments like this where, Zack's words explaining to me that the school was trying to beat me down to nothing and they were all somewhat conspiring against me started to make some emotional sense.

Zack and I were still tight. I just felt completely horrible and sick and at the same time in love with him, which was conflicting and painful, but nevertheless, I still adored him, and it was obvious. If my friends actually believed that I wasn't infatuated with him anymore, they were deluding themselves, which at the present time, they probably were. In the last month of school, Zack had to be separated in class. I was really frustrated, being separated, but we found a way to stay connected. He got this roll of toilet paper, and he took a long line of it that would span the distance between our desks. One one side, I began twisting, and on the other side, he twisted. While our history teacher drawled on and on, we twisted the toilet paper so tight that it became like a wire. We did this for the entirety of class.

Ava was in the same class, and I could tell this made her angry. The next class period in history, We were all allowed to sit together and even move our desks close, I don't recall the reason. Ava tried to force Zack to scoot his desk with hers, and he told her he didn't want to. She got up, and started screaming at him, saying she wasn't going to deal with his shit. She glared at me, and left the classroom. I couldn't lie. I felt a smile draw on my lips. There was something satisfying about seeing Ava not get her way.

And then there was the week before Ava's birthday. Ava had a birthday party a week earlier than her birth date. Her mom didn't want all of us girls making noises all night in the house, so she set up this camper outside, a relatively big camper with a bedroom and a small living room space. Me, Sarah, Teal and Samantha were all invited. Ava had just bought Pink Floyd's The Wall, and we were all going to sit and watch it for the first time. I was blown away. The symbolism in The Wall made so much sense to me, in every way. I felt so connected with the film that there were times I had to hide little tears in the corner of my eyes. The other girls, at the end of the movie, all commented about how 'trippy' it was, and how you could only understand the message if you were high. I disagreed vehemently, but had trouble explaining myself without getting frowned at by the others. The concepts and the meaning behind the film were so clear to me. I felt like this was the first piece of art that I could actually relate to. I felt like I understood everything so clearly that it hurt.

Ava accused me of trying to pretend I was deep. I said nothing further. She then started talking about sex. Teal, Samantha and Ava now had all had some kind of sexual experience to talk about. They started talking about everything they had done and who with. Ava was bragging about Zack in this really mindless way. Talking about his anatomy and such. I knew she was trying to get some kind of reaction from me. I just closed down. I passively glared at everyone. These people weren't my friends. None of these people had any sense of the pain I was in, or cared. They didn't get any message from The Wall, and for that not to sink in even a little, it showed just how shallow and pointless they all were. They saw me as weak. I didn't think it was a good idea to speak up though. If I did, where would it end? My eyes started watering however, so I laid down, and I pulled the sheets over my head. We were listening to the radio, and I remember very clearly listening to Bizarre Love Triangle by New Order. I had always loved that song, but didn't know how to tell people that I liked an 80's hit – at this time the 80's were considered as uncool as some people consider the early 00's now. I felt like I was probably too sensitive to be at this sleepover, and I was wishing I could just go home.

Sarah spoke up though. She had been silent this entire conversation, and I could tell she was really nervous and uncertain of her place in the conversation. But she spoke up anyway, and bless her little soul for it. What she said wasn't that liberating or outstanding, but the lack of sympathy displayed was making her mad too and it was hard for her to sit through it. She told Ava, in front of the other two, that she thought what Ava had done was wrong, and she should actually be more ashamed of herself for betraying a friend, and that both she and I didn't want to hear about this. Samantha looked a little guilty. Ava, once again, as you might imagine was blown away and upset. She ran out of the camper to her own room in the house. Teal followed behind her. Teal of course was thoroughly for Ava's egomania. They came back a few hours later, avoiding me at all costs in the clear fashion that let me know that I had been the topic of discussion. And it was funny, because even though Sarah had been the one to say it, Ava and everyone else saw it as something that I had said. The next morning, Ava told me that her mother didn't want me at the house anymore, because I was trashy, poor, and obsessed with death – macabre. I was a futureless bum and I would never get into a good college. Ava didn't need to be around people like me, and I was ruining Ava's future by being around her. Ava was a winner, I was a loser. Simple as that.

The next weekend, I decided I was going to hang out with just Sarah. Ava didn't allow Sarah and I to hang out anymore. It had been over half a year since we had last spent any length of time together. Ava would always call to see where we were. If she had ever found out that we had hung out and she was not invited, than there would be hell to pay. So I simply stopped contacting Sarah in person. Ava didn't even want us calling each other. And I now felt like I could trust Sarah. We had always been good friends, and had always really connected on a certain level, even as children when she used to be a bit mean to me we had still had another side of our friendship that was very freeing. Now, perhaps to some degree a little overly adamant in my desperation to feel somewhat connected to at least one person in the world, I now chose to accept Sarah as my one true friend. Perhaps the only friend I had ever actually had.

I felt like Sarah needed a lot of work. My newfound perceptions about life had given me a bit of an ego. That ego was largely created I think to protect me, but it was starting to become my master. Slowly, I was starting to see myself as clearly better than everyone else. I felt like Sarah was lacking in a lot of ways. She wasn't very passionate. She seemed to prefer to sleep all the time, and avoid anything uncomfortable at all costs. I wanted Sarah to step up as an equal, to fight back, to question me sometimes, and she seemed to not want to do that. She seemed to crumple up when I asked her what she thought about anything. She posed as a cool kid, but was actually lost. She avoided certain things, rather than face them and this bothered me. But, I felt like I could fix that. Sarah was a good person. She did have a very strong sense of apathy. And on some level, she seemed to really understand me.

I will give Ava one thing. She got her revenge on Mr. Driskoll. (For those who aren't aware, Mr. Driskoll was the football coach who had made sexually inappropriate jokes about Ava's weight, talked about how he wanted to bone teenagers with the football players, who had essentially been the ringleader one night in sexually harassing Ava in the beginning of the school year – he was/is a disgusting person who didn't deserve to have a job). It all started with this incident where Zack intentionally began telling Ava about how Tyeson was sleeping with one of the cheerleaders, in great detail. Ava became derailed. Zack did this I think to piss her off. I just sat there on the bench and watched Ava freak out and go to the girl's bathroom. The bell rang, and we all headed to computer class. Mr. Driskoll was lazily in charge of typing class for some reason – a budget thing I guess. Ava came into class late. She was obviously in the middle of having a panic attack and was trying to make it quiet, and failing badly.

Mr. Driskoll foolishly took this as a moment to be the bully and get in her face. He came up to her and he told her to knock it off. I really don't remember the altercation between the two of them, but I remember the psychological dynamics perfectly. Mr. Driskoll walked up to Ava, thinking he was going to be scary. Ava was not afraid. Ava didn't have those kinds of rules. In fact, every bit of her frenzy and frustration became totally focused on him. She basically challenged him to a fist fight. She stood up and walked towards him, and he backed up scared. She called him a pedophile. I don't know if he was one or not, but it seemed to get a reaction – like he was guilty of something. He looked scared. He was stuttering. She threw something at him. And he left the room, scared. He was shaking. He had no idea what kind of person he was dealing with.

She ended up going into his office, and threatening him to leave her the fuck alone. Which he stammered and obliged. Later, she came back to class with a sinister grin on her face, and a look of satisfied accomplishment. Mr. Diskoll walked like a beaten man, he was shaking. It reminded me of one of those scenes in movies where, the monster actually kills the corrupt cop. Obviously the monster is bad, but there is a satisfaction in watching it munch down and slash apart the other bad guys, particularly when their own hubris made them walk into it.

The Locus Blossom festival had come once again. Just as it had for my entire life. Years ago Rachelle and I had roamed the streets using our squirt guns to mow down the other kids. Even before that, I had been a little three year old, timidly picking up the candy thrown from the floats that fell on the sides of the street. And now I was a few months shy of fifteen, everything had changed, but the festival remained the same.

Zack and arrived with Melissa. It was the first time I had seen them together as a couple. Previous to that of course, I had seen them as friends before Zack and I had become friends. But now I had to see her as someone who was Zack's girlfriend. She didn't seem to be aware of just how intimate Zack was with me. She saw me more as a passive companion in a group of people, and likely she assumed that he was closer with Sarah and Ava. Melissa looked/looks an awful lot like Avril Lavigne. She was very pretty. I tried not to see myself as less than her. I tried to accept the situation for what it was. Zack was with someone else. Melissa was manipulative and there were many things that she had silently seemed to conspire against me on over the years, but I never felt like it was due to any personal dislike. I think she had been curious. And her dating Zack was not one of those things. She genuinely was in love with Zack, or at least it seemed that way. I couldn't be angry at her. It hurt, of course. But I needed to see this. And in a way, I felt like maybe both Melissa and I understood and loved Zack, so ultimately, did we not have something in common in this way?

Melissa went back home early in the day. Zack went to go get high with one of his older guy friends, and then he came back in the early evening. He talked to Allison and David, which was the first time they had ever really talked to him before, and it was amusing. He was teasing them that they should date one another. Allison and David didn't take kindly to the joke, but we were all laughing. He convinced me to disappear from my pals (if you want to call them that), and we ran down the bike path, until we found tall grass that grew by the creek that we could lay in and hide from everyone else. We just laid there and looked up at the sky. I don't remember if we said anything or not. But I remember being extremely happy, and incredibly sad at the same time as I stared up into the clouds. Everything was mixed up and incomplete. I could never and may never have been closer to Zack than I was at that time. And did Melissa really know about this? I couldn't imagine this kind of thing would fly with most girlfriends, and honestly I wouldn't blame them. This wasn't cheating, but it was certainly something. I remember just laying there, and forcing myself not to think, but rather just feel the earth beneath me and the sky above, and Zack there next to me.

Of course, Ava was on a warpath, and she was determine to find us, and she did. We heard her and we got up and proceeded with our lives and the entirety of that event rests solely in my memories of that day.

PART 36 - http://tinyurl.com/y9ygq9q8

PART 35 - http://tinyurl.com/ya5xhe2f

PART 34 - http://tinyurl.com/yc6y4p69

PART 33 - http://tinyurl.com/y87449dz

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PART 3 - http://tinyurl.com/mwp9atx

PART 2 - http://tinyurl.com/lbt6xq2

PART 1 - http://tinyurl.com/l8xbvg8

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