Friday, September 14, 2007

Depressing Thoughtfulness

Ok, so I know I already have enough words, and that I don't need to have another blog post for this week, let alone another one today, but I just went with my mom to pick up my 9 year old cousin because she's going camping with us this weekend, and on our way there we were talking. It gave me a lot to think about.

My cousin is only 9, and yet she has had to deal with more in her life than I might ever have to. When she was three years old she had some kind of brain tumor. I don't remember a whole lot about it, but I do remember that it hurt our entire family to see that precious little girl we all loved so much in so much pain. She survived it though, and for that alone she is my hero, but there are so many reasons why I look up to my adorable cousin. Her little sister is only three now herself, and we found out a little over six months ago that she has Lukemia. Since we found out about the cancer my 9 year old cousin, the Koala Bear as I call her, has been so neglected, and it makes me so sad. She puts up with so much, and yet she doesn't get enough love for all that she deals with. My mom and my sisters would let her live with us in a second, but her little sister needs her, and my Koala Bear needs her little sister as much as I need mine if not more.

It hurts me to hear what happens to her. The things she puts up with, and then to see her smiling face and hear her giggling as she comes to the door when we came to get her tonight... It makes me want to cry. I know I wouldn't be able to handle everything she does. That little girl is so amazing.

We were in the car tonight, the windows rolled down, our hair going all over the place, and then my mom told us to turn on our song. "This One's For the Girls" by Martina McBride. Oh my gosh, I think my heart broke when I heard her trying to sing that song. It was the first time she had ever heard it, and by the end of the song she said she remembered all of the words. My cousin Ella.

My hero.

God, I love that little girl.

Jr. High-----

Wow. I didn't think it would be this hard to think of something to say in my first blog post, but I am finding it very difficult to find a topic that I can write about for a little while.

So I guess I'll write about what I think about 9th grade so far. Just because I have nothing else to write about, and I'm sure that topic will keep me going for a little while, if not for a really long time.....

This year isn't what I thought it would be, so far. I thought that it would feel like both seventh and eighth grade, but instead I'm finding that it's completely different. Every time I see one of my friends that were in seventh grade last year I want to call them "sevies" like I did all of last year. It's also weird that I don't get to see last years ninth graders around the school anymore. I mean, sure I dealt with that same thing last year when suddenly the ninth graders I had looked up to as a "sevie" were in high school. I couldn't talk to them between classes anymore, and I practically never saw them, but that seemed different somehow. I guess it would have to be because I got to know last year's ninth graders really well over the past two years and I became friends with a few of them. It's just so weird to know that there aren't any kids that are a year or more older than me at the school now.

Then there are my friends. I've suddenly stopped hanging around the friends I thought were my closest friends in the world, and instead I'm hanging out with my friends that were, I don't really know how to word this.... I guess you could say they were just my background friends. The friends I had for different reasons. They were the friends that had more of the same interests as me, but I thought that I didn't get along with them as well as my other friends. Now it's like everything has switched around. The friends I thought were my best friends in the world are now the ones that I hardly ever talk to, and I find myself spending all of my time with those friends that I didn't think I got along with very well, and I'm actually noticing that I get along with those friends better than I've ever gotten along with anyone.

Its all so weird to me. The other day I was looking through some old pictures for a yearbook assignment and I found myself thinking about how different things were say five or so years ago. I didn't have any friends back then, and I didn't even do very well in school (other than the EOL's). I was learning what I needed to learn, and I had people I would talk to and play with, but I just simply didn't care.

So I got to wondering why I've began to care so much about how I do in school, and whether or not I have any good friends, and I can honestly say that I have no idea. It was just that suddenly I did. I wanted to be able to go to things on weekends like my sisters did, and I wanted to do even better than all of them in school (That didn't happen. My little sister who is in the fifth grade has always gotten better grades than I did when I was her age.). So I started paying more attention in class, I read more, and I was just a bit more friendly towards people. By the end of seventh grade I had tons of friends, and the JV Science Olympiad team I was on had gotten fourth place at state. That was the most amazing thing that had ever happened to me at the time, but things just kept getting better.

For the first time ever I had things to do during the summer. I went to my best friends house every other day at least, and I couldn't wait for eighth grade to start. Sometime during that summer I changed, matured if you will. I found that my best friend wasn't has funny as I had thought she was. She was still awesome, but I guess I just became a little bit less of a dork than I had been. I found that she got on my nerves more than she had in the past, but I held strong to our friendship, because it was the best I had ever had, and I was scared to lose even a bit of that.

Summer came and went and I found that I was in some of the same classes with my friends, but I had some without any of them, and now I realize that was such a good thing for me. It forced me to get to know new people just like I had been forced to get new friends when I started Jr. High the year before. I found myself with even more friends than I could remember sometimes, and that made me the happiest I had been in a long time.

I wasn't focusing in school as much as I had in seventh grade because I had so many people to talk to during class. I found it hard to resist talking to people during school when that was the only real time I had to do so. I still did better than a majority of the kids in my classes, and I was really happy (Especially when I made it onto the Varsity Science Olympiad team.).

Then we went to state for Science Olympiad, and I realized that I hadn't been paying very much attention at practices. I had been sliding through practices letting my partners do a lot of the work (Of course I did a lot myself, but I didn't even understand a lot of what was going on.), and so when it came to State competition I was surprised to find that I knew what to do, and that I did amazingly well. I got three medals, a gold, a silver, and a bronze. I was so surprised that the weeks coming before we went to nationals went by in a blur. Suddenly I was in Kansas with my friends and we were ready to compete again.

The days during Nationals went by so much quicker than the days before, and I found that it was over before I knew it. The glory of getting a medal at a national competition had not yet worn off, but it was almost depressing to think that it was over, and that I might not even get a chance to be on the team again. Then summer came. I had a party for my Science Olympiad friends (these would be the background friends I mentioned earlier) because we had done pretty well at Nationals, and I found that I had a much better time hanging out with them than I had ever had with my closer friends.

I didn't do over the summer. Unlike the year before I didn't have a parent who could give me rides whenever I needed them. My mom had gone back to work, and I found that I just didn't want to hang out with my friends. I didn't know why, but I spent a lot of my summer alone. I guess I just needed to think about things. I did do a lot of thinking over the summer, and I realized... well I realized a lot of things. One was that I've always underestimated my intelligence. The other was that I needed to rethink who I was hanging out with, and I did.

That brings us pretty much up to the present. I have started hanging out with my "Science Olympiad friends" more, and I've (so far) been staying really organized with school. Sure I did really well in the past, but now I want to be excellent. After all, one of the first things you're told about ninth grade is that this is when it starts to count. So I really need to do my best from now on.

That is why I'm trying to get honors in Science, Math, and English. I'm also hoping to get a 4.0, but I'm not so sure about that as of now.

Wow. This really ended up being way longer than I thought it would be..... It's not even very interesting. Oh well....

Anyway.... This is the end of my first official blog post....


Really, the end now.