I found this pretty impressive.
I know my blog posts have become very sporadic and not very interesting but I am choosing to see that as a good thing. When I started this blog I wrote things that I wanted other people to hear but did not really have anyone to tell. Back then, I wasn't so good with actually having conversations to. Part of the reason for that is that I didn't really have that many people to talk to when I was in 9th grade. Back then I believed that my friends and family weren't really interested in anything that I had to say. Or that they wouldn't want to hear me say it.
So I've decided that I am taking the lack of activity on this blog and making it a positive thing. Maybe I don't write much anymore and maybe I haven't gotten many comments in the last year but maybe that's just a sign that I have taken control of my life and my relationships and moved them outside of this virtual world that exists inside of my laptop.
There's more to that than blogging. I used to be an active member on a lot of websites. Facebook and Myspace (as well as Fanfiction.net and various other websites and forums) took up all of my time back then. I had friends from all over the country that I would get online to talk to and I would talk to them for hours. I didn't have many close friends outside of that and I didn't really talk to my family. I accused people of not knowing who I am. In reality, however, I think I was absolutely clueless about who I was.
I definitely do not have that all figured out now. I think I have a lot better idea, though. That is what is important. I have decided who I want to be. I have made connections with really great people and I have found outlets in the real world to let out my frustrations and to share my happiness. I don't know what I want to do with my life yet but I know that I am who I want to be. Like anyone, there are things that I wish were different... Or... Not so much wish, but I know that I could and will change them and that I will be a better person for it. I'm not as lost as I was in 9th grade.
About two weeks ago, Kara and I were sitting in my driveway. She was dropping me off from this luau thing I went to with her and, as usual, we were talking. Kara and I talk about anything and everything. She knows what I think and sometimes we are brutally honest with each other... Not often, because there isn't much to be brutally honest about, but it's happened a time or two. That night we were talking about some big things. There was music from her cd player (I loved Merv, but I am so glad that we can listen to music in Hercules!) in the background and when Friends Forever by Vitamin C came on she explained to me that she had made the cd for her sisters when they were graduating high school and starting college.
We listened to the song in silence for a moment and then we began talking about how this song will apply to us next year. It's all about kids graduating high school and how they may not see or speak to each other again and while listening to it I had a sudden realization. After next year I probably won't see a lot of these people that I talk to at school again. We will maybe talk a little through Facebook or other such things right after school but after a little while we will just stop talking to each other.
In junior high I used to talk to my friends about how we probably wouldn't still be friends once we got out of school (I know, what kind of 7th grader says that? I lacked some social skills,) and lately I have been talking about how much I can't wait to get out of high school and start college. Not once in all of that did I ever really realize the full extent of never seeing/talking to those people again.
It hit me while listening to that song with Kara.
Another thing that song made me think about was how different being an 8th grader almost into the last year of junior high is to being an 11th grader almost into their last year of high school. In 8th grade everyone was not nearly as focused on getting out of junior high. Back then, a year still seemed to be a long time, each week of school was daunting and the days seemed to drag on and on. Now my friends and I are getting ready to go into our senior year of high school and it seems that is a huge topic on our minds. Kara and I talk about it a lot. I think about it all the time. A year doesn't seem as long as it did three years ago. Now I get to the end of the week and I wonder where all the time went; I get to the end of the day and I feel like I just woke up.
This difference between now and then is so insane to me. Everything is different. And in so many ways now is better. There are some things about then that I would really like back, though. It seemed that it was so easy to maintain relationships with my friends. We were all in the same place and we were all going in very similar directions. Now we are all getting to forks in the road and we are beginning to split up. It's becoming harder and harder to keep up those relationships with those of my friends who are no longer going in the same direction as me. Most of my friends are no longer going in the same direction as me. We're all going different places now because we all have different goals for our lives.
It just seems unreal to me that I will lose all of these people in my daily life when I graduate. I can't imagine how things would be without them. Yet, I know that, right this second, there are people out there who are on paths that will eventually merge with mine. They don't know me yet and I don't know them. Some of them will be mere acquaintances but there are also people out there right now who will be my the best friends I will ever have.
So, I'm being optimistic today.
I may not write in blog much anymore but it is a good thing because now I have people that I actually talk to about what is going on in my head (the only bad thing about not blogging much anymore is that I haven't really been writing about what I have been reading.)
In the next year and a half, it is inevitable that I will stop talking to some of my friends. We will reach the point in our journey where our paths are completely different. However, there are people out there in the world right this moment who, though we are on different paths at the moment, will become my greatest friends and who I will form the strongest relationships with.
I like who I am and I am content with the path I am on. I know that there will be many changes both to my identity and my journey in the next few years and the rest of my life. I accept that.
All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.
~Anatole France
