So recently (as in like five-ish days ago), I left for Indianapolis with the wind ensemble. Yey! Fun! You would think so wouldn't you, but not so much. I learned (i already kinda knew this but it really came out in this trip) that I hate people. People suck (and I mean that in the nicest way possible). The trip was dramafest and I'm the kind of person who hates drama. I've had to deal with drama in the past and I don't like it. It's just unnecessary and annoying. Drama, however, seems to enjoy following me. Right before this trip I realized that I had a friend who wasn't that great of a friend and I was fed up. Then on the trip, I discovered how obssessed a different friend's boyfriend was with her and it's now making me nervous (she broke off her last relationship and I'm worried that if she does that her boyfriend will kill himself or something like that). Ten there's this guy in the band, who I really just met on this trip, who came on super strong (CREEPER!) and that freaked me out. Then in the midst of all this I talked to the friend I was annoyed with about what my issues with her were and I just found out today that she told another one of my friends that she thought all of my reasons were bullshit. Isn't the lovely? So I'm through with her. Anyway, on the plus side, I've become closer with a lot of people through the drama that has occured before and during the trip and so I guess in some ways I'm grateful for everything...sort of. That was kind of a nice therapy; getting my emotions out and all of that. Well, that's really the latest update. Hope to hear from people soon because I haven't heard from people in ages.

~ml9

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
A Message of Change:

After recently recieving e-mails from colleges, I began to really think about everything that has happened to me in the last few years and I really have started to wonder what has happened to me. A few months ago I ran into a couple people I knew from what I now consider my old life. I was with goods friends laughing and talking and basically being the loudest in the group. They saw me and said my name with a question mark and I knew what they were thinking, "What hell happened to her?!" I could read the shock in their faces and it made me laugh. They knew me as the person from my old life and I'm no longer her. She was quiet and studious, a complete geek that many people were nice to partially out of pity.

I am proud to say that that is no longer me. Quiet, I am not. Studious, while being a good student I am probably the worst procrastinater ever. A complete geek I still am, but that's what my friends love about me. It feels good. It feels like I finally get to be myself and yet I know that if were to spend time with the people from my old life again I know I would act as the same old me that they knew. It's a shame.

The friends that I had back then, I thought I would never forget and never lose touch with. Life, however, seems to have gotten in the way. I have forgotten that old life that seems so long ago and with it has gone my old friends. I love them,yes. I remember them, yes, but miss them, not as much as I thought. I feel bad almost like it's wrong to forget that time in my life and those people because in a way that period in time and those people are so much a part of me, but at the same time I am glad. There are memories that I remember gladly and memories which I just want to forget. Now I am mostly forgetting.

I love life now. I love my friends. I love my classes. I love the things I do. I love so much about my life right now. Thinking of college and an entirely new life makes me depressed. I think that this time around I might actually cry at graduation. I'd think to think that I won't lose touch with this set of friends because I'd be sad to lose them, but I've said that with two or three rounds of friends already and it never works out. It's depressing to think about.

If there is one lesson, though, that I have learned from my small amount of life experiences, it's that being yourself is important. I can only imagine what that old life would have been like if I was really me. In my old life I was misunderstood by many because many didn't really know me and many didn't care to try. Yet, in thinking of being misunderstood, I realize that it is important to remember a comment made by Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Is it so bad, then to be misunderstood.? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and JEsus, and LUther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirirt that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood..."