Matias Ruiz: It's Who I Am

Chapter 2 - Early Teen Years

I never exactly knew when I was actually considered a "teen." Sometimes I felt like my age was perfect but my mentality was still that of a child. The feeling was temporary though. My elementary years flew by like the wind and before I knew it I was in middle school. I was about 5 feet tall in fifth grade and that's how it was basically all through seventh grade. I was pretty small compared to all my classmates in middle school. These three years of my life were very significant to me. I started to picture what I could do for the rest of my life. I began to dream as some would say. I started off thinking I could be an airplane pilot. That idea came from watching way to many cartoons. In the cartoon shows the pilots looked so nice and all they did was press like three buttons and they became the hero. I soon realized that it's not like that in real life. It was confusing with all the buttons and that idea soon disappeared. Then I signed up for a band class although I got stuck playing a flute. I gave up on that idea too. I wasn't going to aim at a professional flute player when I couldn't even play Mary Had A Little Lamb. During the time in that class I did start to write songs. I always acted like I was writing in my sheet music and took that as a way to write songs. I guess technically I started writing poems and from there I started to turn them into songs. I felt like it was a good way to express my feelings. The feeling I got when I would show one of my few friends and they would say "I like it, It's so good."  was incredible. I finally felt like I could do something I love and be pretty decent at it. That's how the whole concept idea of songwriting began for me. Then I began to attempt to sing what I had written and the result wasn't as good as I had thought it would be. That never stopped me though. I started to sing just about anywhere. In the shower, in class, at my house, and anywhere you could imagine.  I started to take online vocal lessons to improve my vocals. I knew it was going to take dedication and passion to do this but I was always set to do this since the start. During all this process I lost many friends in middle school. Some that I even thought would be there for awhile. I lost self confidence slowly. I was always sitting alone at lunch and quite frankly I would often find myself playing with a soccer ball alone at recess. The true friends that stayed throughout those 3 difficult years were few. I can't thank them enough.