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Hey Allison, I hope you find this soon!

I read some of your notes and I just wanted to tell you what I did when the same stuff happened to me.

At this age, drama can be seriously rough because this is where real drama starts! Drama never goes away, even when you're older (even as an adult!), but you slowly learn from dramatic things that happen to you as you grow and you can handle it better.

Try not to focus on the bad things that happen if you want something to be fun, you want to encourage if you want encouragement back. If friends want to find a reason to be unexpectedly upset at you for something you couldn't have possibly known would upset them, then let them be upset and just apologize and try to cheer them up. Most people crave attention and sometimes that means making people feel guilty for making them feel bad, they want pity. Everyone does it in their own way.

Instead of writing down what made you sad at an event, write down what made you happy, that'll make you a more enjoyable person and will actually make you less sad. It'll help you have more fun and stronger friendships. You'll be able to find the good things in life instead of focusing on the bad things.

I also saw some of your poems, haha. Those are pretty good and the more you practice, the better you become.

I wanna tell you something that happened to me so that it won't effect you when it happens to you.

I used to write stories of my own, and poems of my own. I used to be pretty good at it. I looooved reading and writing and wanted to be a writer. When we moved, I had less people to show off my writing too but I had a BIG story I was working on. It was one of my best stories I've ever written, it had the greatest story plot and it flowed really well and I was proud of my grammar and wording and length! I was really warming up to people at MCS but was still to nervous to show anyone but Amanda my story or poems, but eventually I tried to show Michael. Michael HATES reading but he didn't tell me that because he wanted to impress me since we only knew each other for barely a year, I also didn't know he was pretty bad at reading English. I had a big crush on Michael and I wanted him to really like something I worked so hard on, but he never finished it. In fact, he said it was a little boring and hard to get through, but then he tried to cover up his mistake by saying it was a good idea but I was crushed. Amanda never finished it either (don't tell Amanda this haha), and I felt that it wasn't as good as I thought, I tried to show it to Jake but it seemed everyone who first read it thought it was either boring, or just not good. I thought that maybe I wasn't a good writer after all, despite what I always thought, and since I wasn't good at math or science or anything else, and wasn't good at what I was supposed to be good at, that I was dumb and didn't have any talent. So I got mad and I deleted everything. All my half written stories, ideas, and poems. I started telling people I wasn't good at writing and I gave it up.

Some time passed and my friends were asking me for caption ideas for their pictures on instagram, and for some of them, I made up cute rhymes. My friend commented that I could be a poet sorta jokingly but she was impressed. I was encouraged. So I made a new poem about the season every time it changed seasons on my Instagram bio for everyone to see. While I was leaving for school, I heard Brett, Matt, and Michael talk about my bio so I went over to ask. Brett exaggerated my poem by reading it aloud, sort of mocking it, and Matt asked if I was some kind of poet jokingly. Michael tried to be sweet and said it was a good idea. I was still proud of it but shy now and afraid people thought writing poems was lame, so I tried to make something up like, "oh I was wondering how much room Instagram would allow for a bio, I'll probably change it later." After that I stopped making poems, thinking that everyone thought it was a weird thing to do, when all this time I was thinking I was being creative. So I stopped writing anything. Period. A lot of times when I showed off my work and received even the slightest criticism I'd ditch the whole thing!

DON'T DO THAT.

Take constructive criticism, apply it, consider other people's opinions yes, but don't let it stop you. Don't give up if someone says something needs a little work. I don't want you to give up on a talent like I did just because some people like to tease or don't understand. Keep trying. The more you try the better you get, there's NO doubt about that. Sure you might still mess up, but EVERYONE messes up, some people just brush it off easier. This can be applied to anything: sports, school, friendships, work, projects. Keep trying no matter what. I always strived for perfection but found I fell short VERY often and would get severely discouraged and disappointed, to the point that I'd either quit, or not enjoy doing that thing anymore. Striving for perfection is ok, just know it's impossible to get, you can't really "master" anything like tv says. You'll always make mistakes and always improve no matter what it is. Don't give up in anything you do, in the end it'll reward you a lot.

I hope you consider this and learn from my mistakes :) I think you'll do very well in writing if you don't give it up and think you're very creative. Good luck!

-Abi🥰