Haylstorm

Why I finally thought I was okay

    After Christmas break I began to drown myself in school work, friends, and extra curricular activities. While most of my friends had their drinking phase and went out partying every weekend, I never experienced that due to the fact that I was on acne medicine that required complete sobriety due to health risks. I continued to hang out with those friends when I didn't have band or winter guard competitions, and was so busy always being out that it made it a little easier to forget about what happened. I was trying to trust God and trust that everything happens for a reason, and I was convinced it was working.

     Unfortunately, since this was junior year of high school, this was also the year that everyone began talking about their plans for the future. More and more I realized that I didn't have a single plan or idea of what I wanted to do with my life. Growing up I always told my family I wanted to go to Juilliard, simply because I knew it was the best performing arts college, but I hadn't done any further research on it at all. Sophomore year I began telling people that I wanted to pursue acting and everyone constantly thought I was crazy, especially since I wasn't even in our schools theater program due to the fact that I had to pick between band and theater.

      I had received an email one day from a school called the "American Musical and Dramatic Academy", otherwise known as AMDA, and I started to feel drawn to this school. The only problem was that it was 1500 miles away, in Los Angeles.

     After about an hour of research and a million mixed reviews on this school I quickly decided this was the school for me, mostly because I was so desperate to finally have a school I wanted to go to so that I wouldn't feel so left out.

     I felt like I finally had one less problem to worry about and resumed focusing all of my time and energy on band, winterguard, and friends. Sadly, thinking back on these few months of my life I realize more and more that I was just going through the motions. In fact, I have no vivid memories from this time of my life, all I have are the hundreds of pictures I took with friends- which I am so thankful to have now, because otherwise I would have nothing to look back on.

     To this day it will always bother me that my mind and body went into "autopilot" so much because I know I missed out on some of the best moments of my life and was unable to even appreciate the people I had surrounding me at this point.

     Around February my first interaction with my dad occurred via text and it brought back up all the anger I had towards him. I had finally gotten my license after being 16 for 7 months and I was so excited to drive. I quickly found out that my car insurance was under my dads insurance account, which he hadn't paid(along with plenty of other bills) since he left. I began to text him asking him to pay the insurance and got no response. I texted him every day for about a week and was still getting no response.

     In the grand scheme of things, it's such a small problem to have, but I was so unbelievably frustrated because everyone I knew had already been driving for almost a year and I just wanted to have one small sense of freedom.

     After a month of this my mom was able to pull some strings to get me covered on her insurance and I was finally driving in late March. I thought everything was finally going good and I was finally feeling like myself again.

      Slowly but surely I "got over" my sadness, and I wasn't even focused on boys anymore. I finished off my junior year I distracting myself with friends, band, church, and even family and spent my whole summer surrounded by people I loved on mission trips, at church camp, and hanging out with my friends and I was able to start my senior year with a bit of a clear mind.

     But unfortunately I learned very quickly that things can never be good for too long.