A Good Day to Remember (unedited)

Chapter One - September 4th, 2018 - Mollie

Up until today, I believed that my life unofficially ended when my band director kicked me out of the program mid-last year. I decided then and there that I would not go back for senior year, even though I was allowed to. I'm not going back to a program where I was bullied and was called an attention whore by the director, who I used to really look up to.

Okay. The "attention whore" part is paraphrased. But he pretty much called me one because I used to cut and I wasn't ashamed to admit it.

The week after eighth grade ended, we moved from Seattle to Tillamook. The day before we left, I started cutting. I was leaving my best friend and the person who I thought was going to become my mother. I had read about it and I didn't know how to else to release my emotions. I was wrong. Up until January, I was addicted. I wasn't able to stop. I almost accidentally killed myself three times, almost four times on purpose. And then I got kicked out of band and it was the best and worst thing to ever happen to me.

But I was never ashamed about the fact that I used to hurt myself. I didn't do it for attention; I did it because talking about it relieved the anxiety and made me feel like it wasn't as bad as it was. I used to be so bad.

But I don't have to be ashamed, right? Or should I be ashamed? Should I be ashamed that I've been through shit? Should I be ashamed?

We're a week into my senior year, and it's my first full year of high school that I haven't taken a music class in high school. I'm taking Advanced Music Theory and Creative Writing at the local university and I'm in the Eastern Oregon Symphonic Orchestra.

I live in North Brooks, Oregon. It has a population of about fourteen thousand. The high school students make up about a fourteenth of that. My graduating class is big. Definitely bigger than I'd like. I liked the small class size of Tillamook.

The university is named University of the Pacific Northwest. I prefer to call it UPac, which is what the professors call it, but most people know it as UPNW.

Honestly, I prefer college music classes over high school music classes. I was raised by music, so I had to slow down when I started taking band classes in high school.

I really enjoy playing with the adult musicians. They're so much better than high school musicians. They're so much less dramatic.

But I don't think that I'm going to do college classes next semester; I'm going to be very busy. I have work, and packing, and music.

I'm moving at the beginning of August. I don't know where to, but I'm moving. I can't stay here. I love it here but I can't stay here.

Anyways, high schoolers cause so much drama, it's not even funny. It really pisses off my dad. A ton of gossip goes on in his classroom, and he hates it.

Especially last year when it was about my assault claim. Everyone thought I was making it up, but why would I? I'm not an attention whore. I'm a whore when it comes to other crap, a lot of other crap, but not attention. I will proudly call myself a food whore, and I will admit that I probably do way more with guys than I probably should, but I do that as therapy for my PTSD.

My grandpa was a professional pianist, and my dad was in a high school garage band that was somewhat successful until my brother was added to the mix.

My parents, Emory Fields and Kathy Armistead, met right before my mom's freshman year of college. They were going to the same school.

My parents had my brother, August Fields, Auggie, when my dad was twenty-one and my mom was eighteen. My dad ditched Beside Stars, his band, to marry my mom, who dropped out of college, and take care of her and Auggie. Five years later, they had me.