Who am I kidding? I wanted to really open up emotionally in this blog, not just chart my day-to-day events, and what better time than the ending of the year to do a shmaultzy retrospective?
Here's looking forward, and backwards.
At the beginning of last year I was smack dab in the middle of my eleventh grade year. I wasn't doing too well in school but trying to ignore it, I think. Looking ahead, I felt like my entire life was about to end. Rachel was leaving! It felt like a crushing weight strapped to my chest that grew heavier every day. Rachel was leaving for college and I wouldn't see her for months at a time! Good lord, I was depressed.
That spring was crazy. All at once, I had the chorus festivals which were amazing (all four of them), and I had Poetry Out Loud (more about that later), and I had school show, and prom, and all the club trips we were taking, and it all just came at me at once and I was more than a little overwhelmed. I'm promising myself not to let that happen again this year, but I'm not doing anything to prevent it either. If anything I'm setting myself up for an even worse spring.
But it all came and went and I lived. In the end I got to say that I am an all-state musician, something I never thought I'd get to say, and that I have been with the same girl for two years. School show was just ridiculous, but there were parts of it that were fun, as there always are. Most importantly, the school year ended and there would be only one left.
The summer was really pretty bad. Looking back on it, it was not good at all. I didn't want to admit it to myself, but I did not have a good summer. Rachel was working as a lifeguard, which meant I didn't get to see her as much as I wanted to. Allow me to describe my state at this point as flat-out panic. Rachel's leaving! She's going away! What am I going to do? Then, to make everything worse, a whole three week chunk of the summer was gone, just like that, in this retarded college preparation program my mother forced me to go to. It was a state-run program where you leave for two weeks the summer after your sophomore year, then three weeks after your junior year. You go to live at one of the state schools and learn about college. That first two weeks in o seven were spent mostly learning how not to be fat, because most of the counselors were at college learning physical education. These three weeks in o eight were supposedly more academic, we attended college courses like we were in college, except without the drinking and sex. The courses were a little bogus, the grades were worth nothing, the only nice thing was I found two or three pretty cool people to hang around with. If we completed these two sessions we'd get money for college, if we went to one of the fourteen state schools. I wasn't seriously planning on going to a state school and my mother knew it. This became her way of punishing me for the misery I'd put her through with my grades throughout the years.
And I've finally come to terms with just how much of a waste those three weeks were. I didn't want to admit it before, because these particular three weeks were smack dab in the middle of the last summer I had with Rachel before she left, and I just had to make some sense of it, I just had to convince myself there was a reason. But there wasn't. The counselors at the program were trying to cut a check. The kids were going through the motions so they'd maybe get some cash for college. And three weeks later I had learned nothing, gained nothing, and it's three weeks I'll never get back, three weeks I could have spent with Rachel, and you know, I don't think I'll ever be okay with that. Rationalize, trivialize all you want, those three weeks were important and now they're gone. That whole period of my life is gone, it ended when Rachel left, and there was no reason to cut it short like that.
But it's almost kind of funny to think about, I really thought my relationship with Rachel might end when she left, but no. No, it's still going strong, stronger than ever in fact, and looking back it's not much of a surprise. But still, having her there with me in school, every day, that was really something. I do miss it.
Something else I missed over the summer was my grandparent's visiting for the week. My father's parents. Talk about your mixed feelings. If I were to be brutally honest with myself, I'd admit that I have all the respect and obligatory love in the world for them, but I've never been close to them and I never will be. They moved to Tennessee before I was born and we didn't get to see them very much while I was growing up. When we did... well... I was a little kid you see, and it's hard for little kids to see things much past a basic sense of "fun" and "not fun". Seeing my mom's mom in the Adirondacks, zipping through the woods on an ATV and having camp fires, that was "fun". Going down to that miserable hot little cabin in Tennessee with my dad's parents where everything smelled funny and every time I was anywhere near my grandmother she'd find something to yell at me about and judge me about, that was "not fun". Call me selfish, inconsiderate, disrespectful, but the truth is the truth and I'm not sorry at all I missed their visit this summer.
My brother, he has all sorts of happy memories at their cabin. He went there on his own for three weeks every summer when he was a kid. They loved him to death. I don't know what they thought when they thought of me, but for the life of me I can't remember a single kind word, a single... well... they did smile at me occasionally I guess. I don't know. they were very old, your relationship with your grandparents never runs much deeper than milk and cookies. But I don't think they liked me growing up. Not that I was the world's greatest kid.
Maybe things would be different now. Maybe I should try connecting with them. Who am I kidding. My grandfather has been of very ill health lately, I'm not sure he was ever completely convinced I was his grandson, but now he's not even sure if his oldest son is married. So there goes that. My grandmother's still all there, women tend to be, but I still don't really want to get to know her. Every time part of my family goes to see them I'm in the part that doesn't. I don't know if I've seen them more than once since I've been in high school.
But I digress (majorly). This fall was good. Classes were a breeze, Rachel and I talked at length every night. School seems a little bit like a completely different place now without Rachel and the other seniors, which I actually had predicted. Now we're the old ones in the school, it's weird to think that every single upper classman I knew freshman year has now graduated, it really is like a whole other school. I have a strong indifference to just about everybody there, I don't think I'll exactly be in tears come graduation.
So, that's where we are. Looking ahead... I think the hardest thing about this next season will be keeping a clear head. Making sure of my surroundings... knowing what's up next and what I need to prepare for. This break has been a waste as they always are, but hopefully things will start rolling when school starts again. Things will start rolling... more like spiral out of control. It's the traditional second-term festivity.
I really really don't want to do school show this year. Every bone in my body aches. I don't want to do it so so badly. Every year I do it, every year I don't have a good time and I think the show is terrible, every minute I spend doing it I spend wishing I were doing other things. Think of how much more time I could have if I just skipped it, for music, for work, for life. Everything would be so much easier if I could just skip it. Why don't I, you ask?
You don't understand.
For the past three years, school show has been part of my very existence. It's that big chunk of time I waste every single February, March and April. It's just there. If it were not there... what... what would I do? I'll tell you what I'd do, I'd hide my face in shame every time I passed by someone who was in it, I'd lose sleep every night thinking about what I've done, what I've missed out on... my senior show. I have to do it. It's my last year. I've done it every year so far... three years... How many of my class mates can say that? Three, maybe four. I don't know why I feel so obliged to finish out something I hate doing, but there it is.
I'm doing school show.
Honestly I wish the auditorium and everybody involved in the show would all fall through some sort of temporal rift... just for the next three months... maybe they could spend it somewhere nicer than here. And warmer.
Looking past this spring, I've got a whole summer to look forward to. Then, hopefully, college. You know I'm really glad I'm doing this blog. This is an important time in my life, I'm going to enjoy having this to look back on. I just hope I actually keep at it.
There are in fact a few changes I want to make for this year. I want to take my classes a little more seriously. No more skipping, anything. Every morning I have to make a reason to drag myself out of bed, like "oh maybe I'll skip piano today", "we're not doing anything in music major", etc. No more of that. I'm getting out of bed because there's school and that's that. I'm going to bed earlier too. Sleep won't be much of a problem after this quarter ends because I'll be switching to seventh period chorus which means no more 7:30 AM period one, and I'm not taking piano this semester, which means I can lazily drift into school some time between 8:14 and 9:00. But it won't be a slippery slope, I will indeed wake up on time and get to school when I need to.
And I want to make sure I'm getting stuff done, as always. So there, there are some resolutions if you like that term. Nothing unreasonable, strictly practical and doable.
Okay, there's a fairly shmaultzy retrospective for you. So here's to another year of big changes, failures, successes, and hopefully lots and lots of music and sex.
-Dr. M
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