Reflection of 2006- my biggest year

This Year:

This definitely hasn't been my favorite year. My favorite so far has been 2005. However, this year was the year of the biggest change in me and my life.

I started the year in January (as so many do).

January 1st was New Year's Day. I spent the first few hours of this day with some of my favorite people. Liz, Jay, Jaime, and Erin. Liz was my best friend. She's so optimistic, so open, and so amazing. It was her senior year. Her last New Year's as a child. It was Jay and my first New Years together. We weren't together together, because well, I was still scared, but we were still on top of eachother. :-P. As I look back to that day, all I can remember is being happy. I don't think I ever felt depressed before that point. At 15 (and only 3 months) I was still young.

As January passed on, I did a few fun things, like Crucible the Musical. CtM was one of my favorite things ever. I became so close to a lot of people. Janie, one to whom I've never really been close, became one of my best friends. We giggled together, laughed together, messed up together. Everything. I came to know Brandizzle- my twinnie. All these people I met and everything, they've affected my life to no end. It was a lot of their last year in highschool. Christine, Jen, Liz, Vaughn. They were all seniors. We did this together as one of the last things until the summer or such.

Musical started up. Beauty and the Beast. Janie and I became even closer, as did Laurel and I. But I won't go into musical until March.

January ended the second nine weeks of my sophomore year. The second half of the school year started. My grades were eh. School for me wasn't a big issue. I got grades, I tried in some classes, I didn't in others.

All in all, January was a month of friendship- bonds with people I'll never forget. This month was the beginning of a whole new year.

February comes next, duh.

February was a big month for me. As musical wore on, Janie and I became was close. We came up with the Belle scene routine, which was my absolute favorite. Laurel, who's birthday was in this month, left for vacation, which allowed me to become close to Janie. Liz and Jay were leads. I lost a lot of friendship with them because of this. We just never had time for eachother anymore. We're still friends and everything, but it was hard to stay together as friends when the leads did everything together and left others out.

I think this was the first month in which I experienced depression- a longing sadness and unwillingness to do anything. That was because of my loss of closeness. I learned that I am one that attaches myself to people. As soon as I become close, I can't seperate without a lot of pain. I am a very routine person, and so when things are different, when things change, I don't know how to handle myself. So this disattachment to the two most amazing people in the whole world really struck me hard.

Febraury 25th. Yeah, we all know that date. I finally said yes to Jay. Now, after like 2 weeks I panicked and was like "Jay I can't do this anymore", but that only lasted a short time and we went back to dating, so we consider this the day we started. This obviously changed me, because I was facing my fears. I was growing up. Yeah, at first it hurt to say yes, it hurt to put myself out there, to allow any pain from a relationship consume me, but I was willing to do it. I overcame that fear.

February overall was the month that changed a lot in me. I became closer to some, farther from others, and I experienced things that allowed me to grow up. This was the starting month to my overall change as a person.

March=end of musical month.

Musical ended in the month of March. Musical was like, a family. You become friends with soo many people, and it's really hard to acknowledge the fact that you won't see these people everyday anymore. I didn't get to see Brian or Kelly or those people after musical ended. I didn't get to see Janie or Laurel as much. I hardly saw Jay or Liz. I lost all of my friends. I still saw them, but not as much, as we weren't as close.

I saw Wicked in March. My one amazing friend named Lyssa took me. We became close after this, and started our myspace conversations. Wicked was amazing. Just knowing that I was in the show and that I was now seeing it professionally made my life.

Venturing did a lot of things in this month. We did the bowling thing, and the wall climbing thing. Now, venturing isn't an important part of my life at all, so I don't know why I'm saying anything about it. But I guess I learned that I can't be friends with everyone, even the people I was previously close with. These people I'm talking about are Tricia, Chelsea, Trae, and some others. Tricia and I go back to like 7th grade. We were really, really close all the way up until about last year. We had our own secret codes and inside jokes and everything, but then she got a boyfriend, and suddenly, we had nothing in common. We started to lose our friendship, and well, by this point I don't think we ever really talked. Chelsea, well, Chelsea. We had sophomore swimming together, back in '05. We never really talked, and so we've never really been close. Trae. Wow. Trae and I go back. We met in a 6th grade drug awareness program- they made us sit alphabetically. We would make fun of each other and tease each other the whole time. I don't know exactly why. Then in 7th and 8th grade, we basically shared every single class together, especially 8th. We didn't really form a close friendship, but there was something there. Not like love or anything, but something. 9th grade we still had a lot of classes together, but our sophomore year, we only had 2. We lost that teasing-type friendship we had.

We had that Josh Shipp assembly at the end of the month. Now, I made fun of him at the time, but when I got home, I went to his site and subscribed to his newsletters. I watch his videos now and stuff. I've learned a few things off of him, even though at the beginning I was just like "bleh.".

March was the month that I struggled a lot with friendships. Musical was over, and I realized that a lot of people just aren't my friends. It was hard for me to realize this, because like I said before, I'm one who attaches myself to others.

Next month up- April.

In April, nothing big happened. Musical was over, band trip was at the end of the month, and everything was pretty steady. I was getting behind in school work, and my grades reflected it. I was losing control of my emotions- I was always sad. This was because of losing my friends. I learned more than anything that friendships are vital. They keep you alive. At least they do for me.

I can't remember anything happening in April, 'cept that I was still learning about myself.

May is the month of bandtrips and endsofclasses.

Wow, May. May was a pretty busy month. When the month just started, bandtrip began. Band trip was another realization to me of who my friends were and weren't. I roomed with Caitlin, Liz, Janie, Meggie, Tieri and Libby Perich. Caitlin and I have never really been good friends before this. We talked in latin, but that was about it. She didn't have anyone to room with for band trip, so I offered her to share with us. After the trip we became a lot closer. Liz never hung out with anyone in our room. She hung out with the musical leads. Janie and I spent most of the time together. Meggie and I were in like every other class together, and so we became sort of friends. And Tieri and Libby sort of just came along with Megan. I didn't room with Tricia or Libby. But I know that Libby (LibbyAnn Libby) is still one of my favorite people ever.

My biggest thing with Band Trip was Jay. I had to share my most favorite person ever, and trust me, it was hard. I really really, really had a hard time sharing him, because like I said I get really attached to people. So every time he went off with Matt and Dan, I sulked. I know I shouldn't have considering they were his friends and everything, but I guess I was just jealous that he was spending so much time with them. I still have trouble sharing him with others, but I know that I shouldn't be sad about it. I shouldn't blame him for wanting to be with other people. This was one of the toughest things to learn, and I'm still learning it.

After band trip, I became depressed again. I didn't see these people 24/7 anymore. May 8th rolled around. That was Andrea Day. The only one who remembered was Libby. This just made me fall deeper into my hole of depression. I needed friends, attention and love. I thrived on those. And since I wasn't getting what I needed, I didn't know what to do. I was starving. Probably I had it good, and I probably was doing better off in friendship than some people, but being so used to everyone loving me and everyone being around me, I couldn't handle it when I was ignored and pushed to the side. It hurt.

I started doing some personality searching. I needed to figure out who I was. If you look back at my blog, you'll see a lot of extensive research I did. I still don't know who I am, but I've been trying to figure it out since then.

At the end of the month, we had camping. Again I discovered that Tricia and others in venturing weren't really friends. Hardly even acquaintances. We just came from different worlds. I remember Matt and I talking about the camping trip, and how we'd finally officially say hi to each other. haha. That never really happened though.

Finals. Omg finals. I learned that sometimes I really have to try just to get a B in some classes. And that's a hard lesson to learn. It really is.

All in all, May was a big month for me. I was still learning, still growing. I wasn't and still am not done.

June.

June was another hard month for me. At the end of the school year, I became super de duper close to Laurel when we helped Mr. K out with the file cabinets. We did all those fun things friends do. Mr. K was pretty pleased with how well we worked together. After 3 horribly hard days, we got everything finished.

Right after school let out, I went to my cousin’s house for a week. He lived near Hershey, if you guys can’t remember. It was a pretty fun week, and I relaxed the whole week. It was really nice.

Then Jay left for like a month to Sea base. The day before he left, he kissed me. I definitely was shocked, and everything else. I didn’t know how to react, so I coiled up into my little shell and told him not to do it again. Typical Andrea thing to do. However, while he was away, it stayed on my mind. The whole time. And when I watched a romantic movie, I actually watched the kissing scenes, and I knew that I was ready to kiss. I texted Jay the very same day and was like “I wanna kiss you”.

That was a huge step. Just like when I finally said yes to dating.

Oh, I forgot to mention that I injured my knee. It doesn’t even hurt anymore, but seriously, that was a big part of the end of the year. Sometimes I’ll randomly find myself limping, but it didn’t affect the rest of my life. It was nice though, to know that everyone cared about me.

June was a month of feeling lonely, since I didn’t see anybody at all. I saw Jay maybe twice the whole month. I also got kissed for the first time, even if I didn’t kiss back.

The OMG month of July.

So Jay came back in the end of June or something like that. The Friday before Independence Day Jay came and joined us at Caste for their annual Fireworks. He said he’d never known of something like this, and was surprised at how busy it was. And boy was it busy. haha. But it always is, so it isn’t like I was surprised or anything. Then July 4^th came around, and Jay invited me to watch fireworks with him. Well, we were finally alone after my text, and he kissed me again. It was a very new moment for me. But I had grown up enough to finally kiss back. I got over yet another fear of mine.

Liz decided that we’re doing Wicked again. Of course I said I’d do it. New people did it, some people left. That was a little sad, but understandable. I made a few more friends, but no one really special. It was nothing like Wicked 1, and that left me even more empty. I know I depend on routine and things, so when this was different, it really affected me. I wasn’t tortured over the ending of this one as I was last year, though.

Overall, July wasn’t that bad of a month, but I took a huge step forward.

August and that band camp

I went to DC with my family in the beginning of August. I love amusement parks and roller coasters and Kennywood and everything like that. So after being at Kennywood a million times, Hershey by my cousin’s, and now this, I was pretty happy with my summer. One thing I’ll always know about myself is that amusement parks make me happy. :D

In the beginning of August, Laurel and I went to Yearbook Camp. I missed a lot of Wicked practices for this, and that was a little sad. I always want to do every opportunity and everything so I don’t miss anything, but I still went to yearbook camp, and had an amazing time. I made friends with the people in my homeroom, even though Laurel and I stayed together always.

After this Wicked went though, and I was pretty happy that it was over. I mean, I obviously again had friend deprivation, but at least I had Band Camp coming up.

Band Camp was pretty fun, but it didn’t compare to last year (obviously nothing did since last year was my favorite year). Janie and I hung out most of the time. Sometimes, though, I’d beg Jay to hang out with me as well. He hung out with Matt and Dan the whole time, which was still hard for me, because I was really really attached to him at this time, as always. As I said before, I still have problems in this area. Band camp was fun, though. I got closer to my squad, or at least Moria and Sean. Sean was an interesting character, I’m not gonna lie. He wasn’t a very good squad leader, but he tried. Moria and especially Tricia got on his nerves a lot. But he put up with them. He isn’t my favorite person in the world, but out of the flute section, I liked him, Janie, and Moria the best. Ted drove me absolutely insane. Whitney, Ally, and the other seniors just….well, weren’t my type of people. A lot of cool people were on the opposite side of the band as I was so it was hard to get to know them. But mostly, it was okay.

Band camp led into the start of school. I already described the first few days, so I won’t go into that, but now I was a junior. Everything was different. The school was different, the climate was different. Everything. I had new opportunities, did new things, took different classes. Everything was new. My friends had changed slightly from when I left school the previous year.

And we all know how I deal with change.

So August was basically a month of transition. Slowly making my way back to school by ending summer, seeing old friends, and well, starting school.

My Birthday Month…September.

September was a very normal month. I started not sleeping from the anxieties of school, I went to a concert of Aerosmith’s (very normal :-P), and I was depressed.

Jay got his eagle award. That was pretty momentous. I’m very proud of my thatboy. And his family invited me to an all-family dinner. Which was super SUPER nice and made me feel really special. And then I got to go back to their house and have some of his cake on my birthday, which was pretty cool as well.

I’m not gonna lie. I am disappointed my sweet 16 wasn’t special. That really made me sad. But whatever.

They did throw me a birthday party sometime that week, but not on my birthday, so it was okay.

Nothing important really happened in September, as far as I can remember. I’m losing blogposts to go by here, since I never updated.

October is another September.

October wasn’t a very busy month. Still marching band going on, yearbook, FBLA and other stuff. Busy as usual, juggling school, activities and a job. Jay’s birthday was in October.

It was somewhere near Jay’s birthday that we started to go a little further in our relationship, at least I think it was around that time. It drove me crazy, and night and day it would be all I thought about. I’m not gonna say what it was, because I don’t want people who read this to know. If you know you know, if you don’t you don’t.

It was in the same month that we stopped as well. And that hurt me just like depression. Maybe worse. Suddenly I was missing something. It was horrible.

October for Jay and me was a month of short one hour seeing each other type things. Like once every weekend on Sunday night Jay would come over for about an hour. So that’s only 4 hours of time to do stuff by the time the month ended.

Overall, the only thing that happened in October was that Jay and I attempted to move on.

Second-to-last is November.

November was pretty much the same as the two months previous.

Laurel was gone. She called me every night though, and we talked for over and hour each time. And then she’d move on and talk an hour to someone else. That must’ve been really crazy, but whatever. It was really nice of her to call me every single night and update me on her Disney trip. Laurel and I have formed probably the bestest relationship ever, even though we never see each other outside of school and activities. The last thing we did together was White Water Rafting. Which was fun fun fun fun fun. We’re just good at being friends without needing to be with each other all the time. And we understand that any free time we get goes to seeing our that boys. And trust me I like that. Haha. Except, I always have a lot more free time than she does, for some reason. Even though now I don’t have a job.

Anyways, she was gone and that was really really sad, like whoaaaaaaaa.

November for Jay and me was a little better. We never in this whole month made out or anything. We hung out at the mall, went to the movies, stuff like that. And I was okay with that. We needed things like that.

November started my Audience of the Future Program. It was fun. I haven’t really met people, because I stick with Moria, who sticks with Bethel Park people. Which is understandable. But it’s been fun. I’ve missed a lot of school because of this and other things but I guess I can handle it.

Well, November wasn’t a big month. :-\

December and closing.

This month seems to be soo long. Musical auditions. Yes, musical time already. As each year progresses, I get worse with musical auditions. I’m just so scared of presenting myself with something like that. It’s incredibly scary. I cried. And Jay didn’t even get a part, and I’m so upset about that, but I don’t want to go into it because it’ll just upset me again. I’m not upset because I like Jay or anything, I’m just upset ‘cause it’s wrong. Dance auditions were lots of fun. Jay was funny. Laurel and I were amazing like whoa, as well as Libby and Vickie. Janie did the other dance auditions for the “experienced” people. :-P. haha.

But yeah, musical is starting.

I spent a lot of money this month for gifts. 40 on Laurel’s, since Chris probably won’t pay for the other half (oh well). A secret number on Jays (like, twice as much as Laurel’s? :-\), and about 50 total on my immediate family, and about 30-50 more on the rest of them. L It’s really sad how much money I spent.

Especially considering I lost my job.

Which sucks because now I’m out a lot of money and jobless so I can’t get it back. That was a really hard hit thing there. I don’t know what I’m going to do about money. If it gets so bad that I am in debt, I might have to borrow off of like Jay or something and promise to pay him back or something. Honestly I don’t know what I am going to do.

I also did something with Jay that maybe we shouldn’t have done, but I liked anyways. And hopefully he still liked it?

But yeah the depressing year ends with my loss of a job.

I got my PSAT scores back, and they showed me that I’m not as smart as I think I am. I got the same exact thing as I did last year. I didn’t improve at all. That hurt a lot, because I’ve been trying harder in school and everything, and I still did horribly.

Reflection

Now that I look back at 2006, I realize that this year was one of the toughest in my whole life, and I grew up soo much this year, and to realize that I still have a long way to go…is just wow. I learned how to love, how to overcome fears, how to deal with depression, how to lose and obtain friendships, how to do a lot. I’m still in the process of learning. But this year was a huge part of it. I know who my true friends are, and who really annoys me. I know that I can’t be friends with everybody, and that not all people are nice. I’ve learned that sometimes I have to let loose, and let people in. I’ve learned a lot from talking to Matt. I’ve learned a lot through Laurel. I’ve learned way a lot from Jay with a lot things, relationship wise and beyond. I’ve learned that I can change my view on something, and it still be okay. I’ve dealt with hardships, I’ve dealt with happy times, I’ve cried (a lot) and laughed (a lot more). It wasn’t my favorite year, it wasn’t my best year. But it was probably my most progressive year thus far.

I want to say a few things to those who have made it this way. Thanks to Jay. You’ve made me see the world in a whole new way, it’s unbelievable. I know so much more now that I’ve been with you. I know a lot of my limits, I know what I like to do, I know that I need to learn to share things with you. I know that life isn’t always easy, and that sometimes you just have to deal with it. I know what it’s like to be immensely happy and to know you’re someone’s everything. This year you’ve taught me more than I’ll ever know. I love you<3. st="on">Laurel. We’ve come a long way. From our really small writing in our yearbooks to actually being on the Yearbook staff, and everything else. You’ve taught to see beyond first impressions (since you’re a freak :-P). You’ve taught me that sometimes I just have to do things, like date Jay. Thanks to those who read my blogs, and encourage me to keep posting on them, because the more I posted, the more I remembered things. Thanks to Tim, Moria, Jay and Laurel and sometimes Matt for that. Speaking of Matt, thanks for everything. OMG have you opened me up to things I’ve never heard about, and some other things. I’ve learned so much just by talking to you. It’s crazy. Thanks to everyone. Really.

Looking on to 2007.

When the year starts, musical will consume my life. I will hopefully obtain a job so that I can pay off things. I will plan on doing a lot of community service for NHS and for the community. I will try harder in history, as usual. I will see Jay as much as possible, because this is his last year. I can’t imagine not seeing him. I hopefully will learn a lot, and grow some more (but not too much). I will continue to do some of the things I did in 2006. Hopefully I’ll learn how to not be so attached to people, so that I can spend 2 minutes without them and not freak out.

I know that I’ll be depressed the second half of the year. Why? Because Jay will be gone. I don’t know how we’re going to handle that, because I can’t imagine one weekend without him, let alone months. I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do about that, but hopefully I won’t kill myself or anything.

Do I have a New Year’s Resolution? No. I never do. If I plan on something, it won’t happen, so I’ll just let the new year go by and see what happens.

If you read all of this, thank you. If you didn’t, oh well. Thanks anyways.