#i said 12th grade but i actually meant 11th grade

[summerhighlandfalls]

i like modern aus where they're teachers at the same high school

[frodopotter7]

My brain just brought back a random hurtful memory. That was end of 10th grade and we were walking in the forest near the school, because at the least days of school teachers love to do this, since it’s always way too hot inside. Anyways, I heard some girls were talking about Heartstopper. That they watched the series and even read the box. They even bragged about how those books are their only books in the shelf…that’s kinda sad. Not because of Heartstopper but rather the fact that they just owned like five books in their whole giant houses. I wanted to go to them and talk about it. I thought, this was my chance. I little shy queer, partly in the closet, who had to chance to exchange. “I mean it is so hyped. And I love hyped stuff, but still kinda gross. I mean in the book it’s fine, but imagine people being gay in real life.”, said one of the girls and the others agreed. Never talked much after hearing that this day. I never really came out in school besides to three teachers and my friend, but in the 11th and 12th grade I tried to show off a lot of cool queer shows and even wrote essays about them. I was glad at this point that I wasn’t living in America and no one in this town was actually religiously haunting homosexuals. In fact I am active in the christen church in my town and they are really open for everyone (We can literally play Mario in the church at night and yell at each other and the church actually supports that). I don’t know if those girls could tell that I was gay at that point, but honestly they didn’t even knew what the word genre meant. And I met other girls that were way better than them. So to anyone who lives in a small town, keep going, it gets better. And to middle school me I would probably say, usually girls are really cool, beautiful and nice you just stuck with the very rotten ones.

[random2908]

The stuff I did, the teachers mostly didn't really know how to handle. So mostly, I didn't get in trouble, despite going to large, mediocre, overcrowded public schools--an environment that ends to be discipline first, understand later (if at all). Examples:

In 5th grade, the teacher was wrong about something. She wouldn't accept my correction during her lecture--a first for me, in 8 years of schooling--and after a bit of arguing, I reluctantly let it go. But when she handed out the worksheets and that very thing was a question on them, I got up and started wandering around the room telling other kids to put my answer and that I'd make sure they didn't get marked off for it. When the teacher caught me, I only had to stay in for half of recess (and recess was only 15 minutes), only as long as it took her to give me a lecture about tact.

6th/7th grade was the one time I did get in trouble--with a substitute, for something the girl in front of me did that shouldn't have even been a punishable offense anyway, and certainly wouldn't have been with our regular teacher. I was forced to sit in the hallway for several minutes, until a teacher from down the hall happened to walk by, saw me sitting there trying to keep my temper (trying not to cry), scolded the substitute in front of the class, and made her come out and apologize and take me back in. The next day, my friends (and also the girl in front of me, who felt extremely guilty about me getting in trouble for something she'd done) told our regular class teacher what had happened. As far as we know, that substitute wasn't allowed back; at least, we didn't see her again for the rest of middle school. (She had a long-standing reputation for being really mean and punishing kids way out of proportion for minor offenses, but this was the first time anyone knew of her suffering consequences for it.)

In 11th grade, my trig teacher, who didn't like me, sat me right at the front of the room, behind the overhead projector, for part of the school year. I think it was random, rather than that so she could keep an eye on me, but either way it was a big mistake--because if she didn't like me, I was going to not like her right back. Which meant I spent the class openly reading a book, and when she'd make like a sign error or something, I'd put down my book, reach over to the overhead and point to her mistake, then pick my book back up. She was also a teacher known for disproportionately punishing kids for small offenses (she suspended one of the top kids in our grade for talking back to her), but for whatever reason I never got in trouble.

In 12th grade, my bio teacher knew that I thought her class was a waste of time, and the only reason I was paying attention at all in class was to catch her mistakes and laugh at her. But for some reason she thought she was in on the joke? Possibly because she idol-worshipped my mom, and she thought my mom would just take this in stride? So she thought this was good and not embarrassing for her, so I never got in trouble.

Also, there were several times when I'd be talking to a kid in class, and the kid would get scolded (but not really in trouble) and I wouldn't, even though I was the one talking. I always felt bad about that, and usually apologized to the other kids, but the other kids never seemed to really care, since they hadn't actually gotten in trouble. One kid in 9th grade said she'd rather get in trouble than me, anyway, because even though I was mostly talking, as far as she was concerned we both were, so we were both equally culpable--so the difference between us, in her opinion, was that it mattered if I got in trouble, because I never got in trouble so one mark against me would be noticed, whereas she already got detention on occasion and no one would care about one more.

Curious because this is the Boring Nerd™️ website apparently so I'm interested to see if that started young.

Don't count instances where you didn't get caught, I want to hear about the stuff you did that was stupid and blatant and had repercussions.

[many-but-one]

Signs of being a system that we showed as a child

We are luckily in a decent position where we have a good relationship with our mother, who was around us quite a bit while we were growing up. I won't say she was perfect or even still is, she is the root of a lot of our problems today, but we have worked (on both sides) to mend our relationship and it's been successful. She is supportive of us being a DID system and in fact, when first telling her about it in therapy she said "Well that explains a lot." Of course, I found this interesting and decided I wanted her to elaborate on what she meant by that. This list I'm about to provide is by far not exhaustive and should not be used as a diagnostic tool. These are simply some things that when our mother looked back on it she was like "hm. I should have known that was weird" after finding out we were multiple. (Also want to add, none of these are going to be talking about the signs of trauma I was showing. I was showing a lot of signs of sexual trauma that she didn't understand or pick up. This list is not talking about that at all, just things she noticed after learning we were a DID system that suddenly made a lot of sense to her.)

Amnesia. That was the biggest thing that she noticed. It was constant, from grade school to even now. She'd ask how school was and whoever was fronting just wouldn't know. If we had homework we often wouldn't know until we saw maybe like a handout about a project or physically saw the sheet of homework in our bag. Which means we'd get yelled at for saying we didn't have homework when in reality we really didn't know. As we grew older we compensated with a planner or phone reminders after we got a smartphone in high school. As a teen, if we were at home during summer break, she would ask us to do a chore or task and whoever was out would agree. Of course, we'd then switch and she'd come home with it not finished. She'd say "you literally agreed" and whoever was in front would have no memory of that happening. She started compensating by writing down what she wanted done and putting it in a very obvious place. Which of course, worked really well because whoever would end up coming out when she was gone would see the note our mother left and pick up the task with no problem. She never understood why that worked but other things didn't.

To add to amnesia, memory gaps were something she noticed too. Sometimes I'd remember something that happened in the past and sometimes I wouldn't. Usually it was things that I should have remembered, like my birthday party I had last week or the car accident we had just been in a few days ago. As a young adult I got into a car accident with just myself in the car and after I got home my mother asked what happened and I couldn't really recall any details. However, when over hearing me speaking on the phone with the insurance agent, she heard I was able to recall the exact details of exactly how the car accident happened. As I was a young adult she realized that I remembered so little of my childhood it was quite concerning, and sometimes when speaking about it (even positive things) I'd always find an excuse to leave the conversation. If I wasn't able to, I'd generally nod along but she could tell I didn't actually remember anything she was talking about. She didn't think much of it in terms of the pre-6 or 7 year old years, but became a bit more concerned when she realized I didn't remember much before even the age of 12 or 13, and didn't remember certain entire years of school that should have been memorable. (I didn't remember 7th or 8th grade, nor did I remember any of my Junior (11th) or Senior (12th) year of high school.)

Very intense mood swings or sudden changes in opinion or ideology. As a child we could go from happy to freaking out in an instant, with no real defining reason. She was usually at a loss of what to do. As a teen it became WAY more complex and pronounced. We'd go from "goodie two shoes that wants to go to college" to "rebel teen that wants to drop out of school and is getting high whenever their parents aren't around" and neither of those "versions" would really remember or understand that the other existed. My mother would be so exasperated trying to explain to "rebel" self that I had just told her the other day I wanted to be a doctor, what happened? And rebel self would basically just be like "whatever, idk what you're talking about." Or in that same vein, one version of myself was kind and acted well around outsiders and other family members and the other version of me was cynical, sarcastic, cussed a lot, and hated pretty much everyone other than our boyfriend at the time. Yes, this was [dead name alter] and Alice, our two most frequent fronters during high school. [Dead name alter] ended up splitting due to stress and abuse from our father into who is now Jules and Aeron. She said one of the most obvious things she noticed is that sometimes when being yelled at (usually by our stepfather /neg) I'd either completely fawn or shut down OR I'd go heavy into fighting and arguing. There was no real pattern or thing in particular that would make me fight or fawn. It was random, just sometimes I would fight and scream back and other times I would shut down and just nod and agree to everything until he stopped. She usually tried to intervene as far as we remember, but he was the type who believed he was always right. At the very least, our mother would get the attention off of us so that we could go to our room or the bathroom to calm down.

Struggle deeply with making big decisions. I know this isn't technically like a diagnostic criteria or anything, but any sort of situation that was really "big" like deciding whether or not to quit sports or if we're even going to college or what our college major will be would change so quickly that we generally left the decision until the last minute. My mother said she used to talk to me about this stuff and my answers would change by the day, as if I was a different person every time.

Very differing demeanors toward people or pets. Kind of a reiteration of above, but not as extreme. Sometimes we'd seem really bored or not excitable about things that would normally get me excited (like friends coming over) or my love for our pets would suddenly turn to distaste or extreme annoyance. Sometimes I'd change almost before her eyes. Going from immensely excited to seeing a certain family member or friend only for them to arrive and for all that excitement to just be sucked out of me.

Dissociation. This is another big one that I had been showing since I was quite small. As a little kid (age 5-8 ish...trauma time) she called it my "dream world" where it would look like I was just daydreaming and when snapping out of it I wouldn't really know what she meant. I wouldn't realize I had been sitting on the couch essentially staring into space for the last ten minutes. As I grew older and had more independence, she'd knock on my door to my room or go find me in the house and I'd just be lost in my own little world, completely zoned out. At first she was worried I was using drugs (I wasn't at the times she mentioned) but when she'd start talking to me I'd usually snap out of it and respond looking completely aware and sober. She recalled it used to really creep her out at night because one time she came to the back of our house which had a smallish living room that I spent a lot of time in and I had been playing video games most of the night. When she came to check up on me and tell me I should think about going to bed (it was about 3AM at this point) she saw I was on the menu screen and just staring at the TV with no expression or emotion on my face, loosely holding the controller. She said it almost looked like I was frozen in time and it freaked her out really bad, but she was trying to remain calm. When she said my name I just kind of slowly looked at her, got up to turn everything off, and left without saying much of anything. She said the look in my eyes was not like anything she'd really seen--I looked dead inside. Shortly after I started therapy at her suggestion. (I had been in and out of therapists since age ten, but hadn't been going to one for a few years now.)

Age regression. Well into my upper teens and early adult years she'd walk into my room and see me playing with my stuffed animals or otherwise "kid" toys that I had as if I was a young child. I'd usually look pretty nonchalant about getting caught, not embarrassed like she would have thought. Usually she just let me be because it seemed to help me calm down. (She quickly noticed I did it more when I was really stressed.)

VERY differing aesthetics or styles that would change literally almost every year. My wife noticed this too (we were friends for a long time before we started dating and then we also started dating and she noticed this too, long before the DID diagnosis.) You can look at a picture of me year after year for the last, oh, like 7 or 8 years and I literally look like a different person every time. Wildly different hair styles, clothing styles, makeup styles, etc. My gender expression also heavily oscillated between male and female almost constantly.

That's all I can remember my mother mentioning over the last couple months of me being "out" as a system to her. (I also want to say, all of the above things are things I DO NOT remember or very VERY vaguely remember.) If I think of more, I will add them! Did any of you show these signs that you remember? If so, did your parents ever question you about them?

-Jules

[hotchley]

Nooo wait I meant if you have another extra two classes (8th and 9th period you stay til 15:30) normally you have that once a week one semester in 11th grade and in grade 12th and 13th two times a week both semester. It’s a bit more complicated than that tho I think, because in Germany we have G8 and G9. Meaning that if you’re at a Gymnasium (there’s three types of schools after primary school, gymnasium is the one where you learn the most) depending on whichever of the 16 states you’re in you have nine or eight school years. So if you only have eight you obviously have to learn more in a shorter amount of time and maybe have more classes in the after noon. But I have G9 so it’s fine 😌 (the whole thing is honestly just politician’s constantly failing to come to an agreement as to which way is better. Also in Germany things regarding school are handled by each state separately and not for the whole country)

~ 🐝

OHHH THAT MAKES SO MUCH MORE SENSE *facepalms*

... I had a period 6 once a week in Year 11, it was not good.

OH YEAH!! I LEARNT ABOUT THAT!! In history! I do Germany, so we look at education from 1918-1989, and I was just like: Wow.

This is so interesting to hear about! Like the way it's handled by state instead of by federal law, and how DIFFERENT the actual types are, like here in England it's either: state, grammar, private and the only real difference is private/grammar school kids usually have better connections...

I AM NOT BITTER ABOUT THAT AT ALL (/s)

I literally said to my parents that I'm all for contextual admissions because private school children should have to work like the rest of us- and what I meant was they shouldn't just be able to BUY their way onto things

(*ahem* one of my many second cousins didn't get the grades for medicine so now his parents are paying for him to go to a private college, whilst the rest of us have to struggle along and be better than the average person *ahem*)

BUT ANYWAYS! Thank you for clearing that one up :)

[mariacallous]

My history education from K to 4th grade was not super Rigorous (because private Catholic school in suburban San Francisco Bay Area but like...Oakland/Berkeley suburbs leading up towards Fairfield and Sonoma. Fortunately I was a fucking nerd with two heavy reader parents so I got to feel superior because I read history and stuff for fun outside of school). 4th grade was CALIFORNIA HISTORY because I remember the Missions (where we briefly, if at all, touched on the colonial and hardly at all on what many could/would/did call genocidal aspects).

5th grade was your basic history and I remember at one point we had to dress up as historical figures and present our life stories? And i chose Nicholas II because of course I fucking did and I got dinged for not being fully creative with my cotume, which was meant to be his under house arrest outfit? IDK, my family didn’t have a ton of money and I wasn’t going to put too much effort into it since other people did more work on the costume and less on their history.

6th grade was history from “ancient times” up to about the early middle ages? We made pyramids out of sugar cubes, made papyrus parchment art, traced someone’s body to make a greek god/goddess (we got Athena and I was very pleased and I also posed to be Athena), and we also made a mummy which was basically drawing on pieces of paper and decorating and layering.

7th grade history was from wherever we theoretically left off in the early middle ages right up to maybe World War, if not maybe late 19th century.

8th grade was back to US history and I will never forget writing a ton about the causes of World War I and then being told that while I was technically correct I didn’t discuss enough about the US.

9th grade history was some bullshit newly created social studies class that was a mishmash from all over the place with a blatantly copywright-infringing “reader” that was just a ton of chapters and articles from various sources photocopied together - we spent some time talking about the indigenous tribes of Northern California which is the only coursework related topic I remember - the teacher was way past their prime and drank mouthwash out of their coffee cup. I got my first referral to the administrative office from this teacher because I was trying to correct something that was being said and defend a classmate who was being hectored by the teacher, which gave me my in with the cool kids group who went to a different middle school and out of which I still have my best friend after all these years (who was a frequent challenger of the teacher as well because she also loved history and didn’t tolerate being treated the way this teacher treated a lot of people - her mom actually sat in on a class once just to see and he didn’t notice for the longest time even though it had all been arranged and discussed).

10th grade history we were back to Europe and I liked the class and the teacher liked me but he was also kind of a jockbro (but an at least over-45 one, if not over-50) and also kind of a chauvinist dick. But I was in my element once again. We may have touched on non-European history but I don’t think it was prioritized. And this class had geography quizzes and whatnot.

11th grade was AP US History and it had the best teacher and was my absolute favorite and I will never forget how great it was even though we barely got to 9/11 and the textbooks ended right when Clinton was being impeached (because that was happening when they were being published). We did Jeopardy and I had to be told that I wasn’t allowed to answer at a certain point every game session.

12th grade was AP Government and Economics - one semester of each. The teacher was a fusty old basically libertarian dude who did not want me to discuss too much about Keynesian economics or governmental relations because it was a very cut-and-dried, both parties are basically the same and driven by interests and power. And this was in the middle of the 2008 recession too and so my classmates might have had some of the basic mechanics of how things worked but that was it. And we had the various issues discussions too which was fun.

We spent a lot of time going over the EPA, I remember, and particularly like Reagan’s appointees and how they interacted with Congress.

And then I took various history classes in college.

Suburban San Francisco Bay Area K-12 public education history classes, y’all. 

[vicmackie-blog1]

in honor of it being mental health awareness month, i decided to share my personal narrative I wrote for one of my english senior projects. this essay means to much to me so i hope you guys like it :)

Personal Narrative

Have you ever wondered what runs through a person’s mind who has anxiety? It’s not just little worries and fears. It’s way more than that. For me, it is something that affects my life more than any physical illness I have ever had. It affects me in a way that people would call “dark”. This is my story and my life.

Let's start with what most people think anxiety is. Most people think it is just another word for freaking out about shit. They think it’s a word that can just be thrown around here and there for laughs. Well guess what, its not. Throwing out that word that affects people a lot actually makes the ones who are professionally diagnosed pissed off. I get so mad when people throw around that word will yell at them but guess what, to me they deserved to be yelled at for saying that word. It triggers this anger in me whenever somebody throws that word around which i cannot help. I guess it’s just caused from how much shit i go through having this mental illness.

Anxiety sucks. It makes you fear everything. Even yourself. It can also causes other mental illnesses to happen too. In 10th grade, I noticed something was wrong with me. I was already diagnosed with anxiety when I was younger but it did not start to fully affect me until sophomore year. I noticed that I started feeling sad. Really sad. I would cry over everything and nothing. I would be scared of everything and that is when I learned that one of my biggest fears was myself. I started having these thoughts that scared me so much that I could not focus on anything. These thoughts caused really bad panic attacks but they would only happen at night right before I went to bed. They made me cry and silently scream until I passed out. I would not let anybody know about them. Why? Because I was scared of getting judged. I was scared of people thinking I was insane and that people would say I’m fine and just overreacting. So I started telling myself that. I would tell myself that I was fine when I actually was not. It was after a few months where I finally came forward and told my guidance counselor what was going on in my head. I broke down in her office talking to her and my mom about it. Those tears were for two reasons. Being afraid still and finally being able let those emotions I held in for months out. My guidance counselor then told my mom that I needed to see a counselor again and that’s when I knew, my anxiety has gotten worse.

I left school 12 times that year. Both my academic classes and shop were hard for me to stay in and focus in. I guess you could say that the guidance office became a second home to me. I felt like the world was against me. That it wanted me to suffer and cry everyday and feel numb. My anxiety getting worse was a new feeling to me. I never knew my emotions could be so affected by a mental illness. My emotions were and still are an emotional rollercoaster. Literally one moment I will be happy and the next I could be crying my ass off.

You’re probably wondering what being numb feels like or what it is. I hate talking about it because it can trigger me and make me feel it right after I say it but hey, this story is about my life so I have to say it. It is a terrifying feeling. All these thoughts and voices come through my head telling me things and it makes me not want to talk or even do anything. It is so hard to get out of bed when I have that happen. They are inner demons that destroy that bit of happiness you had that day. The demons don’t want you happy. No, they want you to feel mental and emotional pain.

11th grade was probably the best year for me mentally. I barely left school and I learned how to deal with it during that year. It never got in the way with anything and it never crept up on me. The only time it started to affect me again was at the end of 4th quarter. I started to have no motivation to do anything and it was a struggle for me. I had no idea why this was suddenly happening again. I didn’t want it to happen again. I thought I was done dealing with this shit for a while. For a few years at least but nope, it got worse.

12th grade. Senior year. The year of school that is said to be the best. Well nope, not for me. I mean, it was still a good year for me but it wasn’t for my mental health. In august, a week before school started, I notice I started to feel like I did in 10th grade. Then it went away for about a month. But then it came back but this time worst than ever. Sad all the time, gave attitude to everybody, bad panics attacks, all the stuff I should be used to. I gave so much attitude to my parents and would yell at them and be pissed at them a lot which I still feel like shit for. I would have so many attacks and I would forget about them right after and be confused on what just happened. I was so confused about everything at that time. I left so lost and felt like nothing was real. It was a very scary feeling that I will never forget and that will never leave me.

I went to my counselor a few days after having a huge fight with my parents. I did have counselor appointments scheduled for every other week but this one was different. I told her what has been going on for about a month and let's just say it was very dark. I let out all of these emotions I have been holding in for a while and she listened which is what I needed. She then told me that my brain goes through changes every two years. Which meant that my anxiety has gotten worse over a two year span. Wonderful isn't it. Yeah no let’s just say my life came crashing down again that day. It was like 10th grade all over again but much worse this time.

I was told that I needed to be put on anxiety medication that day. I was so scared of being put on medication because of everything I have heard badly about it. I’ve heard that it could make your anxiety worse, that it wouldn’t work, and that the side effects were bad. I had to see another counselor to prescribe my medication to me. I still see both of these counselors to this day too. She then put me on Zoloft which worked for about two months. Started off with a small dose and worked my way up. It did wonders for me until one night when I had a bad reaction to it which was, a bad anxiety attack. It felt like I was choking and couldn't breathe. I was scratching myself trying to figure out a way to get out of my body. I couldn’t move for about a half hour but when I finally could I went downstairs and choke out as much words as I can. That got my parents attention that I was not okay. It took them awhile for them to calm me down but once they did I was so tired and drained that I stayed home from school the next day. That day was also the day I went back to my other counselor (one that prescribes me my medicine). I told her about the reaction I had and she then prescribed me two new medications. Hydroxyzine which is for when I feel like shit that day and Lamotrigine is the one I take everyday. I have been on both of these medications for about four months now and I haven't had a bad reaction to them at all and I am so grateful for that because I hate switching medications so much.

Even though I have bad anxiety which most people don’t really understand what it is like my friends do and I am also grateful for that too. They can tell when something is wrong with me and try their best to help me get out of that funk. They make me happy to be in school if I am having a bad day. They let me rant to them when something is wrong. They care about me, which is something I appreciate a lot. I know a lot of people care for me but it is hard when your mind takes over and tells you that they don’t. They are probably the best friends I could ever ask for and I am going to miss them when we all graduate, even though two of them are going to the same college as me.

So that is my story and the shit that happens with anxiety. It is a lot to deal with and figure out how to deal with but trust me, I am learning to slowly. This was honestly so hard for me to write at first because I absolutely hate writing about myself. But once I got the hang of it, It was a breeze to write. This was such a dark topic for me to write about but to be honest, I enjoyed it. It made me feel better writing this out because not many people actually know what goes through my mind on a daily basis, but now you do.

[kimonobeat]

aiko bon “Profile Interview” Chapter 4 (3/3)

ーWhat kind of fashion did you wear outside of school?

aiko: In elementary school I was always dressed like a boy. I almost always wore jeans. I started gradually wearing girlier clothes since middle school though. I started wearing a lot of culottes and denim skirts. I used to love the clothes at BETTY’S BLUE. Then in 9th grade, I started wearing Hysteric Glamour. There was this T-shirt I used to wear that had Mickey and Minnie doing something dirty on it. (laughs) That and skinny black pants, skate shoes, and a polka dotted zip-up hoodie. I wore more ‘lolita’-ish clothes in my later high school years. Oh, and in middle school I used to go to Armani fashion shows.

ーWait, you watched Armani fashion shows in middle school? What kind of middle schooler does that? (laughs)

aiko: My older cousin took me with her because she worked in the fashion industry. Sometimes I would copy her and wear perfume. I’d put on Dior, or Chanel, or Poison, and people would tell me, “Ew, you STINK!” (laughs) My favorite fashion style in high school was mod clothing. I also loved psychedelic, hippie-looking clothing, so I used to wear dresses from thrift stores. The fashion I liked around that time had a lot to do with my favorite bands. Like, I loved THE COLLECTORS, so I wore mod clothing, y’know? I also kept my hair in a mushroom cut. Here I was wearing gigantic glasses and vintage dresses… Definitely a cringe-worthy look now. Like, just YIKES. (laughs) Now when I look back on it I just think to myself, “Well, at least I got to do the things I wanted to do. Oh well!” But not too long ago I wanted to eliminate all traces of those outfits.

ーDid you always have long hair up until you decided to chop it off for the mushroom cut?

aiko: Yeah, it was always long except for when I did the mushroom cut. My hair was sooo pretty in high school that anytime people couldn’t remember my name, they’d just call me “the girl with the pretty hair”. It was straight and black, with no split ends to be seen. You can thank my dad’s seaweed dishes for that. I had such healthy hair even though I didn’t take good care of it.

ーYou didn’t really need to do treatments or anything like that?

aiko: Nope! I went to the beauty salon about once a month though. I went to the same hair stylist my aunt went to. They cut my hair and let me pay later. I’d always tell them, “Just the ends, please.” (laughs) I didn’t do anything to take care of it but got my hair cut often.

ーHow was the coursework at your high school?

aiko: Hahaha! I… didn’t study.

ーWhat about when you had exams?

aiko: I did for those… (quietly) But that was the only time I did.

ーAnd your grades?

aiko: Eh, well, they weren’t great. Just average… No wait, a little worse than that probably. (laughs) I had a lot of points taken off. Like, less than 40%. That all depended on which subject, though.

ーSo what classes did you have GOOD grades in?

aiko: Music. I was #1 in our music class. I remembered a pretty good amount of music history, so I got 100 in that class. That and the skills tests we did put me at #1. The other person in my class tied with me for #1 was this guy named Yamamoto Poppo (Coo). We gave him the nickname “Poppo” because he was a lot like a pigeon. I was really good friends with Poppo.

ーaiko and Poppo.

aiko: Yeah, yeah. When it came to music, we had a lot in common. When everyone else was listening to bands like BOØWY, LUNA SEA, TRACY, KATZE, PRINCESS PRINCESS or JUDY AND MARY, we were like, “Hey, you heard Kaji’s new stuff yet?” We also traded each other CDs in secret, and listened to stuff like Harada Tomoyo’s albums, Spiritual Vibes, and Summer Vacation together. I also listened to indies music, something I’d been doing since I was in middle school. I didn’t have any money back then, so I just borrowed CDs from TSUTAYA to listen to. Indies artists didn’t make their music available as rentals though, which meant that I had to buy indie releases to listen to them. And of course, I listened to the radio all the time, same as always. I wasn’t in any after school clubs. I was in a band though.

ーHow many bands were you in during high school, all in all?

aiko: Just one. Oh wait, I was in another band too. The band I formed in 10th grade was entirely made up of girls. A girl named Tomo played the drums, and her older sister played the bass. Another really serious girl named Shimamoto played the guitar. She was the kind of girl who played guitar because she loved, like, B’z and Aerosmith, y’know what I mean? That band only lasted for about 3 or 4 months. We’d say, “Let’s practice!”, fumbled around for a while, then we sorta just fizzled out without even coming up with a name for our band. The real reason that band fell apart was that the bassist lost the scores of the Shonen Knife songs she had. She went through the effort of asking Shonen Knife herself but still lost them. That was too bad.

ーThe members of Shonen Knife sent you guys the band score to some of their songs themselves?

aiko: Shonen Knife wrote their contact information in their indies CDs. There was a “Contact” section that listed their personal address and phone number. (laughs) I don’t remember much, but we wrote them a letter or called them about it. “We wanna cover Shonen Knife’s songs. Would you mind giving us the sheet music?” we asked. They were gracious enough to send it to us, along with a message that said “Good luck!” I was so touched. “Wow, what nice people,” I thought to myself. And then we practiced it. Now that I think about it, the sheet music was pretty simple. They only thing they had written on it were the chords. Just, “Here’s where you strum.”

ーAnd that all-girls’ band fizzled out after only 3 or 4 months.

aiko: I started my first real band in 11th grade. We had 5 members: a guitarist, bass player, drummer, keyboard player, and me. We were all in the same grade. The keyboard and bass players were girls, and the drummer and guitarist were guys.

ーYou were the vocalist, I’m guessing?

aiko: Yup, just the vocalist, no instrument. We said, “Let’s be a band!” and that was that.

ーDid this band have a name?

aiko: Um… (laughs) Let me think. We were “The Pinsaka Knife Orchestra”. The name was based on the names of all our favorite bands. A three-piece indie girl band called The Pinkies, another band called Hanasaka who was passing out cassette tapes they hadn’t even released yet, and Shonen Knife. We covered those 3 bands a lot, so we decided to use them all in the name of our band. Then we tacked on the word ‘orchestra’ at the end, because we wanted to add a bunch more people. (laughs) Not that we needed anyone to play any other instruments; we just wanted them as members of the band. Y’know, members of the band who help us out by making copies of tickets, that sort of thing. The whole shebang sorta felt like Sharam Q. (laughs)

ーBut if you weren’t covering those bands, doesn’t that make the name kind of… wrong? (laughs)

aiko: I thought the same thing.

ーSo were you pretty similar to those 3 bands, at least?

aiko: We were completely different from them. I don’t really feel like those bands had anything to do with each other either. Shonen Knife’s a rock band, right? One of those ‘hit it and quit it’ punk rock kind of bands, y’know? Hanasaka was your average pop group, although they used similar instruments to BO GUMBOS. You see, the drummer played the bongos instead of drums. Visually they had this BO GUMBOS psychedelic vibe going on, but musically they were a pop band. The Pinkies were, what would you call them… Honestly, I only know one of their songs. I used to listen to this song of theirs that was on an indies omnibus release. It was the kind of song you’d do the monkey too, I guess? It went something like, “My cute lil’ baby~ Cha cha cha! My boyfriend’s over there, lookin’ so fine~ Cha cha cha!” (laughs) Well, our band just wanted to have some fun. We covered a lot of pop bands.

ーDid you write any original songs for this band?

aiko: Nah, none at all. No one wrote any songs so we only did covers. We covered Japanese bands like The Pinkies (which I just mentioned), Hanasaka, Shonen Knife, and THE COLLECTORS. People mistook the indies songs we covered for original songs, though, so when we performed at our school festival, we did a bunch of songs everyone already sort of knew. We knew we’d definitely draw a crowd if we performed Mr. Children or JUDY AND MARY. We performed some of Mr. Children’s songs from around the time they released the songs “Kind of Love” and “versus”. There I was, singing, “One of~ these days~ We’ll be together~” I asked the keyboard player to pitch the song up to C for me. The song’s about being in love with a girl who’s older than you. I was actually dating a guy who was younger than me at the time, and he came to see us play. Everyone swooned. (laughs) We also did JUDY AND MARY’s song “LOLITA A-GO-GO”. I wore lolita-ish clothes for it. (laughs)

ーHow long were you in The Pinsaka Knife Orchestra?

aiko: Up until just before I graduated, I think. We practiced in a studio, performed live at school festivals… It was a blast. It’s just, we were all headed down different paths. We stopped after about 2 years.

ーBy the way, when did you decide to apply to a music college?

aiko: Sometime around June of my senior year. (laughs) I didn’t really care where I went to college. I would’ve been fine with a vocational school too. I just sort of thought it would be nice to be part of a music college. When I told my dad, he said, “I ain’t lettin’ you go nowhere unless it’s a music college.” So I was like, “Really!? Guess I’ll go to a music college then!” and asked my teachers for advice just before summer in 12th grade. They said, “Really!? Well, if you don’t turn things around, you’re not gonna get in!” And yeah, that was true. I ended up doing just fine, surprisingly.

ーThere weren’t any particular subjects on the entrance exam of your music college?

aiko: Well first of all, there were the subject exams. Like, I think I did a Japanese exam. There was that, and a ‘composition’ exam where they quizzed you on music history: “Beethoven is ___”. There was also a music theory exam where they asked you questions like, “What interval is this? A minor third.”

ーWere there any practical exams in addition to the subject exams?

aiko: There were! I majored in popular music vocals, so my practical exam was singing a song. They gave you a couple of set pieces to choose from. I chose the song “Yesterday Once More”. I had another exam called ‘solfege’, where they have you transcribe a song, then sight-read the music.

ーDid you do any interviews?

aiko: Oh, I did that too. I talked pretty briskly through the whole thing: “Yes! Yes, that’s right!” But… I don’t remember a single thing I talked about. (laughs) That whole time period when I was applying to music school is a fuzzy memory to me. Honestly, I really don’t remember anything that I don’t really care about… That’s why it’s all kind of a blur to me. I sometimes forget about people too. For example, let’s say you’ve got two people, and they both get teased and bullied in the exact same way. One person might remember how they were bullied, and what people said to them down to the letter, but the other person might not remember anything at all. I guess that’s the difference between people who give a damn and people who don’t. Music school was one of those things for me. It’s not really that I didn’t care at all about music school, I just don’t remember anything about it because it was never really a goal of mine to get into a music college. Even when I was in school, it wasn’t the kind of college experience that made me feel like, “I’m in a college for music!” That’s why I don’t really remember a whole lot about it.

ーWasn’t it hard, going through all those entrance exams? Normally, students who apply to music colleges spend years preparing. You’re not supposed to study for everything a few months before.

aiko: Definitely, because of the specialized subject exams and the practical exam. I studied for those in a huge hurry starting in June. My music teacher gave me very intensive lessons. For singing lessons, I went to this place my music teacher introduced me to and told them I wanted to be a musical major. “You’re not meant for musicals,” they said, so I decided to apply for the popular music department instead. I definitely wasn’t cut out for being in musicals, that’s for sure. At the time, I couldn’t really hold out a falsetto note. “I’m definitely more of a ‘pop music’ kind of vocalist.”

ーEither way, when you decided that you wanted to go to a music school, it really meant that you wanted to sing. You didn’t want to play an instrument, or just compose music.

aiko: Right. That was already set in stone. It felt like the only option to me.

ーYou never wanted to go to a music-focused middle school or high school before you started applying to colleges?

aiko: Not one bit. It had nothing to do with music, I just didn’t really feel like going to high school. I basically went because my dad said I had to. I never felt like studying music when I was in school either, though. It never occurred to me that music was something you could study because it was everywhere: it plays on the radio, you hear it while walking around, you hear it playing in stores, you hear it on TV… So when I got accepted, it was… honestly, I had mixed feelings about it. Even my teachers said, “You don’t seem all that happy about it!” I didn’t desperately wanna go in the first place, so whenever I talked about it, all I said was, “I got in…” When I enrolled it was almost like, “I got in… So I guess I should go after all, huh…”

ーYou weren’t totally sold on studying music yet, were you?

aiko: I was, a little bit. Every time I went to singing lessons, I found myself thinking, “Wow, what IS this… ?” You know how you start off voice lessons doing that ‘ma ma ma ma ma~, ma ma ma ma ma~’ exercise? You’ve gotta practice that sort of stuff to make singing fun. I have to say though, there’s gotta be a more fun way to learn the basics. They are lessons after all, so they’re not that much fun. That was all I was doing, so after a while I thought to myself, “I don’t know about music school anymore…” The field day we did my senior year of high school was SO, SO much fun though.

ーWas that when you were the captain of the pep squad?

aiko: Yup! (laughs) Apparently the kids in my class who decided I would be captain of the pep squad got scolded by the teacher though. At that point I’d already decided to apply to music school. The teacher said, “I hope you all know by doing this that if she ruins her throat, it’s all YOUR fault!” I wasn’t even thinking about my throat. (laughs) My voice was so powerful I was actually kinda curious what would happen if I did hurt my throat. I’ve never once lost my voice, no matter how much I scream and shout.

ーDid you ever think about applying to a regular college as a back-up?

aiko: No, I didn’t. I had zero interest in going to a regular university. Everyone was always talking about how difficult it was to get into a private university in the Kinki region, which I don’t really understand. Someone would say, “Isn’t it amazing that so-and-so got into ABC University?” And I’d just have this blank look on my face. Like, “Huh?” I know about Tokyo University, of course. I know of Waseda and Keio too. I used think Doshisha was a company or something. (laughs) I honestly don’t know anything about colleges. Like, NO idea what’s so great about one university, or what the class curve is. My school was the ‘smartest’ in one of the top school districts, but I stopped there.

ーIt didn’t rub off on you at all, did it?

aiko: Not one bit. You might say they were really focused on skills. Like, “Wow, you’re really good at frisbee!” Because of that, I never really looked at the grade curves when applying to music school. My dad said, “If you’re going to school for music, that means you can only go to a music college!” I said, “What about an art school?” He said no. I probably would’ve found a bunch of other schools if I had looked at the music departments of women’s colleges.

ーIn spite of all that, it’s pretty amazing that you managed to get accepted into a music college with such little time to prepare.

aiko: No no, not at all. Everyone gets lucky every now and then! I’m sure they just went a little easy on me during the exams. (laughs) Classical music is so much harder. I basically had to practice for a couple hours every day. The school I went to had a ‘popular music vocals’ department. We were known around campus for being the ‘delinquent’s major’. They wouldn’t even let us use the opera house. “Popular music isn’t music,” they would tell us. All of the older professors refused to acknowledge pop music vocal students.

ーBut now that you’d been accepted into a music college, I bet you were thinking about having a career in music in the future, weren’t you?

aiko: I definitely did. I had sort of thought about becoming a singer before that, so I had already thought about starting my own career once I’d graduated from high school. Getting into a music college helped me make up my mind, I think. Part of me wanted to become a singer, so I definitely had the feeling that I wanted to cling to whatever would help me head towards that goal.

ーSo when you graduated, were you already hoping to work really hard towards that goal?

aiko: Sure. When I graduated from high school, one of the underclassmen said, “I’ll be sure to buy your CDs when you debut!” Everyone had written stuff like “I’ll be rooting for you when you debut as a singer. Good luck!” in the back of my graduation yearbook too. Seeing people write stuff like that to me definitely helped lock in those feelings, I guess you could say. They said those things to me like it was totally obvious too. “I’m definitely gonna buy your CDs when you debut, Aiko. Good luck to you!” And when they did, it made me think, “Geez, I have to work hard on it now!”

ーWould you say that that’s when your childhood dream of becoming a singer finally felt real to you?

aiko: Yes. It suddenly became reality between the summer of my senior year of high school and graduation. It hit me that I needed to get things going on my own. I couldn’t just wait around for it to happen.

Read more: Previous « Index » Next

[travelingthroughtimejjs]

Sports

Sports have always been an extremely important aspect of my life. I played hockey when I was 5 but quit after the season because I hated to sweat lol. In my younger days I played soccer, from the time I was 4 until grade 8. Grade 6 was when I really started to expand into a variety of activities. In grade 5 I played in a touch football league with kids grade 5-8 but I wasn’t that good.

In 6th grade I started playing football, hockey, basketball and doing track and field. My friends were all playing football with the River Riders so after a couple of games I decided to join. I was a wide receiver who didn’t do much at the time. I had one 40 yard touchdown that season off an end around sweep. I knew I was fast so it wasn’t surprising but I was raw. At the end of the season I asked the coach if I could play runningback the next season so I could be more involved, he laughed and said we’ll see.

My first year back in hockey was okay. I was also really raw in this but I was one of the better kids on the team just due to my speed. All the kids on the team wanted me to be captain after I gave a big speech when everyone was pissed in North Battleford but we didn’t ever end up giving out a C.

I was good at basketball again because I was fast but I got so many stupid fouls because I was over aggressive. I won the team MVP in grade 7 and played the same style being one of the better players in grade 8.

Track and field was the same old thing every year. I was just simply faster than everyone in elementary school. Everyone was always telling me that so and so was really fast and that I might not win against them, but that wasn’t the case. I never lost once, I never even had a close race. Grade’s 6-8 I won the city championship for every single sprinting event, and also got track and field MVP every year. 

Grade 7 football changed my life. I had done all my growing which meant I was 5′7″ absolutely dominating the football field. I put up 2 197 yards in just 8 games, an average of 275 yards per game. Along with that I scored 36 touchdowns if you count the meaningless playoff game we played, an average of 4 per game. In that last playoff game we were down by 5 with 1 play remaining and 2 yards to go, the play broke down completely and I ran to the left with basically the whole other team standing in front of me, so I sprinted to the right as fast as I could and dove into the corner of the end zone. We won the game, and so many teachers the next day came up to me and said they heard what had happened on the radio. I won team MVP of course.

Grade 7 hockey was okay. i was getting better but due to my birthday I was forced to play in a grade 8/9 league. This didn’t really matter. I led the team in scoring. 

I started snowboarding when I was 5 and got really into it in 5th grade when I joined a team of riders that was taught by the owner of Propaganda. In 7th grade I went to the mountains for the first time with tyson. In 11th grade I went back with Short. In 12th grade Josh asked me if i wanted to go but I didn’t think I could afford it because of S-Trip and university in the fall. 

Grade 8 football was finally my time to prove myself. Playing against kids older than me it was a question whether or not I would get to start. Those questions were silenced pretty fast as I continued to dominate. We had a really good team and made the top bowl for playoffs. I scored 19 touchdowns in our 8 games and again won team MVP. I also met Adam on this team and we turned into really great friends throughout the years. This was the first time i got to be a team captain for anything, I was the only grade 8 to get to be one. 

Grade 8 hockey was fun. I played on a travelling team in a higher league that would go on to dominate. First we won the lloydminster tournament before qualifying for the provincial tournament and ultimately crushing Regina in the provincial championship to be the champions. I had a lot of cool friends on this tea, including Ryan, who again I became great friends with and Short. I didn’t get too much playing time on this team but I gave it my all when I was out there and scored a decent amount of goals.

After grade 8 I made the U16 North Sask football team. We travelled to Winnipeg to play against the other provinces, I didn’t get much playing time though. 

I became really into biking in 6th grade as well but I didn’t really keep up with it into high school. 

Grade 9 football was really tough. Our team was terrible was didn’t even have 24 players most games, meaning someone had to play all game. We lost every single game except for one. I scored 11 touchdowns in 8 games, which was pretty disappointing for me. I cried with frustration more than once. At the end of the season I once again got the team MVP. 

In grade 9 I made the Junior A basketball team, it was pretty fun because we got to travel around for tournaments. I was in track and field too but once I realized I wasn’t the fastest person anymore I lost interest. I went to provincials and got 9th place. 

In grade 9 I played high school spring football with mostly grade 10s and 11s. I tried hard and did alright all season. At the end of the season Mr. Germs came up to me and told me he wanted me to be the starting running back of the senior team the next year.

10th grade football was alright. I played with an amazing QB named Bray, but he was extremely selfish and cared more for the glory. I was one of two grade 10′s to be on the senior football team, we were both starters. I captured the teams Rookie of the Year after putting up 628 yards and 3 touchdowns in 7 games. This season I had a huge performance in front of the whole city in the Canadian Tire Bowl against Carlton, I had 149 yards rushing and a touchdown in a 14-2 win. I should’ve had the other touchdown as well but Bray for some reason kept the ball on the 1 when he was supposed to hand it off. 

In grade 10 I was on the curling team which was actually pretty fun. I again made it to provincials for track but didn’t really care about it, I was just going for the weekend of fun. Grade 11 track and field was the exact same thing, I qualified for provincial’s but I knew i wasn’t going to win so I just went for fun. In grade 12 I qualified once again but i didn’t end up going because I wasn’t too sure if I could afford it. I made the senior A basketball team in grade 10 but I ended up quitting the team because I wanted to work more so I could buy myself a vehicle.

I played spring football after grade 10 as well but it was kind of a waste of time, nobody could stop me, every time I touched the ball I scored. It was normal for me to get 8 touchdowns in a game. 

Grade 11 football season was fun. Before our first game in Regina I was unexpectedly named team captain. I didn’t see it coming at all, I didn’t even think I was a candidate but I guess all the work I put in and the friendships I was making were evident to everyone else. I finished the season with over 800 yards and 10 touchdowns. Our team ended up losing in the Div 2 championship game. I thought I was bound to win the MVP award but I was super frustrated when the award ended up going to one of the offensive lineman on the team, I did end up winning the team leadership award.

Grade 11 I once again made the Senior A basketball team, I had bought myself a car the year before so I was good to go to play basketball 6 days a week and work on the 7th. I didn’t get that much playing time this year but I didn’t care we were dominating everyone we played against, only ended up losing two games all year. One in overtime in the GIT final and then a 5 point loss in the provincial final. I was always just happy to be there and got super hyped on the bench being whacky and dancing and cheering on the team. For my efforts I was given the spirit award at the end of the season awards.

In grade 11 I chose to once again return to playing hockey for one last year. I played in the North Valley league which meant a lot of travelling to small towns around Prince Albert. I was surprisingly really good this year, although I hadn’t played in so long, I was better than I had ever been before. I was also named an assistant captain on this team, I would’ve been captain had Connor Bear not been on the team but he was definitely deserving of the honour. After working my ass off all season I was awarded with the only trophy that they give out in the North Valley league, not quite a league MVP but given to someone who displays love for the game, is determined to succeed, is focussed and fearless and shows team leadership. It was really cool to be honoured for how hard I worked especially because it was the only award given out in the whole league and there were a lot of people worthy of winning it.

I didn’t want to play spring football in grade 11 because of how easy it was in grade 10 and I told the coaches that. So they ended up dividing the league in two based on skill level, the better kids played in one league while the worse ones played in another. This made it a lot more fun for me.

Grade 12 football was great. I was once again team captain and had some insane games. I finished the year just under 1000 yards (400 more than the second place person) and a league leading 10 touchdowns. The team got our revenge in the division 2 championship game, capping off a great career. 

Throughout grade 12 I was also driving down to Regina to practice with the Regina Thunder every second week. I was the first player invited to spring camp and had made the team at the very first practice, but I didn’t want to move to Regina and I knew that so it was really a waste of everyone’s time. Mr. Hundeby also got me a tryout with the University of Saskatchewan but I had given up on football already and just wanted to focus on school. Any other year I probably would’ve been on the U of S team but our graduation year they were switching head coaches after 40 years, so they only accepted 13 new players instead of the usual 40-50 they have every other year.

Grade 12 basketball we were pretty above average. A big step down from the prior year but we consistently got third place at every tournament. To my surprise I also got to be a team captain on this team, even though I really wasn't that good. 

Throughout university I participated in numerous recreational sports. In first year I played rec football, our team wasn’t too bad and I made some big plays once again. Second and third year I played rec hockey in the competitive league, a lot of former WHL and AAA guys play in this league so I’m typically one of the worst players but I still have fun. In third year I also played rec basketball which was pretty fun. I’ve been playing flag football in the league in Prince Albert for 3rd and 4th year which I just absolutely dominate week in and week out. 

[shawnsassymendes]

High School Sweethearts

Warnings: Reader can sing but it’s like barely talked about, a shit ton of fluff you might suffocate, and editing

Summary: You and Shawn have been together since the start of high school after a life long friendship. When Shawn came to fame, you asked him to keep you a secret for the time being as you were not ready for the spotlight. Now that high school’s over, you reconsider and Shawn surprises you.

Word Count: 2.8k....I have a problem

A/N: Let’s imagine that the reader’s parents are always super busy and they let her do whatever she wants ok?

Masterlist

____________________

“Bye Mrs. Mendes! See you tonight!” You yelled as you and Shawn left the Mendes residence. You were going to drop Shawn off at a radio interview after picking up Aaliyah. 

“Bye Y/N, Shawn! See you at dinner!” Shawn’s mother called from somewhere inside the house.

“You’re never going to call her Karen, are you?” Scoffed Shawn as he got into the jeep.

“Nope. It feels...I don’t know, weird?” You shrugged.

“Ok, so we’re going to pick Aaliyah up from Emily’s house. And then we’re gonna go to the place the interview’s at and you guys are going to wait for me at the cafe across the street. And when I’m done, we’re going to have lunch and go to Walmart.” Shawn said as he never once looked at you.

He knew that if he looked at you, he would say yes to whatever it is you asked. And you had already told him that you wanted to stay in the car to hear the interview live.

He tried to convince you to get an app but he couldn't argue when you said his speakers were better. And now he was trying to ignore the situation.

“Shawn.” You warned.

“Y/n?” He copied your tone of voice, acting oblivious.

“We talked about this! I don’t mind staying in the car. You know I love Jay-bones! The air’s gonna be on and everything! I won’t die! The longest you can take is an hour. And if we get restless we can go to the cafe or go for a drive.” You whined.

“But they know what my car looks like! And if they see me getting in with a gorgeous girl in the passenger seat, there will be headlines. You would be everywhere within minutes.” He said, concern lacing his words.

“I know, but it is highly unlikely they’ll call me gorgeous. Besides, I’ve been thinking. Now that high school is over, maybe I can...I don’t know, come out of hiding?” You shrugged casually even though this was a big decision.

When Shawn started getting famous, you asked him to keep you out of it until you finished school. But that didn’t mean that you weren’t there with him through it all. After he was asked to open for Taylor Swift on her tour, you and Shawn started taking your classes online. You had both recently graduated together even though you were a year younger.

When you were travelling the world with Shawn, you always had a lot of free time. So you took 11th grade and 12th grade at the same time. It was stressful and a lot of work, but you knew that if you kept up with Shawn, it would be better for the long run.

You and Shawn never talked about what would happen after school was over. But you had definitely thought long and hard on it.

It was always hard to stay away from the cameras these past years. You knew it was a struggle for Shawn’s team. It was a lot of extra work to keep someone completely hidden from the public eye and keep the celebrity safe. Maybe this would make his tour easier.

“Are you serious?” Shawn asked after a moment of silence. His face was concerned but his eyes held a spark of hope. He had always wanted to show you off to the world, but he wanted to keep you safe too. He didn’t like it when he was asked if he was in a relationship and he had to say no. He wanted everyone to know he was taken by the most beautiful girl in the world.

“Yeah, I mean, I’m done with school. I’m not busy with anything other than this tour. And I know your team hates me with everything they have to do to hide me. So, why not?” You smiled up at him.

“Are you sure? I mean, do you want this? They can be really harsh out there. If you're doing this for me, you don’t have to. I would love you anyways. You know that, right? That I love you no matter what? Even if the world thinks I’m dating anyone I work with? I mean-

“Shawn!” You interrupted his rambling. “Yes, I know you love me no matter what and I love you too. Calm down. I want this. Isn’t it everyone’s dream to be famous? I was just afraid I would get swept away by it cause I was so young back then. I thought it would get to my head and I might quit school or something. But if I knew how strong you would be the entire time, I would have gone with it from the beginning.”

“Ok then. I’m calling Andrew after the interview to set things up. And you’re gonna come with me to my next event and-”

“Yes, you will do all of that when we get back home tonight. And we can talk about it on the way back, but right now, we’re gonna be late.” You laughed as you realized how much Shawn wanted this.

“I love it when you call our place ‘home’.”  He mumbled as he kissed your forehead.

____________________

“Bye Em!” Aaliyah yelled as she got into the back seat. “Sup?” She said, popping the ‘p’.

“Nothing that can’t wait. What about you?” You asked as you motioned for her to put on her seat belt. She rolled her eyes, but listened to you nonetheless.

“Nothing much. Em and I stayed in the pool most of the time. Oh yeah, she said that she has a crush on you.” Aaliyah said nonchalantly at your boyfriend. Shawn almost crashed the car.

“What?!” He yelled out along with a couple honks from surrounding cars. You and Aaliyah barked out in laughter.

“You can’t just randomly say stuff like that Liyah. We both know that Shawn-y boy is oblivious to his good looks and talents. And the fact that he attracts girls like a magnet. He might get a heart attack.” You said as you brought your hand up to play with Shawn’s hair. You noticed how his cheeks flushed once you said that. Aaliyah was red with laughter at this point.

“What did you say to her?” Shawn asked after clearing his throat.

“I told her that she was disgusting and that he’s my brother and that we would never bring up the subject again.”

“Thank you for not ratting me out.” You smiled back at her softly. “I want everyone to know in a much bigger way. But I’m still thinking about how.” You mumbled, but you knew that she heard you.

“What?! You wanna get out there? Finally! I have been dreaming about this day for years!”

“Stop with the exaggerating. It was bound to happen sooner or later.” You chuckled.

Shawn stopped at a red light and looked over at you and smiled. “Yeah, it would be awkward explaining how I’m single one day and married the next someday in the near future.” You almost choked on your own spit.

____________________

“Ok, so you guys are staying in the car?” Shawn asked one more time before he got out of the car in front of the radio station’s headquarters in Toronto.

“Yes! Now go before it’s too late!” Yelled Aaliyah from the back, exasperated by her older brother.

“Ok ok! I’m gone!” Shawn raised his hands in surrender as he went to the doors.

“Ok tell me everything!” Aaliyah commanded from the back seat. And you did. To say she was excited was an understatement.

____________________

“So Shawn, one of our researchers found an old clip of you and a girl singing ‘Hey Jude’. Who was she?” Asked Maria, the interviewer.

“Gosh, you did your research, eh?” He laughed a little nervously.

“We pride ourselves on our research facility.” She chuckled.

“Well, um, you might be surprised, but that’s my girlfriend. We’ve been together for the last 4 years. She’s actually outside with my sister in the car waiting for me right now.” He said truthfully as he rubbed the back of his neck.

____________________

You and Aaliyah were chatting while listening to Shawn’s interview. Most of the questions were always asked in interviews, so you let it play in the back ground.

“Seriously Liyah, do you not own regular pants? All I ever see you wear are shorts.” You said as you motioned to her wearing shorts and a crop top. You never had the courage to step out of your room in something so revealing. It was good that she was confident, but she was just a kid.

“Hey, when you’re in Shawn’s room you only wear-”

“Well I never said I was a good role model, did I?”

But you both paused when you heard Shawn’s most recent answer. Your mouth dropped open and you froze. Aaliyah squealed so loud you were sure your ear drums were injured.

You heard the interviewer ask Shawn if you guys could come up and both you and Aaliyah bolted out of the car. But you made sure to lock it before sprinting up the stairs.

____________________

“I’m not sure, let me call her. They said if they got bored, they might go to a cafe or something.” Shawn said as he called you. “Hey, did you-

“We’re on the stairs.” You cut him off breathlessly. He guffawed on the other end and you could almost hear it a little ways up.

“Ok then. Be careful.” He chuckled. “They’re coming up.” He said to Maria.

____________________

Both you and Aaliyah burst through the door seconds later.

“We’re here!” Aaliyah sang out as you caught your breath. You looked around for a chair only to notice that there were no empty ones.

“We can get you guys some chairs.” She said as she waved someone over through the glass of the recording room.

“No, it’s ok. She can sit right here.” Shawn said as he grabbed you and sat you in his lap. You felt the heat rush to your face. Not only because so many people were watching or because there were cameras filming. But because Shawn was never this forward with PDA. Maybe he meant it when he said he wanted to show you off to the world.

“Where am I supposed to sit?!” Yelled Aaliyah from behind you. A second later a chair rolled into the room and she let out a pleased sigh. “This is what it must be like to be famous.”

“Pffft, says the girl with half a million followers on insta. You’re already famous Liyah.” You snorted.

____________________

��“So, I guess we have to start with your name then.” Said Maria with a laugh.

Shawn laced his fingers through yours to calm you down. “If you don’t want to answer something, squeeze my hand and I’ll make something up.” He whispered in your ear. You nodded and gave his hand a little squeeze telling him that you were fine.

“Well, my name’s Y/N L/N. I’m 17 and I’ve been dating Shawn since I was about 13 I would say.”

“And that video that we mentioned, when was that?”

“What video? I’m sorry, I wasn’t giving the interview my full attention.”

“Our researchers found a video of Shawn singing ‘Hey Jude’ by The Beatles with who he says is you.”

“Oh my god! I don’t think I have that video anymore! Um, that must’ve been-what the beginning of 9th grade? We were practicing for the talent show auditions, but we didn’t make the cut. So I was 14 and Shawn was 15 I guess.”

“And where have you been all these years? We’ve never seen you at events before and Shawn has never mentioned you.”

“You must be glad you got this interview, eh?” You laughed at her eagerness. You knew that when you were introduced to the public, it would be a huge deal. But watching her get this excited over you was hilarious!

“I told Shawn when he started getting followers on Vine and Youtube to keep me out of it. I always knew Shawn was gonna make it big but I didn’t know it would be so soon. I told him that I would only stay with him if he kept me a secret until I finished school. I’ve seen so many people get brisked away by fame and they don’t even get their high school diploma. So I said ‘I’ll get out there when we both get it’. But Shawn never needed me to make sure he was going straight. I needed him way more. With his encouragement, I finished school a year early!”

“Who says I didn’t need you?! I would be dead if you didn’t take care of me all these years.”

Maria turned to Aaliyah. “Are they always like this?”

“This isn’t even the half of it.” Aaliyah grumbled. “They sing sappy duets all day! And they take up the entire couch!”

“We’ve only been singing sappy duets all day because we're getting ready for your graduation!” You retaliated.

“I know I know, but jeez can’t you guys do it at a studio or something? I mean, even when you’re gone, Shawn’s singing all the time! My ears need silence once in a while!” She joked and you stuck your tongue out at her. You didn’t see Shawn looking at you, savoring this moment. He loved that you and his sister got along.

“So you and Shawn are going to sing at Aaliyah’s graduation ceremony?” Maria asked, her eyes still full of excitement at that fact that she was there at the right place in the right time.

“Yeah, we were gonna tell everyone not to record it and if it did leak we were gonna make something up. Guess we don’t need to do that anymore. We’re gonna sing ‘Hold Onto The Memories' by Corey Tynan .” Shawn spoke up from behind you. 

“Classic graduation song. It’s a lovely choice.” Maria complimented you and you nodded in thanks.

____________________

The rest of the interview went pretty smoothly. Basic questions about you were asked here and there, but mostly about Shawn’s tour. You could see Shawn’s phone buzzing like crazy on the table before he turned it off. You just hoped he wouldn’t be in trouble with Andrew. 

When the interview ended and you guys were leaving the building, Andrew surprised you next to the car. 

“What the hell were you thinking kid?” Andrew mumbled as he scratched his head. 

“Hey Andrew! Didn’t know we were meeting you here!” Shawn acted oblivious to Andrew’s distress. 

“‘Hey Andrew’? Don’t ‘Hey Andrew’ me after what happened! So many people are on my back now! This is a great thing, don’t get me wrong! The amount of times we’ve had to cover up stories about Y/N is insane, but couldn’t you have told me before?” 

“Dude, relax! It was a spur of the moment kinda thing! Besides, this means more press and more press is always good, right? That’s what you always say. Come on, we’re going to get something to eat. Come with us?” 

“Only if you’re paying.” Andrew grumbled and you relaxed. At least you weren’t in that much trouble. 

Aaliyah could see that you were still tense though. She grabbed your hand and followed the boys. 

“It’s going to be fine. Don’t worry about it. Shawn’s got it under control. And now I will train you on how to give the right answer during interviews.” She said, even though you could tell she was joking. 

“Ok then, go right ahead.” You went along with it. 

“So, when they ask you how you and Shawn got together, what will you say?” She raised an eyebrow at you.

“Um, I’m gonna tell them that we’ve been best friends since forever and that it happened one day.” You shrugged. 

“Wrong! You tell them that Shawn’s younger sister Aaliyah who is an absolute angel set you up because she is the best! Got it!” 

“Yes Ma’am!” You giggled.

“And when asked who’s your best friend?” 

“I’m gonna say Aaliyah.” 

“And who you’re wearing?” 

“The most prestigious designer in the world, Aaliyah Mendes, designed this dress for me. She did it because I am such a huge fan of her work!” You gushed, mocking excitement.

“Atta girl!” Aaliyah said before both of you burst into laughter. 

Shawn looked back at you and his sister and felt his heart beat faster. 

Maybe ‘the near future’ was gonna be sooner than he thought.  

____________________

thankyou for reading! please don’t forget to reblog and leave some feedback because it’s what keeps me going!

[couldnt-think-of-a-funny-name]

I need the story of the Underground Shakespearian Ring

Okay, so the school I went to for 9th grade had this really bizarre grading setup that I still don’t understand- for some reason, instead of the teachers writing up and grading tests and exams and the like, all the work was sent to an unknown third party for them to grade??? It made no sense.

Now, for the most part, the school had decent teachers, and they would just teach the curriculum correctly and then you wouldn’t run into problems with the grading. My English teacher was not one of those teachers.

So like, she hated me pretty early on- she was my homeroom teacher and thought it was disrespectful that I slept in homeroom in the mornings (I was on sleeping pills and they never wore off completely until around 10am), I never had the vocab homework in on time (someone kept breaking into my locker and stealing my vocab books I had to buy a new one like five times), she thought it was “inherently pessimistic and stuck up” when she caught me reading a book called ‘Ninth Grade Slays’ (it was about vampires, not her?), and during our Greek Mythology unit I kept correcting her about the name pronunciations of the gods (she pronounced Hephaestus as Hepatitis one time holy shit). 

Anyway, her feelings on me aside, her teaching skills were shoddy at best. But I had had way worse teachers, so had the rest of the class, and Greek myths are pretty straight-up in what’s going on, so no one really had trouble with the third-party tests.

Then we get to the Romeo and Juliet unit.

Now, fun fact: Shakespeare has always come pretty easily to me. Like, to the point where I sometimes forget/fail to understand that other people have an incredibly hard time translating his works. (I told this whole story to my friends in the school I went to for 10th/11th/12th grade and when the drama department put on ‘Midsummers Night Dream’ one year, more than half the cast tried to get me to translate their scripts and monologues for them lmao).

So, anyway, I’m just a girl, reading Romeo and Juliet and digging how it’s going…and then the teacher starts ‘translating’ it.

Um.

I cannot sift through all the bullshit this woman was spewing, but let’s just say that my favorite part is during Romeo’s spew about Rosaline, there’s one part where he says something like ‘with cupid’s arrow/she hath diane’s will’, and the teacher was taking this to mean Rosaline was a Super Lesbian who was breaking the law or something and running away with her lover Diane, which would be a rad storyline, sure, but like…I’m just raising my hand like “Um Ma’am, Diana is the Roman goddess of chastity. What Romeo meant is that she told him she’s sworn off love and is probably becoming a nun?” and this woman just got. So angry. Like, excuse me, you are a student, you’re here to learn, so you clearly don’t know anything about this (I read Romeo and Juliet for the first time in like preschool whoops). Anyway, she continues on making up her own plot to the play, and I…well I was basically Hermione Fucking Granger at this point I couldn’t just sit there and listen to someone be this wrong about something omfg??? She just got angrier and angrier and stopped calling on me after a while.

So for a couple lessons I’m just left to seethe quietly, but one day after class this girl I knew since grade school came up to me and was like “Could you…? Tell me what the hell we’re supposed to be learning?” and I didn’t even like her but I liked the validation of being someone’s Chosen Teacher so I wrote out a summary for her of everything we had covered so far so she could actually write a comprehendible essay for our homework that night.

But THEN the during the class when we got our essays back, she made a HUGE DEAL, like ‘oh Molly, it wasn’t bad enough that you’ve been failing this course material, now you have to drag your friends into it by trying to re-write the play?’ (l m a o). Like this bitch had literally tried to fight me on ‘Paris is the guy Juliet’s father wants her to marry’ and she didn’t even put a grade on my essay where I said the play only ended in tragedy because of how young and naïve the kids were, that if they had taken a breather and thought things through it probably would’ve been fine (it was a damn good essay and I stand by it). But anyway, she’s trying to make me out to my classmate’s as someone who’s trying to sabotage their education for laughs.

This backfired on her.

See, it dawned on people one by one, that she was only teaching the wrong material -> so they wouldn’t know the right material -> so when they eventually would take the exams they would only have her crazy answers -> which the third party graders wouldn’t know about -> everyone fails this course that’s like half the overall grade of the year.

Most students consider that a problem.

So suddenly the class has decided I’m the fucking Shakespeare Whisperer or something, and one by one start begging me for help. At first I was confused, because as I said, it’s so easy for me that I didn’t realize literally the entire class was lost out of their asses here. omfg. So I was really getting hassled here but I didn’t want my entire class to fail you know???? So I started meeting with people during study halls or texting them after school so they knew what was going on. And then they started telling people in this teacher’s other classes, including upperclassmen who were lost as fuck, so this was quickly spiraling out of control on my end, but overall people were really starting to understand the plays better!! So I was feeling really great.

But then, the teacher noticed that none of the homework getting handed in to her matched up with her crazy translations, and knew I was the sole person to blame (naturally). She literally tried to get me suspended over this, she went to the school’s disciplinarian!

Note: This guy, Mr. C, knew I was a God damn angel- my science class was off the charts, inappropriately awful, so every time one of our science teacher’s wanted to give the entire class detention, instead of calling Mr. C up to the class room as was the rule, they’d send me down to get him so he’d know to write up every student except for me. So when my English teacher dragged me in there he was looking her like “What on Earth could this girl have possibly done to piss you off?” 😂😂

And when she explained he looked at her for a very long moment, glanced at me with a signature ‘Office’ Reaction Face™ , turned back to her and was like “You want her suspended…for starting a study group?” and I was CHOKING.

So that really pissed her off and they started fighting and this was a very overworked and Done man so at some point he gave up and was like “I’m not suspending her but fine we can put a ban on the study group if you leave my office” omfg. So all the other students get notified and now they’re back to freaking out about the upcoming exams.

So like two days later, I’m at lunch, complaining about this to one of my friends who had a different English teacher and thus no problem, and I’m on this whole angry rant (Because I’m pissed, a bunch of kid’s grades are gonna get fucked up because of this! They just wanted to do well! I just wanted to help them!) and my friends staring at me quietly the whole time and when I finish I’m like “What?” and she’s just like “…Molly did you literally start up Dumbledore’s Army in our fucking school?” and I died on scene.

But then I started thinking about the comparison and I was like? You know fucking what? If Harry Potter can get those kids to pass their fucking DADA test I can help kids pass their fucking English Exam. Bring it the fuck on, Umbridge.

So I started Spreading The Word that anyone who needs help with their Shakespeare course can still get help, we just all need to meet up once to hash out the details. After some back and forth notes and deliberations, we ended up meeting in the school library, which was hilarious for a few reasons:

1) It was directly across the hall from this teacher’s classroom.

2) It was actually a converted janitors closet, way smaller than all the other classrooms, and there were like 50 people shoved in there; Not exactly an ideal Room of Requirement

3) The library carried no Shakespeare texts, but had the entire Harry Potter series on display to see when you first walked in

But anyway, despite the fact that we were literally three feet away from her door while we were doing this, our teacher was none the wiser of the meeting. We worked out a game plan- everyone writes out bullshit essays that align with what the teacher’s expecting. After she grades those and gives them back, they get them to me- slipping them in my locker, handing it to me discreetly in the halls or in another class, what have you. I then try to power through the dizzying amount of confusion radiating out of the teacher’s mouth and onto these papers, and more or less write out better translation of what was going on in whatever scene they covered, what the highlights they needed to know were, stuff like that, and then slip it back to them in similar discreet fashion (so the teacher/disciplinarian wouldn’t see me and get suspicious ; also because I was like 15 and wanted to feel like a super cool secret agent). They would then keep my copies and use them as study guides for the upcoming exams, where they would then answer all the questions correctly, the way the third party graders would mark correctly, and pass the exams + the bullshit essays would get them high marks in the teacher’s homework grades. The teacher never caught on to what was happening, just thought her students finally started paying attention to her.

All in all, it was a complicated mess, but it fucking worked. I don’t think anyone failed their exams that year. Will I ever be cooler? No. I think I fucking peaked when I was 15.

[sharkafina]

My 2017!

I still can’t believe how quickly this year went by! Can you believe that sometimes I put 2012 in the date instead of 2017? That’s how quickly it went by xD Anyways, even though it felt too fast, a lot of important things (both good and bad) happened to me and my family so yeah, here’s my 2017: January: My sister and I competed in the DECA Regional Competition and both of us actually won first place in our respective contests (whereas last year we both competed as well and both of us lost xD). Winning first place meant both of us would go to the State-level Competition and compete against students from all the island! Great way to start a year! (For those of you who don’t know, DECA is a student organization for marketing) February: All eleventh graders (including me) were required to take the PEAU (simply called College Board). It’s like the SATs but for latin students. It wasn’t as hard as I had heard it would be. April: We’re told our results in the College Board test. I was the second highest in school (my sister was the highest!!). My highest score was 748 in the English field (the max. score you can get is 800). Also in April, my sister and I go to the State-level DECA competition. Finally, 11th graders are required to take the META test (yet another standardized test...). It was harder than the college board, but meh. May: My sister and I are told the results of the competition. Although I lost, my sister won a 2nd place in her competition! Besides, going to the state level competition was really fun and we met people from all around the island. Also, 11th grade was over. I’m a senior now! August: 12th grade officially starts. Jesus, this year’s teachers are all boring. We also get to know the results of the META test. Apparently I was the highest score on school, but I’m not sure. I was the only student that passed the math section, though. September: Probably the most eventful month, and not necessarily in a good way. On Sept. 6, category 5 hurricane Irma devastated the lesser Antilles. My own father lost pretty much everything. Not even a month after that, on Sept. 20, category 4 hurricane Maria strikes my own island. My family and I were lucky, only minor damages in our house (although some windows did fall out, so we were all forced to lock ourselves in my sister and my room for 18 hours or so). The wind was so strong that I could feel it banging against the door to our room, even if said room was literally in the middle of the house. Scariest shit ever (although I am naturally a scaredy-cat...). The day of the storm was probably the longest I had been awake. Three days after the hurricane, I turned 17 (it was the saddest birthday ever). Obviously, after the storm we had no power or water services. Luckily, water services started working after a few days. October: Still no power since Maria, and school hasn’t started yet. I get to see my dad for the first time since both Irma and Maria. November: Finally, on Nov. 4th, after 45 days in the dark (a month and a half, or six weeks), power services were restored where I live! I was so desperate I even counted the hours without power (around 1,080 hours, a bit more). Night in the dark were dreadful, it was so unbearably hot (typical weather in Puerto Rico...). Two days later, school starts again! Unfortunately, there are thousands of people in my island that are still without power (it’s been more than 100 days!). Even friends or people I know are still having a hard time. This is not over. December: 12th graders are required to take the College Board test AGAIN (even if you passed it...). This test was actually supposed to be taken on October, but yeah, y’all know what happened. I still don’t know my score :c And yeah, that was my 2017. Sorry for skipping March, June and July, they were too uneventful! I’d say more good things happened in 2017, BUT the few bad things that happened DEFINITELY outweigh the good ones. I hope 2018 is as catastrophe-free as it can get. Maria was the first hurricane I had ever experienced, and it was probably the worst experience too. Definitely a birthday to remember. Anyways, I wish we all have an amazing 2018, we all deserve it!!

[aramaura]

Hello! I am a teacher in a daycare, and I have taught in both primary and secondary schools as well as every single room we have in the daycare school. I can tell you that are daycares typically run for infants, toddlers, Discovery preschool which is for two-year-olds, preschool for three-year-olds, and Pre- kindergarten that is for four year olds. We also have something called TK which means transitional kindergarten. Transitional kindergarten is usually meant for students who the parents either think their child is not fully ready for actual school kindergarten, or for the children who have their birthdays after September and have just slightly missed the cutoff date to go to regular school. Then we have kindergarten, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th. Depending where you live you can either continue elementary school or primary School in the sixth grade like I did, or you will be sent to the Middle School for 6th grade. That being said middle schools typically run for grades 6, 7, and 8. Or they will run for 7, 8, and 9th grade like mine was. Then comes High School. In most American Media you'll see High School depicted with four grades. The freshman year is 9th grade, the sophomore years 10th grade, the junior year is 11th grade, and the senior year is 12th grade. Or if you went to a weird school district like I did, we only had 10th, 11th, and 12th grades. However ours was designed this way because of the sheer volume of students we have every year. In fact my graduating class was over 1134 students. We also had 13 elementary schools and three middle schools. And only one high school. Hence the weird grade situation. I'm rambling again. I hope this helped a little bit.

As a Non-American don't understand why Americans use grades like they're ages?

Okay Steve Hunterson the 3rd i don't know who old you where when you were in 7th grade so stfu and tell me your age you white hoe-

EXACTLY?

I always confuse myself with American grades but I thiiink it’s something like this..?

Year 1 = uhh not a fucking clue

Year 2 = first grade

Year 3 = second grade

Year 4 = third grade

Yada yada yada, so on

I always remember it by America being a year behind

[eternalexhaustion]

The Time is Now.

When I was in Kindergarten, I was bullied for having an imaginary friend. I was told that we were too old to have imaginary friends, I was told that it was weird and he was not real. A few weeks later, I said goodbye to my purple pal and decided I would not be the weirdo.

When I was in 2nd grade, I was bullied for getting glasses. I was called ugly by boys, my friends joked that nobody would like me anymore if I wore them. I was told I looked like a dork. When I got the chance, I would take my glasses off and pretend I did not need them to see.

When I was in 3rd grade, I was bullied for my haircut. Due to a mistake of my hairdresser, my hair went from being as long as my armpits to being up to my ears. The “ugly” comments progressed. I was humiliated. I have hated haircuts ever since.

When I was in 4th grade, I was bullied for having a “unibrow”. I tried to use my fingernails to pinch the hairs out and get rid of them, but to no avail. My mother let me wax my eyebrows for the first time soon after.

When I was in 5th grade, I was bullied for not shaving my legs. All the other girls started to, and my blonde (barely noticeable) leg hair was becoming the pinnacle of my embarrassment. I began to shave my legs soon after.

When I was in 6th grade, I was bullied for getting braces. A metal mouth on top of glasses and a bad haircut led me to being as unattractive as possible. Nobody would like me, I was hideous. I hated myself and desperately craved anything to change how I looked. I would wear 5 rubber bands in my mouth at once hoping that I could get my braces off sooner.

When I was in 7th grade, I was bullied on the bus by older girls. They told me I was ugly and annoying. They told me that nobody actually liked me. Riding the bus became my personal hell, just praying that they were not riding that day. But they always were. And I went home crying. I got contacts and began wearing makeup soon after.

When I was in 8th grade, I was bullied for dating a “goth” boy. After getting contacts and applying makeup, my romantic life sparked for the first time. I was no longer the ugly girl and I was enjoying every second of it. I began dating a boy who was not in the “popular” crowd, who was more on the edgy side and actually cared about me. I was bullied for dating a “goth” boy. I tried to not let it get to me like everything else. But it did. And I could not take it anymore. I broke up with the “goth” boy to make it stop. But it did not.

Later in 8th grade, I was bullied by one of my own (ex) best friends. She was going through a tough time dealing with emotional problems that I was too young to comprehend. She was self-harming and depressed and I did not understand why or what that even meant. When I decided that dating the “goth” boy was not worth the harassment anymore and ended it, she began to despise me for it. The two became close when I was dating him. She began to tell everyone that I was the reason she cuts herself. She told rumors every day that were not true. These rumors began just amongst classmates, but stemmed into the principal and faculty of our school. The rumors progressively got worse and more frequent. I was being called into the principle’s office several times per week, each for a new claim that was completely false or out of context. I begged the school to stop it. I pleaded that I was not doing anything wrong and just wanted to stay in class. They were worried about her mental health and thought it would be best to keep handling it the same way to help her. They did not ask about my mental health. They never did. My mental health matched hers by the end of the year, but nobody cared.

When I was in 9th grade, I was bullied for dating a junior in high school. I was excited to be out of the torture of 8th grade. I had little to no self-esteem. I was extremely depressed and anxious constantly, but being with my boyfriend made me feel better. People thought it was pathetic. I was told I was being used. I did not care. What difference did it make to someone who does not view herself as anything to begin with?

When I was in 11th grade, I was bullied for being a “psycho ex” when my long-term boyfriend and I broke up. He was my longest relationship, and I thought the person I would spend the rest of my life with. I never liked his friends and he changed as a person because of them. He broke up with me. I wished things were different. I missed the old “him” immensely and his friends mocked me for it. Why could not I just get over it and move on like him?

When I was in 12th grade, I was a bully to someone. I was the bully to one of my best friends since 7th grade. You know who you are. I am truly sorry, from the bottom of my heart. You did not deserve it, as no one does. I was weak and pathetic. I have no explanation other than that. There is not a day that goes by that I do not think about it and regret it. I just hope someday you may genuinely forgive me.

When I was a junior in college, I decided to make a change. All my life, I have been craving and seeking love. I have tried my absolute hardest to become accepted by everyone, to be a friend to everyone, to be well-liked. I have forgiven all of those who have made my life hell in the past. They have shaped me into the person I am today, regardless of how they did it. Time after time, person after person, I have accepted their apologies, I have given them several chances to prove to me that they care. And I am tired. I am tired of being walked on. I am tired of being taken advantage of. I am tired of faking friendships that just make my chest tight when I see them and relieved when they leave. Most of all, I am tired of not being loved the same amount that I give out. I am at a point in my life where I am finally comfortable with who I am. And who am I? I am a weirdo. I am a poor-visioned, horrible haircut surviving, bushy-browed hairy-legged girl who has struggled to find any confidence throughout her life. While it might not have been okay in the past, it certainly is okay now, regardless of what others think. I am who I am. If someone does not appreciate the full extent of that, it is their loss, and I feel okay saying goodbye. I have began to cut people out of my life that are not encouraging me to be the best “me” there is. I have began to block out those who did not appreciate me and my friendship. It might seem extreme to some people, but when you have been treated so poorly by “friends” your whole life, there comes a point where you decide it is time for a change. And that time is now.

I still struggle with the trauma of my past to this day but I have learned to love myself despite it all. I have accepted that I will not become friends with everyone. I will not always be liked. I will not always receive the same amount of love and respect from someone that I feel for them. And that is okay. I am beyond thankful for the people that I DO have in my life. Thank you for all that you’ve done for me and thank you for continuing to show great friends do exist out there.

[defunctblogtobedeleted]

8/28/19 8:09pm - Meanwhile, In Real Time (basically all of aug ‘19)

So today I only have one patient for the first time in like half a year. I guess it makes sense since it’s the end of august and insurance policies are starting to roll over. After so many busy weeks of work it’s really exciting though.

And it couldn’t have happened at a better time. For one I’m pretty excited to get writing and catching up on this past year. But for TWO, World of Warcraft Classic just launched this week. I wasn’t sure if I was going to like it. Yknow I never played it before because I was worried how it would eat my life like Runescape did. But Spencer and a bunch of NC Melee peeps wanted me to play so I’m in there. Looks like my obsessions really have cycled in order.

[continued at 11:04pm after putting pts to bed]  Pokemon (first grade), Magic (third grade), Runescape (fourth grade), Halo/Gears (7th-9th), Guitar Hero (8th-10th), Quiz Bowl (11th&12th) , Ultimate Frisbee (12th-soph), League of Legends (soph-senior), Melee (senior-last year). I have a kind of filthy habit of playing so much that it’s debilitating and then finally breaking out of it only to move on to doing the same thing with something else.

Since quitting melee I’ve gotten obsessed with Pokemon and Magic, so it looks like getting into WoW was inevitable. 

Just kidding, an unscheduled 2nd patient showed up and it turns out he’s actually supposed to be here so I’m not QUITE so free as all that, but it’s still not 3 patients, 2 is totally easy for me now.

Lol I took this screenshot when I got in to the office 

as of now I’m all caught up with work and I’ve still got 133 minutes to go, so looks like I have plenty of time to write for a second.

So what do I have to catch up on? well my days have been looking like weds-thurs-fri are always work, saturday I’ll stay up all day doing something, sunday I’m usually sleeping in, Monday I’m usually either playing DnD or chilling playing games, and Tuesday is a chill day until karaoke. 

The past two weekends have been kind of crazy though, so I just wanted to write about them for a minute before I got too far gone. 

Actually, let’s go back to 3 weekends ago. I visited Dars because I needed to, it’s been too long. I meant to write a lot more than I did, but instead I stayed up late into the night watching Andi draw shit on twitch. I’ve been thinking about her a lot lately, mostly trying to collect all my thoughts on what I want to write about, but I definitely miss her and hope she’s doing okay. I ‘accidentally’ responded to a question she asked when she was talking to herself on stream, I hadn’t meant to talk to her at all I just wanted to see her do her thing and reflect on her a little.  Really I wanted to watch her play breath of the wild. I miss us playing that together. Watching her enjoy something I enjoyed so much really made me happy. Anyway, I only bring that up because I tried to tune in again to actually watch her play BotW and found out she blocked me from her channel. I could still watch, which was nice, but I couldn’t say anything. Probably for the best. After watching her for a few hours I unfollowed her channel so I wouldn’t even try anymore.

Now you’re just somebody that I used to know.

I did that song at karaoke last night. I practiced in the bathroom and the car beforehand and was nailing it I thought. But I got up on stage and I was thinking of you and I bombed it. I haven’t bombed a song so hard since the time I tried to sing you I Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing when I was in drunk-screaming mode, or the first time I tried to do MakeDamnSure. And those were when I was drunk. This I like just tried to get to the high notes and on stage I just couldn’t. My voice kind of broke. I cleared the crowd. It was humiliating, to be honest. I don’t know if I was tired from playing 12 hours of WoW with spencer yesterday (amazing, btw. I had a ton of fun), or if I was thinking of you too much, or if I was actually just floundering from making the first mistake (which doesn’t quite make sense because I’ve made mistakes and then fixed them easily in plenty of songs before). But it was awful.  I got to hang out with some friends for a bit, sang The Hand That Feeds and did excellently at it, got some good cheers and shit, but I still felt like ass. Went home and played some melee and some more WoW and stayed up until 6am and slept 12 hours lmao.

So I had an avocado for dinner and now here I am. I’ve been doing more fasting days lately where I eat really light. They’re not true fasting days because usually I eat a bunch of nuts or something. But I don’t eat a big meal like I normally do once a day. Also I wanted to go back to Darlin’s because we watched zoolander, and at one point he says “bulimia is a great way to lose pounds before a shoot” and I was like “oh yeah, true.” lol so now if someone makes me eat a bunch of ice cream with them (darlin and jill), then I’ll do it and throw it up after -_-. Not the healthiest but I’ve only done it on like two or three occasions. I’m mostly being good. Only exercising once a week lately though, WoW kinda blew up everything this week and I’ve been hella busy lol. 

Okay so week after Darlin’s, I made some new friends at karaoke that my buddy Skyler introduced me to there. I drove up to Virginia on Saturday to do Quarry Fest that tessa and her boyfriend had planned out on his property. It was fucking phenomenal. Spent the day day drinking and swimming, it was gorgeous out, beautiful people in swimsuits everywhere, made a whole bunch of new friends who loved me because they already loved tessa, saw a handful of old high school friends. I really got strong attraction vibes from my friend Emily, but she was there with a new boyfriend so ah well such a shame for her lmao. Stayed up until like 4 in the morning talking with people around a big bonfire, it was just like a fun old rappahannock field party where everyone knew everyone at least by a removal factor of one. Such a beautiful time. I fucking drunkenly danced my ass off all night while these live musicians and djs were on. Just phish style sway jammed out in the sand, made my legs fucking exhausted lol. Moving in sand is so fucking hard! I’d get a drink, chug it down, spin around drunkenly jam around for a bit, sober up, get a new drink, rinse and repeat lmao. The Diet Dr Pepper and white rum idea later in the night was miserable though. FUCK diet drinks they’re not adequate mixers. holy blegh. plus the rum was hot as balls I need to find a new kind of liquor to keep in my trunk. The best idea I’ve heard from people so far is sake. I loved Tessa’s boyfriend’s family too. The one little brother had the same supreme cheetah print that I had on except he had the boxers, we really hit it off actually. After sleeping in my car for the night I woke up and went skinny dipping for like an hour or so, I spent a lot of the next morning talking to him and his girlfriend, mostly entertaining her with the weird stories that I tell on here. She said I was probably the craziest person she’d ever met, and wished that I lived closer so that she could hook me up with her sister. She said she needed to try someone fun like me out LMAO. Then their family made a huge breakfast at their house and I got to pig out on some lox and chit chat with tessa about shit before heading back to Raleigh.

That’s right, I went there and came back for just a day because I needed to be back the next night for Emo Karaoke LOL. There’s no way I was gonna miss it, it’s only once a month. 

It was the craziest thing though. My friends caitlin and gretchen came to emo karaoke but it hadn’t started yet because of an open mic poetry night, so they split to go to Ruby’s annual No Pants Party and told me to meet up with them if I wanted to. I was the first person to sing, I did The Used and it went fantastically. I met this guy morgan and his girlfriend elizabeth I think, and she emailed me a video of it lol I love it. I also sang backup vocals for him on MakeDamnSure, I was so happy that he asked me, I’ve literally practiced doing the backup singing just in case someone ever did hahaha. But after my song this girl walks up to me and says “did you go to chapel hill? Do you remember who I am?” I look at her and it’s none other than fucking LEXI. Like huge crush in college Lexi. Like written about her at least a handful of times at LEAST Lexi. Like I named my fucking CAR after you Lexi. So I was like “HOLY SHIT YES” oh my god and caught up with her and I’m 90% sure she was there with another guy, but I got to meet her friends and chit chat and I screamed my fucking throat out that night. My voice was already toasty from singing in the car all the way up and back from virginia but after that it was torched lmao. I also did The Used+MCR’s Under Pressure with my friend from there Kenny, got some chick’s number, and the list was full so I dipped after that.

Went to the no pants party and it wasn’t super crazy, but I got some beautiful pics lol. Caitlin helped me tie up my shirt super cute, I wore it as a blouse and as an ascot hahaha. But hanging with them at the no pants party mostly got me to this afterparty at a friend’s place downtown.  I had rum and bought some coke that we threw in the freezer, but instead of mixing the coke and rum me and Jacob had this great idea to mix the rum with freezie pops to see if it was any good. Did like 3 shots testing it out to see if the ratio could work. Mostly it tasted like a bad slushie lol. Went to the porch to smoke a cig and people started passing some coke around so I did a little of that, and started having this long ass conversation with this girl MJ. We hit it off for like literally an hour on the porch at 4 in the morning. We talked about pokemon and tons of nerdy video game shit, and it turns out she had been at karaoke that week, I had already listened to her singing! I got her number and have since tried to hit her up a few times to hang out. She’s always responded to all of my texts IMMEDIATELY. like within the minute fast. It’s weird. But unfortunately either because she’s not actually interested or because she’s truly been too busy, I haven’t been able to meet up with her to do anything. I guess we’ll see if that ever develops, but I think she was really cool. I really hope I at least get to make a pass at her.  After that I brought gretchen back to my place to hang out. Didn’t try to hook up with her or anything, but we just wanted to chill and do some blow that I had leftover and wanted to get rid of. Did some talking about some fucked up shit going on with some of her friends dying, but it was mostly in the context of her wanting to go back to the party to try to find an adderall on the ground when we ran out of shit. At like 8 in the morning we drove around to pick up some shit, but nobody was awake, she gave me half an adderall to try to help me stay up but after I popped it I still took a nap in the car while we waited so I was like yeah nah I’m tapping out. After driving to virginia and back and having two late party nights I was fucking spent and didn’t want to miss my appointment to drop my car off for repairs. Honestly though, I have no fucking idea what Brandon saw in her that made him so coocoo for her. She seems like your typical party hardy everything-sucks kind of girl. I don’t think I’ve heard her say a positive thing about...anything. She’s always shit talking or talking down about life or saying she wants to go somewhere else that’s cooler, or that older parties were more fun or some shit. Meh. Luckily I’m not the one tryna bang her, and Caitlin totally balances her out with how smiley and happy she is when I hang out with them. Her and Jacob are cute as fuck too. 

But I DID end up making it to my appointment. My car is almost done being fixed!!

Then I had a board game night that monday, me and Trent and Steven played some of this train game called snowdonia and I narrowly lost. Steven almost always beats me, that fucker lol. I really respect how smart he is about magic and game theory in general tbh.

Last week there was karaoke and work. At karaoke I found out this really cute smiley girl Hannah (a friend/coworker of my lesbian couple friends) is getting a divorce from her husband (she’s like 24), and so thattt’s pretty interesting. I don’t wanna make moves because she’s wonderful and I don’t want to be a douche, but she’s like... still the happiest person I’ve ever met even in the midst of changing her entire life. I kinda wish I could go on a date with her just to find out more about her lol. Saturday I didn’t sleep so that I could go to my friend Helena’s place for her to dye and cut my hair. I really followed through on wanting it to look like Brad Pitt from Once Upon A Time In Hollywood like I decided when we saw it darlin’s lol. I really wanted to change my hair, I’m kind of sick of having bangs in my face and need to symbolically move on to doing something new. Then saturday afternoon/evening I got drunk as fuckkkk with broscious and irene for their housewarming party. First time getting really drunk with them it was so much fun! We played a drinking game while watching a glassblowing show where we drank every time they said glass or blew, so it was pretttty good hahaha. I probably overdid it with the threesome and trap jokes later with their friends when we got to the bar lol, but they seemed so innocent I had to fuck with them a little hahaha. Fell asleep on the floor of their living room at like 3 in the morning because someone else had dibs on the couch. Woke up at like 7am blegh, found out I lost my house key lol, went back to sleep at my place til noon, then went to play board games with steven trent and reyad again.  After that I went to boxcar to meet up with Maya, and she had brought a bunch of her coworkers and Rianne as usual, so it was a great time. We bounced from boxcar to Rianne’s place, got to drink with Ollie and played this weird frog golf game and we discussed whether Blonde or Channel Orange was the better Frank Ocean album. They ALL were fighting me that Channel Orange was just better in every way, but I still think Blonde is incredible. I offered to take Jill home to her place since she lives nearby, we got some mcdonalds and watched some american dad and had some great sex. and again the next morning, and again in the afternoon. So luckily that’s still working out, I thought it had fallen apart, but I’ll explain more on that later on when I finish playing catchup. I took her back to her car and we got some good ass ramen downtown.

We made tentative plans to hang out again the next day and maybe go thrifting and I spent the rest of monday playing Melee for a couple hours. But I woke up at 9am and started playing WoW with spencer, so when she hit me up that she was getting off work at like 3pm I was in the middle of a 6 hour bingefest playing WoW for the first time in my life. He told me I should keep playing with him so I didn’t fall behind and so I thought about it... and then I did lmao. I said that I was nerding out with my roommate and asked if she wanted to hang out after karaoke. She said yeah definitely but she might go to bed earlier than normal (~3) because she had to work a double. I hit her up at midnight to leave karaoke early after that embarrassment of a performance, but she never responded. I think she said she wanted to hang out so that she could blow me off too, tbh. But jokes on her, I got to play more melee until I could get through the login queue for WoW and got to play for another 3 hours. Perfect.

Though more sex would’ve been nice, for sure. 

Anyway, things are going wonderfully. I’m going to a big concert in raleigh in two weeks. Probably just nerding out this weekend since I mixed up my weekends and didn’t make plans. Helena dyed my hair with highlights to look like brad pitt, but I’m changing it to be totally blonde like Maya and Rianne want instead. They miss my old yellow hair lol and Oliver and everyone I’ve asked did too so I’m gonna try it out again. 

Definitely ready to move forward and try some new things. 

I’ve been thinking about Andi way too much the past two weeks. It sucks. I really want to talk to her. And give her her chair back. So I want to see her. But I know I’m feeling good with everything so really things are better off just moving on I guess. Maybe once I finally write my catchup posts about her I can stop thinking about her. But it’s made me procrastinate a lot, I’m like literally doing anything I can to not write these last handful of catchup posts...

But I promise I will soon. I need to do it. Maybe that’s what I’ll do saturday while I wait for the queue for WoW to thin out lmao. It’s currently 12:06 and I still have an estimated time of 13 minutes after trying to log in at 7:45 lol.

Also tryna cop some supreme clothes tomorrow. Wish me luck, I Really hope I can get this tiger print jacket and hat. Boutta drop a mint lol. Clothes are kinda fun. It’s nice not dressing like a hobo all the time, I guess. Mostly because it’s hot. Once it’s the right temperature to wear pajama pants again you better believvvve I’m gonna just get fancy sweatpants lmfao.

Anyway, queue’s finally done! holy shit yeah it’s only 12:15 Kappa. Gonna go play some WoW love you guys bye <3

[color-of-magic]

Becoming LGBT?

I started preschool when I was three years old, and I went to the same all-boys catholic preschool that my brother had gone to two years before me. I only went there for a year, and I don’t remember any of it, but there’s this really cute picture of me on picture day standing in a crowd of eight boys fixated on the doggy chew toy that I had in my mouth. 

The next year I went to a co-ed presbyterian preschool, and I cant really tell from the picture, but I think there were only two boys in my class. My best friend was named Theresa and she had a hyphenated last name that I thought was the longest name I had ever seen, and she was allergic to tree nuts and peanuts and milk and eggs, and every Friday I would go over to her house and we would watch that movie Spirit and we would do a 100 piece puzzle and plan the rest of our lives together. We were going to adopt a puppy and a pony and live on a farm together and I know this because I saved all the letters we wrote to each other for years after I moved again. 

In kindergarten I kissed my best friend while playing and the teacher saw and suddenly they weren’t fine with us playing house with two mommies and I was sent to the principals office. I got a talking to about how you aren't allowed to touch other people while at school and I was so scared by my visit that the next time I would allow myself to touch a friend would be in 10th grade. 

In first grade I was sent to my grandparents house without my parents for the first time. and I got to play with my grandparent’s old transformers. My parents were starting to get worried about my tomboyishness and were making me wear more and more pink and skirts and dresses and I would cry every time they did but I would still wear them to make my parents happy.

At this time my grandfather began to pester me about the boys in my class that I might have a crush on. He heard the name Evan once and to this day he still asks “How’s Evan doing?” and “Has Evan asked you out yet?” Jokes on you, Grandpa, he’s gay too now.

I really liked playing with those transformers and I would sit on the rug in my grandparent’s living room while my grandmother read a book on the couch, and once she caught me completely by surprise by looking over at me out of the blue and asking if I felt like a boy trapped in a girls body. I was so surprised by this that I said yes, because I knew that I wasn’t a girl and if I wasn’t a girl then I must have been a boy. Somehow this got back to my parents and my father hit me until I cried and I promised that I would never call myself a boy again. 

Sometimes a girl would look at me and I would forget how to breathe and I told myself that it was just because I was shy but it never seemed to happen with boys. 

In the beginning of fourth grade I heard the word gay used as an insult for the first time and it was directed at my older brother and I was confused because the only time that I had ever seen gay used was in the book Pippy Longstocking. In the book it meant happy and I was wondering why happy would be an insult. 

At the end of fourth grade I was so tired of being asked who my crush was and not having an answer that I opened my yearbook and closed my eyes and pointed to a person at random and did this three or four times until the person my finger landed on was a boy. From that moment on he was who I said my crush was whenever I was asked. His name was John in case you were wondering. 

In fifth grade I got my first crush on a fictional character. It was Ginny Weasly but in my head I justified it by saying that I was just so happy with Ginny and Harry’s relationship. At this point I began thinking the reason I didn’t feel like a girl because I read so many books with a boy as the main character. And maybe I didn’t like boys because that main character always kissed the girl. I stopped reading at that point. 

My mother made me start wearing bras in the fifth grade and I can remember hiding under the comforter on my bead in just my underwear and new bra, crying that first morning she made me put it on because it felt so wrong and I didn’t want anyone to be able to tell that I was a girl. Later that day we went to Costco and I remember that I hid in the bathroom stall and I took my shirt off and stared at my chest and cried instead of peed because I knew that even if I took the bra off people would still be able to tell that I was a girl because I had boobs now. 

In sixth grade the first couple of the school got together and they held hands on the playground and kissed once and I was confused because I kissed a friend once and got in so much trouble but they could kiss and hold hands and face no consequences. 

In seventh grade I started thinking girls were so pretty and sometimes I couldn’t take my eyes off them and there was this one girl in particular, she played softball and the clarinet and was in all but two of my classes and she wore skirts with t-shirts and had dark brown hair and eyes and then she moved away and we never spoke again. 

In 8th grade I was told by a friend that this friend of another friend of her’s liked me and my heart stopped and I turned bright red and stammered out a very not convincing no-homo that I’m sure she didn’t at all believe. 

In ninth grade I became an Ally but I would do that obnoxious straight person thing where I would say 100 times in a sentence that I am straight but support the gays no-homo. 

In tenth grade I identified what I was feeling as what can be described at “homosexual tendencies”, but I was so scared of being gay that I justified it in my head by saying that I wasn’t feeling any sexual or romantic attraction to these girls, just aesthetic, so I’m probably asexual and not in any way a lesbian. And after all, I had a crush on Evan and John, remember?

In 11th grade I realized that yes, I am defiantly attracted to girls. Not at all asexual like I once thought. 11th grade was the year of very intense gay feelings for people that never quite went away, but I always managed to convince myself that it would never work because they were straight. As it turns out, only one of them are actually straight. 

11th grade was also the start of all the self-hatred. Because I was disgusting for liking these girls and if any of them knew what I was feeling they would all hate me and I would never be able to make friends again. Gay marriage hadn’t yet been legalized and I was so worried for my future and whether I would be able to get a job or adopt kids or live a happy life. 

In 12th grade I went to prom with a beautiful girl. Just as friends of course, but I still remember her red dress and the way her hair curled down her back and the shade of her lipstick. And I might have had a mild, no, correct that, major crush on her too. And I danced with a different girl at the end of the night, just before it closed at midnight as the lights were starting to come back on and people were starting to exit. When we were done she kissed the back of my hand like I had done to my friend all those years ago and her lipstick stained my skin and shoulder and in that moment I wasn’t afraid of who would see me or how I would be perceived. In that moment I thought maybe gay can be okay. 

Sense I’ve left high school I’ve done a lot. I’ve gone from being completely closeted to coming out to a friend, and then another friend (all over text mind you, because I’m too scared to do that sort of thing in person) to saying the words “I’m a lesbian” out loud for the first time. I’ve gotten my first binder and I’ve changed my pronouns and name (more times than I can count before I finally found one I liked and told others). I’ve made so many gay friends and I’ve become comfortable with myself as a result of their support. I’ve gone to my first and second pride and I’ve become the vice-president of the gay club. All that’s left now is for me to kiss my first cute girl and live happily ever after