Saturday, June 11, 2005
First day of summerman.. first day of summer. saturday, june 11, 2005. craziness man. i never EVER thought it would come. it's finally here. i'm happy in most ways. i'm glad to be lazy. i'm glad to have no work. i'm glad to sleep in. i'm glad for everything, pretty much. the thing is.. i feel like there's a lotta things missing. i miss everyone ALREADY. i know that longing will just dissipate as time goes on, but there'll always be that faint void because i won't have everyone by my side every second of the day. i won't have the knowledge that my friends are absolutely without a doubt gonna be there for me if i need them. i guess that's what the phone is for? ahh.. i dont know. i'm glad it's summertime.. time for more changes in myself, inside and out. it's gonna be a good one.. summer of '05. i'm excited, happy, sad.. you name it.
so before i go into this extremely long and painful post about the year.. let me talk about the past few days, since i haven't filled in. i've avoided the blog, because i didn't want to post an end-year post too quickly. anyway.. yesterday was of course the last day of school. it was good and bad.. mostly good. i had pe and english, and english was a lot easier than i thought it would be. so yesterday was good. i had a hard time leaving some friends, but of course, i didn't show that. but it saddened me a lot to know that this would be the last embrace i'd have with that person for a while, or maybe even forever.
anyway, i went to graduation to meet lily and nia there. of course, nia being the gay hole that she is, forgot my freakin yearbook. thanks nia.. now i have to wait for lily to bring it to me on base.. hopefully you didn't forget THAT too. anyway.. grad was pretty boring, but it was cool i guess. i rode with zack and brad back to zack's house to spend the nite, and we ate dinner and such. we were gonna go to heather wiswell's grad party, but we found out it was in vacaville, so that was a big N-O. anyway.. we had a good time i guess last nite.. of course, we fell asleep early.. like 11. but that's alright, because we were tired. then today we chilled for a long while. played darts and stayed inside for most of the day. the highlite of the day was definitely that very nice batch of "Zack's Famous Waffles"!! i was so excited to eat those things man.. i haven't had them in a long time. then me and zack went to BK to eat with our free meals that we got from there. we chilled at the bx, and now we're here at The Peak, and i'm telling you my life story. here goes.
Freshman Year - Vanden Highall i can say is.. dang. i can't believe.. it's
over. i mean.. finally
over. i just.. have such a hard time trying to wrap my mind around that concept. when i look back on some aspects of it.. it seems so LONG ago. but then.. from all other angles, it's like it ended in a week, and we're here now ready for sophomore year to come. of course i'm not, but that's a different story. man.. freshman year. we all walked in thinking we were so bad because man.. we were
freshman and we didn't care. we felt older, wiser, and we thought we knew everything. ok, maybe not EVERYTHING. but we sure thought we were way better than we had ever been in our entire lives. which is mostly true. i mean.. we are in high school, and we always hear that these are gonna be the greatest years of our lives. yet high school i think.. has turned a lot of us into worse people in sense. i know it did somewhat to me. maybe it's just the drawl of school.. having to go there EVERY day, seeing the same people every day. it just became so monotonous. i became very bitter towards life in general for a small amount of time. of course, it wasn't
just school that did that to me. circumstances had a lot to do with it.
many things happened this year though, that changed me for the better. events that i thought i'd never get over, because they were so horrible, actually in turn made me a better person. my mother leaving was one of those major events. it made me, along with the rest of my family, a much stronger person. i realized that yeah, my mom is the greatest mom in the ENTIRE world and i do take a lot of the things that she does for me for granted. and it's sad.. really sad that it takes something that major to realize how great you actually do have it. but when my mom was gone, i had to figure out how to do things.. to not let the house become the messiest house of the century, to become more independent. but my mom.. she's my hero. she's everything to me, and if ever had to lose her.. i don't know what i would do.
the next major event.. me and nia. my only relationship this year. and a pretty darn good one at that. she helped me learn so many things about myself. helped me to straighten out many things in my life that i was doing wrong. she probably doesn't even realize that, but it's true. yeah, there were a lot of downs, but i wouldn't trade that time i had with her for anything. i just want to thank her for being there for me throughout all the times that i acted retarded.. for putting up with me, basically. i did a lot of stupid things, but she helped. so thanks nia.. i appreciate all the things that you did for me.
track and cross country played amazingly major roles in my life. i started cross country not knowing what to expect. i walked into the classroom with martinez talking about what we'd be doing for the season in cross country, what we'd get up to in practice, and what kinds of goals we have. and holy cow, was i surprised. after finding out we'd get up to 7 miles a day, along with crazy mile-intervals, i wasn't so psyched up about running anymore. of course, i still went to practice, because running is my one chance to show people who i really am and what i'm capable of. but i don't run just for that, of course. i'm not gonna go into detail about the life lessons that running teaches you, and the amazing exhausted bliss you can get from running, but you get the point. i improved so awesomely over this past cross country season, i can't begin to explain. and even though i know tinez won't ever see this.. i'm really grateful to him. he's such a great coach, and right now, i couldn't ask for a better one. cross country wasn't only good for the running. our team bonded so well.. it was crazy. yeah, it's cliche, but it's like we're one big family. and a great family at that. i spent more time with them than i spent with my regular friends. i mean.. it was every single afternoon, then almost every single saturday. crazy.. i love those guys though. track wasn't nearly as fun, however. maybe it's because i don't enjoy running in circles.. or maybe it's because there's a big track team, as compared to a small cross country team. we didn't really bond at all. of course, there was some improvement.. and again, i'm thankful to martinez for that, but other than that the season kind of sucked. so.. as you can see, running is my life. i love it.. if i lost it.. i don't know what i'd do. and running became so major this year.. that i couldn't imagine going to school knowing that there was no running to do. what a freak.
gosh.. friends were so important this year. there were a lot of points where i, along with everyone else was so busy that there was no time to hang out. but no matter what.. i knew that we'd all be there for each other, if it was needed. i grew so close to three people this year, it's not even funny. zack, nia, and lily.. they're such great friends. knowing that i won't see lily and nia every day like i normally do is a hard fact to face. i'm gonna miss knowing i can just walk up to one of them (or all four of them, for that matter) and talk about anything. i'm just looking forward to spending time with them this summer.. it's gonna be great.
one thing that really got me this year was the business of it all. we ALL had things to do. me with running, zack with soccer/aerospace/gw marching, lily with asb, and almost every other one of my friends with marching band. i never realized how busy we actually all were gonna get this year. i got caught up so much into what i was doing, that a lot of times, i didn't just take in the present day.. live in it. i think we all do that sometimes. of course, looking forward to the future is good. but if we all continue to look forward and don't take in what we have during these times now, what life is that? you don't even see anything. everything is just working towards something new. and yeah, that's good sometimes.. but like i said.. we gotta take in our surroundings. i love jack johnson's line.. "slow down everyone, you're moving too fast. frames can't catch you when you're moving like that.."
as for the entire year sum up.. i couldn't do that. but i could name something major that happened every month that helped this year be what it actually was.
August-i started cross country, and met some amazing new people that i'll probably never forget in my entire life.
September-school "officially" started.. everything started to become routine. i started finding my "place" in that which we call high school.
October-football games were definitely a big plus. halloween was hecka fun too, because i got to join in on the tradition that zack and brad have for halloween. dressing up like scarecrows and scaring kids. holy crap man.. good times. but it seems like it was just yesterday. gosh..
November-thanksgiving, of course. i got to go down to louisiana and visit friends and family. mostly family.. but i had a great time. all this time, zack and brad are having fun snowboarding and going to a GRITS concert. it was fun to hear about them though. this is also when we found out my mom would be leaving for kuwait.. and i surely wasn't ready for that.
December-Christmas was great this year. i got my beloved fender fat strat. hecka clean. but then, my good mood was pretty much ruined a couple days later with my mom leaving for kuwait for four months.
January-my 15th birthday. we didnt really do anything, but that's ok. i got some pretty cool clothes, along with a lot of money. on a side note, this is when zack's and nia's dads both left for the middle east as well. not very relevant to my life i guess, but i feel it's worth mentioning because they were very easy to connect to while all three of us had a parent that was gone.
February-me, zack, nia, and lily started hanging out a lot more. then of course, me and nia started going out.. which in the end.. i'm thankful for. she was a great girlfriend.
March-i have two words.. SPIRIT WEEK. good times man.. i once again grew close to people i didnt hang out with before. i also met karessa tam mendoza. now,
she is the coolest. i'm glad i met her.. her smile brightens up my life. hahaha.
April-the end of school mood is really starting to settle in. i started getting more and more lazy by the second. spring break kinda sucked, but then it was fun as well. from me wearing girl pants to
getting drunk (haha, yeah right).
May-me and nia broke up.. but we were both cool with it.. at least, after a while i was. also.. my mom came back. that was awesome.. having GOOD cooked food again. after she came back, it was like suddenly the house became clean again. i guess it was all her doing.
June-not much to talk about, i guess. school finally came to an end. i became a really good procrastinator. also, i'll never forget the romeo and juliet scene that jessica and i had to act out on tape. "
Sin from my lips? O, trespass sweetly urged! Give me my sin again!" (they kiss)i'd just like to make one more comment before i end this
ridiculously long post. near the middle of the year, zack and i (along with a few others) realized just how obnoxious the group started getting. and i'm sorry to anyone who is reading this and is getting offended. but it started getting really bad. this is why me and zack basically stoped hanging out with the group during the day. i mean, i can't say that everyone's retarded, because they're not. but it is true that some people made the group no fun to hang out with anymore. i won't name those people, but the people that know that i enjoy their company know who they are. i'm kinda sorry that the group goit retarded, but maybe it was bound to happen anyway. i don't know.
so there you have it.
freshman year. i hope you enjoyed it.
chris
chris ran as fast as he could
..never look back..
