Obviously, he had so much power and I had NONE. [Project year timeline, age 15]

Let it be known that this August has been the longest month of my life.

Literally, I've been counting down the days since the Orientation at central on the 1st. It SUCKED to wait this long, and I've still got 12 days! Still, fun to think I'll be turning the page this upcoming September today, how exciting is that.

I didn't accomplish my goal this month of studying accounting every day, but I did study a few solid hours this month and read the first about half of the textbook. It was a good enough review that I think if I were to just pick it up a couple more times before the class I'll be more than ready to ace it.

I've gotten a bit better at the guitar these last couple weeks (more than usual) because I finally got my hand positioning completely correct. Now that this is done my risk of carpel tunnel is alleviated because I'm more relaxed in my playing, it's a really big accomplishment! It's Week 21, week 22 is my last week with Jacob but I intend to continue my practice logs to map out exactly how many hours I've done. I'll have to buy an awesome piece of music equipment once I hit 1,000 hours. Maybe even a new guitar.

___________________________________

Project Year Timeline

Age 15, 2006-2007

The Year that Broke my Initial Spirit

That picture was taken by a professional photographer so it's not the most accurate representation of who I really was back then. Maybe this is better...

Okay those are crumbles of cookies with green frosting which we left on Les's porch. Why? I don't know? Notice that I look pretty psychotic. I genuinely was pretty crazy, but it was the first time in my life that I was happy and I wasn't used to it.

Summer before freshman year... I had pretty bad depression in middle school, for MANY reasons which I will explain to you in the next entries for that age. My mom had started me on Paxil for depression just a few months earlier, and it certainly worked. For the first time in my life I wasn't depressed and angry.

I was dating Toren S. that summer. Katharine was dating RJ so we'd spend a lot of time down at the skate park with the "BSK" group. Ever since then I call us the skate park groupies, because that's what it was like. Neither one of us could skate (Though I did try, of course, and failed miserably) so we'd just go there to hang out and goof off.

The BSK group was probably stoned all the time and that's why they acted so goofy and crazy. Katharine and I never were though, and we'd pretty much just feed of their craziness to get the proper vibes to come up with our own inside jokes. Damien C. was funny as Hell; they all were. They seemed like the right people to be hanging out with at the time. I felt like a cool 70's kid taking buses from skatepark to skatepark with no money and all the time in the world. 

I started to think I was rather cute, so my confidence was in the sky when I started highschool. I had Katharine, my boyfriend Toren, everything was going to be okay.

Of course things were NOT okay rather quickly. Toren and my relationship didn't translate well into highschool. Toren was just as crazy as he was during the summer. He was extremely loud and would wear pigtails to assemblies. This one time it embarrassed me and I politely asked him to take them out and he snapped back that he'll do whatever the Hell he wants. We broke up shortly after.

I think I originally broke up with him because of his "pot smoking," even if I had no idea what it was at the time. I'm pretty sure I just wanted an excuse to break up with him before he got to me, but the depression that the breakup caused spiraled rather quickly. I was sad about Toren for a few months, I think I really loved him back-- I mean my brain now is so different that I can't even say it counted as love but for young teenage love, yes it was pretty genuine. 

Because of Paxil I would act really loud and crazy too, but I really don't think it was just for attention. I think I just did it because I wanted to have fun, but once the relationship with Toren was over I quieted down quite a bit.

When I first started highschool I didn't fit anywhere. Like I said before in my previous entries, my class and I never got along so I figured Katharine would have a spot for me. She did, she managed to make it okay that I sat at the Mormon table but I said something really offensive and got booted. 

Katharine and my friendship during freshman year was really short lived. Things were fine originally, we'd joke around at soccer practices, sit next to eachother on bus rides, etc etc... But as time went on she became more and more cold toward me. I didn't know why, I figure I was just acting like myself and she was used to it; little did I know I was probably doing things every day she was keeping track of because months later when I tried to rekindle our friendship she gave me a big long list of all the things I'd done wrong.

Anyway... We'd been on the bus, it was a long ride home from Cle Elum or something and I was next to Katharine. Katharine had been talking on the phone with RJ since we'd left and didn't care to hear it so I looked for another seat. Haley M. and I had just met a few days earlier, she was a junior and had a lot of seniority on the team because she was really good and I was attracted to that. Well, that and I didn't want to listen to Katharine's sweet nothings on the phone anymore, so I moved.

My mom always hated this picture because she says we look like lesbians. This was taken before a football game in my basement. 

Haley and I got pretty close quickly. She was an open minded person-- she had a lot of cool afterlife theories, zodiac books... She was just an all around fascinating person and she was always pretty nice to me. At the time she was dating Indy, and I thought he'd be jealous of all the time Haley and I were spending together. After actually dating Indy myself, though, I realize he really didn't give a damn either way. 

So this friendship with Haley progressed during September where we'd walk over to Indy's and hang out there, hang out at her place or mine; I didn't really think there were any problems. Unfortunately Katharine got pretty jealous of this new friendship Haley and I had, and on top of the other vices that she had against me, decided this was enough of a reason to attempt to destroy my reputation. 

The shit really hit the fan Halloween night. Katharine and I had made a new tradition (that we'd started my 8th grade year) that we'd spend Halloween together, act crazy and give out candy. She came over and everything was alright for the first couple hours or so until Indy and Haley unexpectedly showed up. 

I think Indy actually had to talk to my mom about something, like he wanted to visit, but of course once Haley was at the door I was more than happy to make our halloween party four people. When Haley and Indy didn't leave Katharine started to get really quiet and bailed. Me being naive, I didn't think about it and really thought she had to go somewhere. I stuck with Haley the rest of the evening until she went back to Indy's.

That night I went on MySpace and Katharine posted a blog entry that talked about her disgust with me. She mentioned that I was "spending time with Haley, who knows what they're doing... gross!" Or something like that, implying that I was gay and that everyone needs to know what this new friendship REALLY is. Celeste P. had commented, who was pretty popular in highschool and known for having a bit of a big mouth; no offense Celeste-- again this is when we were 15, 16 years old so it's not like any of this implies today. 

Katharine took down the blog when I called her house asking why the HELL she would post something like that. She was pretty quiet, she ended up taking it down but this was just the beginning of the rumor mill saying I was gay. It didn't bother me as much as it bothered my mom. 

I didn't dodge the "Easy freshman" entirely, but my situation was more complicated then just hooking up with guys at parties or something. I was in a full out mind game with Tony L., he'd call my phone almost every night and we'd talk on the phone for hours. It was the weirdest ass thing I'd ever experienced, I had no idea why he was talking to me, I KNEW we weren't actually going to date... Mainly because he had a girlfriend and he was way out of my league. He pretty much stated this. I'll never forget when he said...

"Emily you're hot, but not really right now because you're so young... You'll be hot when you're like 18 years old." 

I appreciate this compliment a lot, I was coming out of an awkward stage my freshman year. I just really didn't understand why he'd be talking to me, but I went with it. 

Things got REALLY bad with Tony, however, when he ditched talking to me to go for Ainhoa, the foriegn exchanged girl. At the time I was actually hanging out with Heather E.'s group, which Ainhoa was a part of. Ainhoa was on my soccer team too so we knew eachother rather well when I told her that "Tony is a player." BAD!!! BAD idea! Should not have done that, in a matter of hours the entire school felt like they were gunning for me. Maria E. told me what was about to come and it scared the shit out of me. 

Tony called, "WHAT were you thinking. Why the FUCK would you say that. You're the one that made that mock myspace account didn't you?! Just to talk shit!!" There was some mock myspace account that someone created that was saying Tony was a player, this was NOT me. Of course I didn't want to create waves with Tony, I was really intimidated by him (obviously, he had so much power and I had NONE. Nothing, I was 15 for god sake and had just lost my best friend). 

Ironically enough, I ended up dating Chino, Tony's cousin for about six months. My relationship with Chino was pretty bizarre, he was nineteen years old and didn't really know what to make of me. I was still sort of crazy because of my influence from Toren but he really just took me as I was. Chino was really attracted to me physically and didn't seem to care much for my other weirdness. He didn't really get my sense of humor but we did have some good times...

Chino was freaking loaded, all the time. I have no idea where he got his money but he used to shower me in dates and gifts... He'd shower himself in gifts too, I'd never seen anyone who wore more Buckle and Ed Hardy style stuff (this was before Ed Hardy was big, but he dressed so perfectly.) My mom loved Chino, she liked having him around because he was the type of guy SHE would have dated and liked me being with him. Dad wasn't so fond of it though because he thought Chino and I were gonna end up getting too serious. Nooo way, my brain back then was so loopy there's no way I would have taken anything too seriously; with Chino I was just along for the ride. 

Freshman year was also a year of a lot of failure in attempt at being school spirited. I tried a lot of things, I tried being class treasurer and had to come before a group of leadership Mormons that probably thought I was the anti-Christ for my crazy behavior and short shorts, needless to say I didn't get the spot. The Mormon girls also didn't like me because I had hung out with Evan B., this totally hot, picture perfect Christian whose family did NOT like me that I met at Freshman orientation. 

Basketball season was a nightmare. I was originally on C squad which was fun because I got a lot of playing time but when the school cut the program I was stuck on a large JV team... The coach benched me for entire games, it broke my heart because I loved basketball and thought it was my best sport. Of course I was on a team with Jessica Small who even if it was her first year playing got all the playing time. She was tall, and probably in all fairness a better player than I was. This was the start of a long chain of Jessica S. senselessly beating me in practically everything. I hated her. 

After the awful basketball season I tried out for cheerleading for the following year. Jessica tried out too. We got our results delivered to my English class (with Sterns, she liked me a lot). This was very embarrassing because there were three of us-- Jessica, Kim and I, that all openned them up to see if we made it. Jessica starts screaming and jumping up and down, "OMG I MADE IT!!!" I look down, I didn't. I sat quietly for everyone to leave before breaking down to Mrs. Sterns. Sterns told me, "Why the Hell do you want to be a cheerleader anyway, that's not you." She couldn't have been more right. 

After that though, I was like F*ck Ki-Be spirit, I hate it here. 

I wanted to quit. Everything. I wanted to die. I'd come home and scratch big gashes into my thighs until they bled. I'd scream and cry into my pillow and wish things would change. Luckily my wish came true, here I am 20 years old looking beautiful, successfully have my first college degree and shred the f*ck out of a guitar. It's taken so much pain to get where I am today. 

Again, I should have probably just changed schools. I should have just gone to Hanford or something and things would have probably been a lot easier but I'm happy to have lived through these experiences because it's made me a more well rounded person in the long run. 

In all this, at least I wasn't completely alone. For most of the year I had a place to sit for lunch because Heather took me in. I felt pretty fortunate of this.

Having Heather and her friends there made things a lot easier, it helped me blend in and feel I was part of some clique which is what I really needed at the time. 

The one good thing that happened freshman year was trying tennis. I was partners with Michaela and we barely won any games or had any coherence but at least I got to play all my matches and got some good playing experience for the following years. I ditched the partner game and decided to take up singles, Michaela was okay with it though because Chelsea E. had started playing. 

Well lets face it.... Freshman year was a BITCH. And this was actually an improvement from middle school. Tomorrow I'll do 14 and talk about 8th grade, the year I almost fell to my death. 

peace. 

I really didn't let half this drama bother me that much. [Project timeline, age 16]

Jessika is back on the scene.

I saw that she updated her profile picture today, which was the first update I'd seen from her since June 5th (around the time we had the falling out). Back then I figured she'd blocked me but I later realized that she temporarily shut down her facebook. I had actually wondered in the bath today what she'd been doing. I had more assumed she'd moved away, like to Idaho or something to help take care of her friend's baby.

Nope, she's still here.. I have no idea where she's living or what she's doing but I have no intention of asking or clearing the air between her and I. I'd rather put that to bed for good. However, I will not delete her from my friends list. Seeing her occasional updates might be interesting. I love facebook for that reason, you can see what people are up too while keeping your distance.

 Last night I spent the night at Katelynn's house and slept on her mom's mattress that she's going to sell soon. I actually really like that mattress, or maybe it's just that I like the sheet on top. I have been noticeably more sore lately but I think that's from all my working out with the whey protein. That stuff lets you work out for longer periods of time but it has a tendency to let you over-do it if you're not careful. My abs are really starting to get definition, it's strange.

Onto my project timeline again. Going back further I have to dig into my old myspace, back even further I'll have to go into my old photobucket account... I don't think I have any pictures of me when I was a child on my facebook, we'll have to wing it with snapshots from my phone. Until then...!

Project Year Timeline, 

Age 16, 2007-2008

Year of blissfully surviving social nightmares.

At 16 I was sort of starting to find my identity. I knew I didn't fit in that great with the mainstream popular leadership kids after getting shut out by them the previous year, and I was ready to find a more accepting crowd and move on. 

Unfortunately this was hard to do, because the way I saw it I had two choices: Either find some freshmans to hang out with or try finding friends two classes above me. Katharine's class was off limits because I knew pretty much all of them from being friends with Katharine, and none of them seemed like they'd want to hang out with me. Maybe someone would have if I tried, but I didn't, they were an extremely tight class and had very defined groups of friends that I didn't fit into. 

The previous year had been really rough for Katharine and I, which I will explain when I talk about 15. During soccer Katharine would snap at me for one reason or another, like this one time she was at the front of the line when we were running tied hand to hand with the rope and I asked a question to the girl in front of me (probably Alex S.) and Katharine yelled out the answer, sarcastically, as if it was a stupid question. Caitlin D. yelled that we needed to stop fighting immediately. 

Soccer season was rough especially because I hardly got any playing time. Lindy played defensive center mid too and scored a couple goals with her enormous kick and put me out of the job. I was a solid varsity player though, never had to play on JV. There was actually enough of us to have a jv team that year. 

Katharine was going to CBC but she was still in yearbook with me. We had soccer sports awards and I apparently didn't get the memo on when they'd be held. I had forgot about it and NOBODY called me to tell me it was going on. It pissed me off so bad that I started cursing and crying in Mrs. Tyrell's room, and Katharine just shrugged like I should have known. She could have easily called. Soccer season ended badly on that note and I didn't know if I wanted to play again. 

On top of that I was dealing with absolutely crazy shit with Tony L. and Genisis, the younger sister of my ex boyfriend Chino. Genesis printed a bunch of flyers saying I'm a "hoe" and left them all over the football stadium. She was never punished for it. 

You see I'd made some other friends, a much larger group consisting of a lot of foriegn exchanged kids. Austy C. was a really well liked person and she seemed to like me after I'd become friends with Heather E. the previous year. 

They were a really good group of girls, definitely involved in the school and super spirited (note that I was NOT. I was actually anti-school spirit after my previous year...).. Austy and Chelsea L. really were the group leaders and we'd all sit together at lunch. 

I was really envious of this girl in my group named Alice (pronounced "Aliche"). Well, I'm pretty sure almost girl in the school was. She was drop dead gorgeous, I mean tall, rich, beautiful, tan, from Milan. At the beginning of the year I was pissed about it, I was like, okay now my chances of dating anyone in highschool are probably even worse. Ha ha little did I know Chino wouldn't have let me date anyone regardless. Once I got to know Alice, though, I really enjoyed her company and stopped caring. She ended up dating Tony L. (Chino's cousin) who at the time absolutely despised me. 

Jack and I started talking on the phone this year at some point. During one of our long phone conversations Jack asked me where he should take Aliche on a date. 

Not far from Austy's group sat Kandyce's group. Kandyce and her minions were sort of the power in numbers clique that were SUPER school spirited and supportive of our football team that was doing really well that year. Kandyce was a friend of Chino's (well, Chino didn't care that much about her I don't think but Kandyce would hold parties and Chino would probably be there...) and after an atrocious experience at Warped Tour her whole group wanted to make my highschool experience a nightmare.

I guess they failed at that. Because in all of this, all these people gunning for me, I somehow stayed pretty in my own world. I think at the time I was playing a lot of video games and hanging out with Katelynn when I could. 

Academics weren't great this year. I really excelled in English with Tyrell but I had to deal with an elective nightmare. Stupid Minkler put me in Welding the first half of the year... Oh my God, Welding, THAT was an experience...

I'm pretty sure I had a crush on every guy in my welding class, namely Levi D. At the time I had just broken up with Chino, who all these guys partied with. No way in HELL they wanted to date me at this point. I was totally off limits. I don't think me and Chino were talking at the time so I didn't understand. Jessica S. was in my welding class, did much better than me, was a favorite of the teacher and got flirted with all the time. Obviously I'd be jealous for this reason. I was really happy when this half of the year was over. 

I was then placed in a weight training class, which was completely full of guys aside from Katharine, Emily B., and Jessica S. Katharine at the time was more than happy to just be partners with Miguel, who she'd started dating recently. Jessica and Emily would work out together and wouldn't really include me so I was stuck without a partner. I didn't have a partner that whole half of the year, I was really fortunate this group of hispanic girls let me in. They'd talk in Spanish together and take turns getting stuck with me. 

Things didn't get much better in the Spring. Tennis was rough because I had started acting like a complete bitch toward Haley in order to regain my friendship with Katharine. This didn't really work; actually when I'd talk bad about Haley toward Katharine to try to impress her she'd say "Haley isn't that bad, actually!" This completely drove me up the wall because HALEY was the whole reason Katharine was mad at me the previous year; of course it was clear that this wasn't the only reason once it that "problem" was taken care of. 

Me and Haley got in a number of arguments, including one on the tennis bus over some headphones. She would take falls during challenges so she could be in the 2nd seat because I seemed to WANT to play first seat. Actually my sophomore year I didn't want to play first seat, I wanted to beat Haley because I didn't like her and she didn't want to give me the satisfaction. What better way than to put a 16 year old against girls that completely whiped the floor with my face? I probably deserved it, honestly. Haley ended up quitting and I was stuck playing monsters the rest of the season. I think I won a couple matches, it was good practice however for the next year.

Overall:

Looks: I was still sort of dressing/dying my hair how my mom told me it would look the best. I did the blonde thing most of the year and didn't feel that comfortable with it for the most part. I dressed in plain, sort of preppy clothes from Pac Sun, JCPennies or the new Fuego. 

Work: This was the height of babysitting for Chad and Carmin, I'd be over there multiple times a week pulling practically all nighters. I had just started driving and would get pulled over by cops for violating curfew.

Skills: Developing tennis skills, I wasn't that good but I still loved it. 

Love:

I guess one of the best things about my sophomore year WAS Connor. I had talked to Audrey, his best friend, and ended up meeting up with her to go to Ray's. I met Connor and we clicked almost immediately. We'd cuddle in Audrey's basement in this spare bedroom downstairs. There was a lot of crazy shinanigans going on that I wasn't used too.

Connor was a huge smoker, and I'd never been around that before nor did I really know what it was. It didn't bother me though because I liked Connor so much I was willing to put up with whatever. It really drove his day to day life back then, though, and it bothered me that he cared more about it than he did me. Overall, though, my relationship with Connor was good. 

The timing really was perfect (around tennis season my Sophomore year). I was never really attracted to Chino and after our relationship was over I was looking for another guy that resembled Toren-- long hair, skater type, etc... and Connor fit the mold of what I was looking for even better because he was tall. I really liked this one and it took a long time to get over him after we were through around July. it's funny, in the times we've spent together he said the same thing even if he acted as though he didn't give a f*ck either way at the time.

I've never really had a relationship like Connor's since we broke up in 2008.. It  really has been that long. Regardless of Connor's lifestyle's contrast to mine (I was still pretty goody two-shoes back then, Hell I still am in a lot of ways) he still really liked me for me and I think that was the last time I really had faith in love. 

Granted I can't say I really loved Connor, but I'm sure I wouldn't have broken up with him and it could have gone there. It's probably for the best that it didn't, he didn't like how caught up I was with school and sports and discouraged it. Sports kept me out of trouble.

Music: I had a Zune with a huge amount of memory so I started buying CDs from all sorts of rock genres. One of the CDs that I bought was Trivium; I originally got it for Katharine (not realizing at the time that Katharine didn't like metal at all) but she didn't really want it so I kept it myself. This was really my first exposure to metal. 

I mainly listened to Coheed and Cambria. Katelynn got me really into them when we started talking again and she burnt me a couple CDs such as Junesong Provision. 

Confidence: 

Like I said before I really didn't let half this drama bother me that much. I wrote a lot in my blog to get it off my chest but I was able to escape by playing video games, namely Bully for the PS2 that we'd finally purchased that year. My mom was always really stressed about my drama but I put a lot of it behind me. Needless to say I didn't really like Ki-Be, but I dealt with it and figured it was just part of being an underclassman. If I had to do it all over again I probably would abandon sports and transfer to Kamiakin because I had a long road ahead. 

Alright that's it for now. Tomorrow I'll talk about 15, my year of being CRAAAAAAAAZY.

peace.