abuelita.

my great grandmother is 96 years old and i found out a week ago she got pnemonia in one of her lungs. at her age, that can kill her. thankfully she was hospitalized in time and it seems like she's doing really well and she talked to my mom for a long time. i couldn't talk to her because i was at my orientation when this was all happening. when i came home i thoguht my mom was telling me that she was dieing and i almost started crying, but she told me she was ok. the day she dies will be the saddest one for our family. she's touched every one of our lives. i'm getting choked up just thinking about it.

she is the strongest woman i know. at 96 years old she's still incredibly independent. she still lives on her own during the winter in florida and comes up to pittsburgh to live with my grandpa during the summer becuase florida is too hot for her. she still has her license and can drive. she's so incredibly optimistic and never stopped believing in me. everytime she sees me she's so interested in what shows i've been in and tells me how i'm going to make it to broadway. i know i won't, but i love her so much for saying it. she's so genuine and the kind of woman everyone loves. you just can't help it. i aspire to be like her when i'm older. god i love her so much and i don't know what i'm going to do when we lose her. i don't want to think about it.

we saw in the heights on wednesday and there was a character, abuela, and she knew everyone and everyone knew and loved her in the neighborhood. she died in one part and the community came together. when they were singing about her all i could think about was my gram. i started crying and couldn't help it. my thorat was choked up the whole rest of the show.

we're going to visit her this week and i can't wait to see her.

blah

so this always happens to me. once i find out a guy actually likes me, i freeze and get really shy all of a sudden. when it's obvious that i should be even more outgoing and more confident of myself. it's hard to explain. but my brain comes up wtih all of these reasons why things will not work out and why the guy couldn't possibly like me. and in this bizarre situation, it should not be this way. i should be beyond confident and in control. but it's just the same. i just wish that for once in my life, i could be sincerely happy with my life. i wish i could be confident with myself and see the beauty everyone says that i have. i don't know what blinded me, but it's terribly frustrating. i constantly search for reasons why i'm worth being with, and can't find the answer.

and now that i know. it's scary and exciting at the same time. i feel like i do when i have too much coffee. my body can't handle a lot of caffeine, so when i do drink coffee, i start getting really shaky and i have to move around. it's slightly annoying but more exciting and fun. but thoughts race through my brain and my head is all over the place. that's me right now. so much for sleeping tonight...

i hate that i only write in this when i'm unhappy. because i have lots of happy moments, but that's not when i need to write down my emotions. i'm terribly sorry for whomever reads this depressingness.

philosophy of life

sometimes life is really, unbearably hard. this morning it was so unbelievably hard to get up. like THE hardest it's been my entire highschool career. and i really don't know why. but apparently it was for everyone becuase i kept hearing people saying the same exact thing all day. by the time i found my keys, my shoes, my umbrella, and a coat it was already 7:50 so the first late bell already rang. so i was driving to school and it's about 7:57 when i pass sheetz and figure i'm already late so why not get some coffee? haha so i did. it's crazy how the simple fact of being a senior can make you care so little. i have a 75% in ap history and i wasn't even bothered by it. i'm into college already so why worry and cause unneccessary stress? going to school seems SO pointless especially because i'm pretty much done with school work. the only thing left to do really is the POL paper. which i'm having a ridiculous time with. first of all becuase i have the most ridiculous teacher in the world, mr. zieglar. i hate him sooo much. he is the most insufferable person in the world. he gets too overwhelmed if students say answers without raising their hands and he asks us questions that we are supposed to debate amongst ourselves and if we take the debate somewhere that he has no knowledge about or that isn't where he wants it to go, you can see him freaking out and trying to steer us in another direction which really isn't a debate, it's us getting to the answer he wants. so our POL's are supposed to be philosophies we've developed over our lives and i know i have mine. the problem is that we need to use 5 pieces of literature we read this year to support it. and absolutely nothing we read this year relates to my philosophy of life. so what am i supposed to do? lie about my philosophy and create a new one. the whole point of the paper is to write what we believe to be true and i disagree with just about everything we've read. the majority of it being existentialist. which i am the complete opposite of. i hate existentialism which i quickly learned in humanities last year. i'm sorry but how do you relate the myth of sisyphus to no regrets, only lessons learned? if anyone knows, please feel free to tell me.

so philosophy of life. my philosophy of life is something that i believe very strongly in and have developed over the years with my crazy life experiences. truly, i believe that you should live with absolutely no regrets. if you look back at every mistake you've made or think you have made, you can see little life lessons appear and it's our jobs to take them, learn from them, and apply them. how else will we learn if we don't experience things. our experiences make us who we are and mistakes build our character. i think mistakes are really blessings in disguise. it's kind of like, you can't see the rainbow until after the rain. now relate petrarch's sonnets to that.

choices

lately i've been wondering i've made the right decisions throughout highschool. i keep wondering "what if?". i mean throughout highschool i've dropped and gained new friends like crazy. and not just highschool, i mean like throughout my life. and i realize that yes everyone loses and gains new friends but i feel like i've done it more frequently then most people have. and i can't help but notice the trend of my old friends. my first best friend was casey kramer who now is def into drugs etc. my next best friend was mary peltz and really, who knows what she's up to. but she still seems like a good person. then came probably the most influential best friends. jess leonard and julie mcginley. god i miss them so much. they truly were the best friends ever. at least julie was.. jess was except for her rage fits that she had frequently and that were often aimed towards me. which i guess was more detrimental to our friendship and was a leading cause to the ultimate and inevitable end of the friendship. i know i made the right choice in hanging out with my friends from musical more than them and just all together ending the friendships, but i just miss hanging out like we used to. i truly had the most fun with them. then came musical. if i hadn't made musical and met the people i did. i would most likely have ended up where jess and julie are now. musical changed me so much as a person. it made me feel more ok about myself and made me more outgoing. it also helped my love of singing grow. it also led me to my first true and sincere crush which then led me to my first true and sincere heartbreak. i was so naive. i don't know what drew me to him or what actually started the whole thing but i just know that i'm actually glad it happened. i'm so much smarter then i was. i learned from the experience and without it, i wouldn't have grown as a person. it's hard to be really happy without experiencing pain first. i remember when i first realized that i was over him. it was the most blissful feeling in the world. to be living for myself rather than him. i'll also never forget that while i was kissing the first guy after i kissed after him, i thought to myself i'm not kissing him anymore. i'm kissing someone else. i'm over him.

after the whole musical thing came my friendship with casey taylor and mckenzie graf. i've never been as close to anyone as i was with casey. but she was the most hurtful of all. looking back onto our friendship, i realize all of the warning signs and little flags i missed. she had an eating disorder as many people know, and in a way she brought me down with her. i was the one who spent the most time with her and experienced a lot of it. her bad thoughts about her body were instilled in me as well. and because she didn't think she was thin enough, i couldn't help but wonder what she thought of me who is obviously larger then she is. from then on, we were only hurting each other and, sadly enough, should have ended way before it finally did. and now mckenzie is my best friend and has been with me through so much. i just, can't help but think that we are kind of drifting apart. for a while she didn't speak to casey and i think that was when our friendship was the strongest. but then she and casey made up and that started putting a burden on our relationship. i felt like i had to compete with casey to get mckenzie to like me better but they had so much history together. how could i compete with history? i still feel like i'm competeing with casey and i hate it. i have to ask mckenzie to hang out weeks before just to make sure that i can hang out with her before she makes plans with casey. scheduling time to hang out with your best friend? i mean who does that. i'm used to just calling them up and hanging out. that's how it should be. but unfortunately that's not how it is for me and mckenzie.

now to the what if. what if me and casey were still friends? would things have gotten easier or would they have just have gotten even worse? what if i was still friends with ben and we hadn't gotten in that stupid arguement at hersheypark? would we have dated? would keri and him have hooked up last summer? we wouldn't have this awkward situation we joke about between us. what if i kept trying with rohit? things would be so different. the decisions and choices we make affect everything. i can't help but wonder if i've made the right decisions. i feel like i have yet looking at what i have now, it seems like i didn't make the right choices. like i should've changed something.

either way. we're going to college soon and none of these decisions will really affect us. so, was everything up until college just totally pointless? it seems like it is.. but i refuse to believe so. i think everything up until college was just a learning experience that prepares us for college and beyond. just like my first heartbreak. our experiences make us the people that we are going into college. and i'm proud of who i am now. sure there are some bad things with the good but i'm a human being. all i can do is work at it and i think i've done a pretty good job up until now. so here's to a new life at college. may we make the right decisions and not regret the ones that we do make.

my life is such a fucking mess. i hate feeling like this.