I'm tired of finals, so what's up Blogger.

A lot of people are finished with finals by now, but not I. I'll be at Loyola until Saturday. Oddly enough, I can't concentrate on the three papers that I have to write, and I am spending much more of my time staring out the window into space, because that's more entertaining than studying.

Anyway,

a while ago, I was meeting someone for the first time, and we were going through the typical banter of where I'm from, where I live and what year I am. When I replied sophomore, the kid said, "Seriously? I don't ever remember seeing you around on campus last year." I make some awkward response saying that I was, in fact, around, but as I'm thinking about it now, I'm sure he did see me on campus, or what was left of me. I was probably a broken girl when he saw me, and I wouldn't be surprised or offended if he just looked right past me. Who I am today is not who I was during my freshmen year at Loyola or prior to that. I probably wouldn't have wanted this guy to meet me last year.

My freshmen year of high school I was also broken. Pissed off at my mom, my "friends" from grade school and mostly myself, I was nervous and self-conscious, worried about repeating what I deemed some of the worst years of my life (in retrospect, not that bad). That didn't really last long. Anyone who knows me knows that I fell into the greatest group of individuals whom I would later call my best friends. We're obnoxiously perfect for one another, even though we're all a bit different. We fit, somehow, and have managed to make it through some rough times all while maintaining an incredibly strong bond. I love these girls with everything I have in me. They saved me, in a sense, from what I don't know, but that doesn't matter. With them, I didn't have to worry about what I said or did. They've always accepted me for who I was so I became a stronger person for that.

That's why I was so surprised and angry with myself for the way that I behaved during my freshmen year in college. People always told me what a strong person they thought I was and, here I was, throwing out most of the ideals and beliefs I had held onto for so long in a such a short period of time. Life gave me a test; I got an F. I'm not proud of a lot of things that I did, and a lot of things that happened I'm still not really comfortable confronting. I buckled under pressure, apparently forgot that the word "no" existed and got entirely too caught in the whole college experience. I was incredibly unhappy, but I wasn't doing anything to help myself; instead, I was just sitting there and making it worse. I was a doormat. I gradually became a shell of who I was. Empty.

This year I'm starting to regain who I am. I've been doing things when I wanted to do them and I've been caring less about some other people's opinions of me. I have a radio show with someone who I can call one of my best friends (and I hope she shares the sentiment) and I live with an entertaining group of girls who never cease to keep me laughing.

Sometimes I still get lonely. Sometimes I still feel as if I have no one that I can really trust. Sometimes I'm really unhappy that I'm here. But I am here, I plan on staying here and I want to make the best of it while I'm here. I'm not just going to sit around and let everyday pass me by. I'm standing up for myself and, you know what, I am happier even amidst a heavy workload. I'm not ashamed of anything I've done this semester thus far. And that's something I can feel really good at.

And right now, I'm going to watch True Blood before I write my essays because, well, I damn well feel like it.

Good luck on the rest of your finals, everyone. And if you're already home, then fuck you, I hate you (just kidding - my envy is clouding my ability to be nice haha).