Tomorrow, I will be starting my senior year of high school, and

I can't believe that I'm a senior already. It seems like just last week I was starting my freshman year of high school. And now I'm nine months from graduating. Where in the hell did the time go?

Adults always told me that high school would go by so fast that it would be over before I knew it. I never believed them, because when you're forced to spend every other day in detention for being too "rambunctious", high school seems like it will never end. But, like almost always, the adults were right.

I don't know why I'm freaking out about starting my senior year. I should be excited that my days of detention and dress codes are over. I mean, yes, I can't wait to go to college and be out in the "real world". I just need more time. More time to prepare for the "real world". More time to get to know myself. More time to find people who truly understand me. More time to just...be, without any major responsibilities. More time to figure out what in the hell I'm supposed to be doing with my life.

I seriously doubt that nine months will be all of the time that I need to figure everything out.

Even though I have all of these thoughts running through my head, I refuse to let them get me down. This is my last year of high school. I'm going to have as much fun as I can.

Hard Question, Simple Answer

It's simple.

Nothing more and nothing less.

Smile

Hey, you. Yeah you.

Sometimes, life is going to suck MAJOR ass. You're going to have to deal with heartbreak, death, failure, hate, jealousy, loneliness, fear, goodbyes, depression, weakness, doubt, anger, regret, and disappointment. The people you though you could trust are going to betray you. Dreams you thought you could accomplish will be crushed by unexpected reality. Love will make you feel like you could fly one moment and make you feel worthless the next. Just when you think the storm has finally passed, a cloud will appear out of nowhere and burst open, drenching you with hopelessness.

Yes, life will not always be kind to you.

Even so, I want you to remember that something will always come along to let you know that the darkness will soon be lifted. That something could be a smile from a stranger, a hug from a friend, a comforting quote from a book, a soul touching song. A ray of hope can come from anywhere. And when that ray of hope shows itself? Smile. Smile. Smile because the world just let you know that life is still full of beauty.

You just have to remember to look for it.

Family

This is my family.

Clockwise, it's me, my mom, my grandmother, my brothers girlfriend, my brother, and their baby boy.

We took this picture just a few weeks ago at my grandmas house. I set the camera on top of the television, put the timer on, and ran behind the couch just in time to smile and be blinded by the flash that signaled that the picture had been taken. I ran back to the television and picked up my camera. I pressed a button and the picture sprung onto my camera screen. As I studied it, I smiled. The picture was perfect.

Maybe it's not perfect in a photographic sense. It's off center. None of us are dressed up. We're posing on an old couch. My brother is still holding up the remote. The lighting is weird. Even so, to me, the picture is perfect, because we are all in it.

My family is definitely tumultuous. We have plenty of problems, sometimes problems so big all we can do is pray that the grace of God will be bestowed upon us and we will all make it out alive. We have moments where we get so angry at each other that we say horrible, hateful things. We have moments where we talk about all the good things that have happened to us, even if those things are few and far between. Rarely though do we have any of these moments together.

So, naturally, it's rare to have a photo of my whole family. Actually, I think this is the only one in existence. We are all always wandering around doing our own thing, or arguing with each other, or we're too busy to even think of taking a picture.

So when miraculously we all happened to being the same room at the same time looking mildly decent with nothing to do, I whipped the camera out of my pocket and ushered everyone onto the couch. No one complained as I fumbled with the camera and dropped it (I'm such a klutz). When I finally managed to get the camera working and set it on the television, everyone straightened up and smoothed their shirts. I pressed a couple of buttons, and as I raced to get in my spot next to my mom, I saw my family look up at the camera and smile. In that moment, we were together and we were happy. And it was perfect.

Drops of Hope

There is nothing more beautiful to me than the rain.

Every time it rains, my heart feels absolutely free. I just want to run outside, lift up my arms, and fly.

Don't misunderstand me, the sunshine brings me happiness as well. There is just something about the rain that makes me feel like nothing can touch me. Rain makes me feel like everything that happens to me, no matter how horrible, will turn out alright in the end.

That hasn't always happened though. Sometimes I wake up to a rainy day, which automatically puts a smile on my face. Then Ill leave the house, and everything goes wrong. I get in a fight with my mom, my friends make plans without me, I fail an important test. Even so, when the day is over and I look up at the sky, the rain that falls from the clouds feels like little drops of hope saturating my hair and clothes.

When it rains, I know that I will ultimately be happy, no matter what happens.

Music

I ♥ music with all of my heart.

I don't know what I would do without music. I would be completely lost if it wasn't for music. Music makes me happy and fills my soul in a way that is impossible to describe.

I've decided that instead of me blabbing on, I'm going to show you quotes I've found about what music means to others. They say it a lot more profoundly than I ever could.

• Music washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life. ~Berthold Auerbach

• Without music life would be a mistake. ~Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche

• Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons. You will find it is to the soul what a water bath is to the body. ~Oliver Wendell Holmes

• Music was my refuge. I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness. ~Maya Angelou, Gather Together in My Name

• Were it not for music, we might in these days say, the Beautiful is dead. ~Benjamin Disraeli

• Music is what feelings sound like. ~Author Unknown

• Music is the poetry of the air. ~Richter

• If I were to begin life again, I would devote it to music. It is the only cheap and unpunished rapture upon earth. ~Sydney Smith

• There is nothing in the world so much like prayer as music is. ~William P. Merrill

• If in the after life there is not music, we will have to import it. ~Doménico Cieri Estrada

• Men profess to be lovers of music, but for the most part they give no evidence in their opinions and lives that they have heard it. ~Henry David Thoreau

• I have my own particular sorrows, loves, delights; and you have yours. But sorrow, gladness, yearning, hope, love, belong to all of us, in all times and in all places. Music is the only means whereby we feel these emotions in their universality. ~H.A. Overstreet

• My idea is that there is music in the air, music all around us; the world is full of it, and you simply take as much as you require. ~Edward Elgar

• Life can't be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years. ~William F. Buckley, Jr.

• Music cleanses the understanding; inspires it, and lifts it into a realm which it would not reach if it were left to itself. ~Henry Ward Beecher

• You are the music while the music lasts. ~T.S. Eliot

• Music is the universal language of mankind. ~Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, Outre-Mer

• He who hears music, feels his solitude peopled at once. ~Robert Browning

• Music expresses that which cannot be said and on which it is impossible to be silent. ~Victor Hugo

• Music has been my playmate, my lover, and my crying towel. ~Buffy Sainte-Marie

• Music is an outburst of the soul. ~Frederick Delius

• Music is the art which is most nigh to tears and memory. ~Oscar Wilde

• Music is what life sounds like. ~Eric Olson

• Its language is a language which the soul alone understands, but which the soul can never translate. ~Arnold Bennett

• Music expresses feeling and thought, without language; it was below and before speech, and it is above and beyond all words. ~Robert G. Ingersoll

• Music is the literature of the heart; it commences where speech ends. ~Alphonse de Lamartine

• When words leave off, music begins. ~Heinrich Heine

• Truly to sing, that is a different breath. ~Rainer Maria Rilke

• What passion cannot music raise and quell! ~John Dryden

• Music is forever; music should grow and mature with you, following you right on up until you die. ~Paul Simon

• Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without. ~Confucius

• Life is one grand, sweet song, so start the music. ~Ronald Reagan

• Music is the medicine of the breaking heart. ~Leigh Hunt

• Music, once admitted to the soul, becomes a sort of spirit, and never dies. ~Edward George Bulwer-Lytton

• After silence, that which comes nearest to expressing the inexpressible is music. ~Aldous Huxley, Music at Night and Other Essays

• Music is love in search of a word. ~Sidney Lanie

• It is incontestable that music induces in us a sense of the infinite and the contemplation of the invisible. ~Victor de LaPrade

• Music is moonlight in the gloomy night of life. ~Jean Paul Richter

• Music is well said to be the speech of angels. ~Thomas Carlyle, Essays, "The Opera"

Bestest Buddy

This is me and my best friend Jennifer.

This picture was taken last year, our sophomore year. Since we are both students in honors classes who are viewed as responsible and polite (hahahaaa), we were chosen to be Prom Marshalls. What's a Prom Marshall? An underclassmen who walks around during the prom and picks up peoples trash and helps clean up afterwards. It was a lot more fun than it sounds. We stood by the refreshments most of the time and gossiped about who came with who and girls we don't like who looked fat and boys we thought were gorgeous. I love to dance, so I danced by the chocolate fountain since I wasn't allowed on the dance floor. At the end of the night, we were exhausted. We went outside to sit on the curb until her father came to pick us up and take us home. We were the last ones to leave and sucked helium out of left over balloons and cracked up at how hilarious we sounded, and broke open glow sticks to see what the liquid looked like inside. Jennifer had her camera with her and asked the teacher waiting with us to take our picture. We scooted closer to each other and smiled, capturing our friendship and what we look like at midnight in my favorite picture of us.

Jennifer and I became friends in 7th grade when we were shy students in honors classes at our ghetto middle school. It's been a long time since then, but it doesn't always feel like it. As we got older, we changed. I went through my lame emo phase and Jennifer started using not-so-lady-like words. We've sprayed teachers in the butt with water on kind of accident, crawled through ceilings, broken into abandoned schools, and stalked people (ahem, cute boys) to Sonic. We've eaten a million pounds of junk food while watching random movies on my bed. We've agonized over boys we like, gossiped about girls we don't like, listened to stupid songs (WHAT WHAT IN THE BUTT), taken the ghetto city bus to the ghetto mall to eat delicious Chinese food. I mean sure, there are times when I know we'd love to beat each other with our Pre Calculus books, but we get over that. And I'm glad. Because without Jennifer, I would have no one to eat orange chicken with and laugh at The Shining with. I'd have no one to recommend good books to me. Without Jennifer, my life would be one giant ball of suck. So to anyone reading this, know that Jennifer is one of the most amazing people in this world, she's my best friend, and if you mess with her, I'll haunt your toilet when I die and poke you in the butt when you pee, and believe me, you don't want that. So back up. And Jennifer, thanks for being the Bestest. Buddy. Ever. :)