public school in US
9th
this year was all about finding myself, i hated everyone because they were so fake. everyone pretended to be adults and the adults annoyed the hell out of me. i was super anti-authority unless i deemed them cool at the time. i wasnt big into music yet, i could sing but i didnt really feel special about it since a lot of people in my family could. what i did want was love and that was gonna make everything sugar pops and rainbows. so i searched and kept my eyes and mind open and eventually found. that whole year was learning what it meant to be in love and how i wanted to love someone
10th
this year was probably the most impactful. the summer before school started my best friend got killed in a drive by shooting hanging out with stupid people i told her not to hang around. i fell into a deep depression, destroyed my relationship because i didnt know how to handle my emotions and basically said **** it. my mom and sister thought i was going to school everyday but i skipped everyday but Friday and big tests, i hid notes, went into my moms email and deleted email notifications, i did the most. so i started just catching the bus downtown and messing around killing time. met a group of skaters and punks who skated at a park downtown and they introduced me to so many things and this subculture i never knew about and also helped me get over losing my friend. a lot of good times outside of school with these people..i also learned to drive that year
then everytime i was at school everyone acted like they missed me so much. but i couldnt hear or feel any of the love i was receiving from people at the time, i was just in my own world. a lot of my teachers also reached out but i didnt want to give them the satisfaction of knowing that they actually made me feel better sometimes. this end of school year summer is also where i started learning guitar and started playing in bands with my friends and people i met at concerts i went too. i wasnt going to school and was out all night, my little sister also had my back a lot and would help me in not getting caught being out late
11th
that summer was basically falling in love with music, experimenting with and using drugs, partying for the first time, ***.... and summer school to make up credits. that school year though i went to class more, i learned from summer school that i didnt want to be there. sadly though all the friends i made, except for my one friend around my age(drummer btw) were older than me and not in school with us. everyone gravitated towards me which i enjoyed for a while, but i started realizing i dont like most people, which made me not like myself. i felt like a freak and that people gravitated towards me because they saw that i was missing something they had. then i started experimenting with drugs outside of weed like XO's, shrooms, acid and started drinking all the time, my older friends could get whatever but i realized and learned what i could handle, shouldnt be doing and should be doing
i also started taking music more seriously as i realized it helped me take my mind off of things. a lot of people around me started encouraging me to pursue it and a lot of my friends had similar tastes in music. i had played guitar for a bit and was getting good fast and picking up a lot from playing with my friends and asking others, i started singing covers of songs i liked and playing the guitar while singing, which made me less shy about my singing, which led to me learning people liked my voice. so i started posting covers and songs i wrote on my Facebook wall for my friends and started building more confidence
12th
that summer before i had recorded a EP and started showing it to my friends, i recorded all the parts on my iPad and people liked it so i submitted it for SXSW the following spring and by some miracle they invited me to play...but i didnt have a band so i started advertising to get people to fill in the spots. i got one started with people i knew outside of school which people in school found out about somehow. the band director wanted me and my friend to be in the jazz band so we gave it a try to maybe learn about jazz. that fall also for the talent show i was in a few people acts didnt win but it was fun to be asked. i was still going to school most days but would skip when i wasnt feeling it or if something exciting was gonna happen with my friends outside of school( mostly grafitti tagging, shooting skate vids for fun)
me and my friend played that spring at the SXSW festival and the school announced it on the morning announcements, missed school for a week. i thought i was gonna blow up or something lol but when we got to the festival only like 20 people stopped in our tent, which i thought was a fail at the time but would later turn out that event helped me a lot with my career goals. anyways came back to school and had a great time till graduation, fell in love again was applying for different colleges, thought i had a good plan leaving but overall high school was fun. i just had my own issues and growing i had to do but i learned a lot about people and how to talk to them, i was also humbled many times by the different situations and things other students had going on in there lives and the things theyve been through that they shared. i didnt really like school that much at the time but looking back on it i didnt have an awful experience
