Besides my fundamental desire to become the “best” there is in blogging, a lot’s been going on lately. UIL was Saturday and for lack of better terms – we sucked. The judges apparently thought so as well. In both sight reading and contest prepared music we made 2-2-3s. 3 is the lowest score, 2 is in the middle, and 1 in the best. We made no 1s. I’m rather disappointed, but it’s more of a bruised ego than anything. Only one out of our four different string orchestras at school made sweepstakes (1-1-1) and it wasn’t even the top group – they made a 1-1-1 in contest music but a 1-1-2 in sight reading. Oh well. Today we were supposed to get audition music for the next year of orchestra, but our conductor hadn’t run all of it off, so we shall receive it tomorrow. I’m looking forward to it.

My greatest bit of news to share with the world: I have a job! I had an interview to day in response to an e-mail I had written, and I was accepted for the job. I start work tomorrow, and luckily it’s only after school and on Saturday. They’re closed Sunday. Anyway, the place is called World Music, and it’s a local music store right next to my AA meeting. How convenient is that? Quite literally, my AA home group is a few stores down from World Music. Both are within walking distance from the house. Tomorrow, I go in and I’ll be filing, organizing, and cleaning. I’m allowed to teach, but first I must get my own clients and refer them to the music shop. I’ll probably wait for the summer to start teaching again simply because… What’s the point of teaching middle school kids who’ve already had a year of teaching under another instructor? I like the fresh out of elementary school, just picked out their instruments kids. They’re much more fun! Anyway, I think the point I’m trying to make is that I’m VERY excited!

TAKS is coming up as well, and I’m not looking forward to it at all. I had a tutorial to go to this Saturday, but I had to go to UIL instead. Luckily, there’s one more this weekend. TAKS starts next Tuesday and I have testing Thursday and Friday as well. Joy! I plan to spend much of the weekend studying, preparing, and getting LOTS of sleep! I hope to score well on the TAKS tests. I’m also trying to get prepared (or at least start the process) of taking the ACTs and SATs. I need as many shots as I can get at those tests so I can take my best score and apply to a college that I really want to go to. Like Rice University in downtown Houston! That’s been my dream college for a while now, but I’ll probably have to transfer in after I go to University of Texas or North Texas State University for a while. I’ve decided not to go to community/junior college to start out simply because it’s too many transfers and I if I didn’t go to a major university before Rice, that’d be a HUGE leap from community college to a big prestigious school.

Although I have lots of college plans, I must first graduate high school, which is what I’m working on now. I’m taking two college dual credit courses next year – English and U.S. History. Aside from that, I also have to maintain a steady job (World Music, hopefully), eventually get a car, and be able to support myself financially. So, it’s a long process that will most likely take a couple of years, but I’m looking forward to it. It’s nice to be free and to grow and make my own decisions, which is definitely not something I was able to do a year ago.

I celebrated 11 months on the seventeenth of April, so that was really exciting. God’s definitely given me more than enough blessings in life, and I pray I continue! Until next time!

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Contest consists of two divisions – performance of prepared music and sight reading. Sight reading is my strong point and I love it. What happens is you get a piece of music that has never been seen by the orchestra before and we have seven minutes to go over it, shadow bow, look at key and time signatures and then play it. If you make any noise while going over the music, aside from asking the conductor questions, you are disqualified. I’m pretty nervous about that one; we have one rowdy bunch of orchestra kids in my class! The conductor can sing the different parts but there is absolutely no playing on the instruments until we play the entire piece. It’s exhilarating!

I’ve also been job hunting – it’s offically been approved by my Probation Officer. After a few days of getting applications and not turning them in, I think I’ve found the ideal job for me. I’ve done this job before and I love it. I want to teach music again. When I started high school, I was still in contact with my middle school orchestera director, and I’d have her refer incoming students to me for private lessons. I had about two or three clients I worked with once a week each and it was amazing. Being on house arrest, I would most likely have to have my students come to the hosue, and I’d also have to get back in touch with my middle school director, which I’m actually looking pretty forward to.

My old middle school director (Ms. C. I’ll call her) always rooted for me from day one. When I started playing, she got me passionate for the music along with my private music tutor. I have a lot of fond memories with my middle school orchestra, as well as not so great. I started in the beginner’s orchestra in sixth grade and by the end of the semester, I was moved to Intermediate – a first for the school to have a beginner move to a higher level in the middle of the year. 7th and 8th grade, I was first chair in the top orchestra as well as first chair regions in the 2004-2005 school year. I went to several camps and improved and improved.

Around seventh grade was when I started getting bad into drugs. I’d do them at school and then go to orchestra class. Ms. C has seen me so messed up out of my mind, but she’s always been there for me. I think I have an ammends to make. I would go to class messed up and have to leave to the nurses office, where my mom would then proceed to drive me to the ER to see if there was anything they could do. I’m so blessed and happy to say that I’ve cleaned up my act as well as my drug addiction.

Speaking of my mom, we had our visit and it was great. She left about two weeks ago and I was pretty sad to see her go, but I’ll most likely be going up there this summer and taking distance leaning courses through Texas Tech, to get some of my missing credits. Mom and I got to bond a lot and it was a lot of fun. We laughed, we played around, we just had a really good time. It was so nice. I’m beginning to think that with sobriety do healthy relationships really come.

All that aside, life has honestly been pretty up and down. My friend continues to tell me that I’m blowing her off, when really… My sobriety is more important than hanging out with friends. It’s irritating because I’d love to tell her that, but I don’t think that she would understand. She doesn’t drink or drug, but she’s also not in the program. She lives in the same town as my probation officer’s office, so everytime I go she asks if we can hang out. And everytime, I have to tell her that I go to women’s meeting with my sponsor and go to dinner afterwards. Which was amazing, by the way. Such a strong group of women!

I don’t know how all that will be resolved, but it’s in God’s hands and for now, I’m not going to worry about it.

I wrote this during my study hall period, and the bell is about to ring for my next class which happens to be English. My favorite! We’re still working on our research paper as well as reading Of Mice and Men. I read that book once in 8th grade and loved it. It’s really nice to read it again. Although I am on a roll and culd probably write for hours, class comes first and now I must depart. Farewell and have a BLESSED day.

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My schedule isn’t half as jam-packed as it used to be in my past sobriety and I don’t necessarily think I’m wearing myself too thin… yet. I feel it coming on if I don’t try to stop adding things on. So far my schedule looks something along the lines of this: On weekdays, I go to school from 7:30-2:30 and catch a meeting around 8pm. On Mondays, I have orchestra rehearsal from three o’clock until five, which is when my bass teacher then picks me up from school and we go back to the house for an hour long lesson. UIL contest is in a week on next Saturday, so we’ve really been preparing for contest with our picked pieces as well as sight-reading.

Wednesdays, I report to my Probation Officer, followed by a women’s meeting on that side of town with my sponsor and then I go out to dinner with them. For now, that’s my set schedule aside from the TAKS tutorials on Saturdays. Sunday, I try to go to a meeting as well. Next year is going to be a struggle though. I have the rough draft of my courses picked out and it seems like it will most definitely be a challanging year, but I’m up for it.

My year should consist of Orchestra, Newspaper (I’ll be a reporter, next year I’m an editor.), Chemistry, US History, English IV, and Algebra II. It’s flexible, so that’s a good thing, especially since next year in August, I REALLY want to try out for Volleyball. Plus, after this first month of probation (which I have a week left for it to be a full month), I’m allowed to go job hunting! Yay! I’m thinking retail for now just to get me on my feet. Fast food is not an option, simply because it’d probably make me super sick to my stomach.

I’m also trying to get some college credit before I actually apply, that way I’ll have a good start. In Texas, we have dual-credit high school courses, which is where you can take ONE class and it counts as both high school and college credit. I’m doing that for US History and English IV. So yeah, next year will definitely be intense but I’m looking forward to staying busy with school, work, and orchestra. That way I’ll have structure and be pretty grounded.

Lately, a lot of old people from my past have been popping up. Mostly ex-boyfriends. The boy I was so anxious to see that came back to school last week and I are alright. I’m trying to keep our friendship strictly at school, and so far it’s working. I guess it helps that I’m on house arrest. A really good friend of mine I’ve known since I was 12 also popped up out of nowhere the other day and we had a really nice talk and we plan to keep in touch. Now that he’s 18 and I’m 17, we’re bound to see each other soon because I’m planning a road trip to go see him once I get my license. Eventually. All things will happen in good time.

Then there’s the biggest person of all that’s back around. I hadn’t heard from him in year, due to being locked up. He lives near me and him and I were REALLY close. We went through a lottt of things, including relapsing together. Well, I saw some of his family at a meeting the other day. It was actually the same meeting where I had met him. Long story short, his family’s trying to get back on their feet again. So I exchanged numbers with his sister and when I called her, he picked up the phone. We talked for less than a minute because he was fixing light fixtures, but it was so nice to hear from him…

He’s not “completely sober” in his words, but he said it’s working for him. I’m not quite sure if it really is or not, but I really hope it is for I wish him ONLY the best in life. After we talked, I had a lot of old feelings come up. When I first saw his family there, I almost cried. Seriously. It was so weird, because I hadn’t seen them in SO long and I was just scared of what they would think. But I shared and after the meeting, they said I looked and acted SO much healthier. Yay. I just wish things could change for him like they did for me. And they might… They might not. Whatever happens, it’s God’s will.

The feelings I felt regarding him were most along the lines of guilt and shame than of happiness and joy. That bothered me. I really don’t know what to think right about now… I’ve had thoughts of calling him, but I’m still undecided. I do, however, remember that when I saw his family in that meeting, all I could thing was: “Okay, God, you can STOP throwing crap at me now!!” And it was funny at first until I realized that now I have to deal with my feelings. Real, gut-wrenching feelings, not just superficial “Oh, I’m mad. What am I really feeling?” feelings.

I have a lot of old resentments coming up recently, and I’ve been working my hardest to deal with them along with God. I do, however, know that resentments are the number one offender and they lead only to a life a unhappiness and futility (page 64 of the Big Book). I have yet to talk to my sponsor about it yet. I’ve been waiting for her to be available for us to go over some step work so I can talk to her. Lately she has been very busy. I saw her today at a meeting and she had to go straight to work. After she chewed me out about not calling her last night.

Last night, I went to a Geek Gathering at Coffeegroundz. It wasn’t bad. I got to meet a lot of my dad’s friends who helped him with putting up posters from when I had ran away. It was kind of a celebration of my homecoming, was what dad said.

Tonight, I’m going to a play about a teenage girl and her venture through the social media world. It’s called Wallflower. I’m excited to see how it all goes, and I’ve promised to blog and review it afterwards. I have lost of ideas for what I want to do with this blog, it’s just putting into action that is the hard part.

I want to start doing music reviews not only because music is my number one passion, but because I need practice for Newspaper next year as well as it’d be a GREAT opportunity to combine both my main passions in life – writing and music. So I’ve got some things in mind. I actually really want to do a Self-Injury article again after watching The Secret Cut that came out this year for Self-Injury Awareness Day. It was really good, and I really want to reach out to other self-injurers.

Like I said before, it’s just a matter of putting my plans into action. There’s a lot of things I want to happen here and they should be happening soon.

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School on Monday was … horrendous. I spent two or three hours trying to get admitted because the rehab I was at did not have a working fax machine. Therefore, they couldn’t get all my transcripts in. After three class periods later, I was off to class. My schedule had been established as two core classes: English III and Geometry and all the rest are electives: Study Hall, Student Aide, PE, Journalism and Orchestra. Since I’d been waiting so long, it was already fourth period. Off to geometry.

It went pretty bad. You know those classes where everyone picks on the teacher and on each other, are loud and in general just plain distracting? It was one of those classes. On top of everything else, I had no idea what the teacher was trying to teach because I didn’t pay attention to geometry prior to this school. That’s my loss.

Once I was put out of my misery and the bell rang, I went ahead to my next classes and lunch. I was lonely at lunch, but I survived. The next day was MUCH better.

First period, I had my first orchestra class in a VERY long time, but I think I sight-read the music pretty well. I got a disc on Friday to practice with so I can get the rhythms right. We’re playing pretty basic songs because for now I’m in the lowest orchestra, simply because I hadn’t auditioned for another one and we only have nine weeks left of school.

I had my ARD meeting on Tuesday in the morning and it turns out most of my credits transferred over. I was so happy, I probably could’ve cried. I am .5 credits away from officially being a junior and I plan on taking Distance Courses through Texas Tech while I’m in Ohio visiting my mom this summer. If I don’t go to Ohio, I’ll probably just take summer school at one of the local high schools.

Wednesday was a much better day, as was Thursday and Friday. I have officaliy completed my first week back at school. It’s going very well. I have a friend, who actually came over and we hung out on Friday. She’s good for me, so it’s okay.

I haven’t blogged in forever and for that, I feel sad. I hate to say it, but I feel like Delicate Melody is one of those things where I have a couple of great ideas, I find somewhere to host them, and then I just loose interest. Except I’m not so much loosing interest as I am confused about what I want to do with Delicate Melody and then there’s always the anxiety-provoking and cliché writer’s block. I have, however, been working on a research paper for English. It doesn’t have a name, but the basics of it is this: Find a thesis you want to write about concerning life and then back it up with a literary piece, a historical event, and a current event.

I have decided to write about how media affects our culture negatively. This is what I have so far:

Today’s media is cajoling our culture into a generation of hate, self-loathing, and utter filth. We are being bogged down and intoxicated by what media portrays the standards and morals of the “average” teenage American. We live in a world full of reckless choices: drinking and driving, drug abuse, risky sex and so on and so forth. Our generation today is suppised to lead our tomorrow. We live in such an economically and morally run down world where the average American is unhappy with their lives.

The media makes the people unhappy and live more chaotic lives than we would have left to our own devices. Tuesdays with Morrie is a book based n learning life’s lessons, Morrie, a man who died from ASL (or more commonly known as “Lou Gherig’s Disease”), touches on everal key points on living life and simply being human. Morrie was a sociology teacher at Brandeis University. He said before he passed that, “the culture we have does not make people feel good about themselves.” (Tuesdays with Morrie pg. 42) Our culture is sick and the media is the root of our troubles.

Look around you and what do you see and hear? Weight loss commercials and advertisements, fad diets, plastic surgery, even diet pill advertisements. They say that there’s always room to improve here in America. That’s far from the truth. People should not change to fit American “standards and morals” to live a successful life. So many Americans struggle with body image.

….

My current even which is what I was working on when I stopped writing is Anorexia. i’ve struggled with eating disorders myself, so I know what it’s life to have poor body image and self-esteem. This is something I feel very strong about. And now that I’m on the other side of it, looking in, I realize that I was unhappy with myself not only because of the choices I made and consequences I faced, but also because of the media telling me what I should look like. All around me, there are models weighing under 100lbs, and here I am twice that, although I haven’t always weighed that much. In my addictions, I weight about 120lbs to 130lbs. Granted sobriety weight is a bitch, I would much rather be bigger than I was before and HAPPY, then utterly miserable and “skinny,” whatever that is.

My historical event for my research paper is “Shotgun Weddings”. When Bristol Palin was forced to hold hands with Levi Johnston at her mother, Sarah Palin, at the Repubican National Convention, something struck me. As I faced my consequences, now she must face hers. Pregnant at seventeen years old and now in a position where she was forced to become engaged, Bristol faces hard times. A “shotgun wedding” is defined as a marriage arranged by the woman and/or the woman’s family when the woman becomes pregnant. This relates to my paper because media and our culture believe that sex is glamorous. It’s fun and risky, therefore we should all do it. When really, people are ending up pregnant and with STDs. This is something I feel strongly about as well, simply because I’ve been in those kind of positions.

Sex is meant for two people who love each other, not for an adrenaline rush.

All in all… I think life is a learning process. Almost a trial and error thing. If something doesn’t work, do it differently next time. Obviously the drugs, cutting, and believe I was a fat monster didn’t work for me so now I have to work on living a happy, joyous, and free lifestyle. That means doing the next right thing and following what I am SUPPOSED to be doing it. It’s a hard path, but it’s not as hard as the other lifestyle I was living. Something I have to keep telling myself constantly is that the strong are those who change and get to the other side, not the ones that can go through things and then continue to live the same lifestyle. The weak are those who refuse… They refuse to change and their life is Hell.

Maybe I’m getting a little ahead of myself, but I think I’ve finally beat my writer’s block.

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Not only is it the people that I will have to deal with, but also the academics. Okay, I’m book smart and, yes, I do well in school. I just don’t know how my credits are going to transfer. This is the part that will be extremely frustrating. I took Credit by Examinations while I was in jail, so those probably won’t transfer over. Which means the ONLY English credit I have is the first semester from English III. I’m supposed to be a junior, and I got a lot of credits with a lot of hard work at the rehab I was at, but I still think I’m going to be knocked down not only one grade, but also I’ll probably be taking one or two Freshman courses. Which is EXTREMELY frustrating. But I have to realize that this is completely out of my control and I will undoubtedly have to accept what comes my way. If all else fails, I can always take night school or summer school. Depending on where I stay the summer, since my parents are divorced and my mom lives in Ohio. I’m supposed to spend the summers with her, but it’s kind of in the air.

Which brings my to my next point. Mom is coming down from Ohio in exactly a week and I just found out today. I’m pretty nervous about this too. I want to prove to my mom I’m a new person. .And though, I realize that trust is NOT gained back very easily, I really want her to know that I’m different and this is my chance to show her that. I guess it has to do with instant gratification. I don’t want to have to PROVE to her that I’m different – I want her to just assume, which obviously isn’t going to happen. Ultimately, I guess I’ll just have to do what I’ve always preached – lead by example. Except in this case, I’m not really leading anyone, I’m “proving by example.”

Other than that, besides Victoria trying to be superhuman, I’m pretty good. Just stressed, I guess. I have this blog that I’m desperately trying to get out there and I have a lot of ideas for things I want to do, Maybe I’m just trying to bite more off than I can chew… Which has always been a problem for me, and also where I usually slip up or make careless mistakes. So the best thing is that I’m realizing this now and not slipping up and then wondering why. That’s what I used to do, anyway.

All in all, I think I just need some serious prayer. That’s all for tonight.. Maybe tomorrow will be more inspirational. If not, I’ll at least tell all about school and how it went.

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