As freshman year draws to a close... I'd like to that this excerpt from my autobiography and dedicate it to my wonderful friends, it kinda sounds like a end of the year speech, so I thought I'd share it. :) Enjoy.
As high school began, something changed. I got more moody, and didn’t want to surround myself with all these loud, obnoxious theatre folk that I had once idolized.
HSPVA changes you in many ways, but the perhaps the most apparent change would be in your fashion. Unlike most high schools, HSPVA had no dress code, and you could pretty much wear anything you wanted, and people did.
Now, I was no trend setter, but I had found a style that worked for me. This style consisted of cute t-shirts with funny slogans, and form-fitting jeans. This all went downhill when we were required to wear sweats and loose clothing for dance and movement classes. It was like a revelation, I had never experienced sweats before. Needless to say, I instantly fell in love.
I then began to wear clothing I proclaimed as my: “Fat Suit”. This usually included: sweats, and baggy t-shirts that were at least two sizes too large for me. Despite dieting and exercising and loosing twenty-seven pounds since 8th grade, my body was still not where I wanted it to be. So I gravitated towards large clothing that didn’t make me feel self-conscience and fat.
My style was the first to go, then was the hygiene. Now, I always brushed my teeth, and put on deodorant, do not fear. But my hair, which has always been a poof ball of death, began to aggravate me like no other. I was in a predicament. If not combed, it would look like a bird’s nest, but then when combed; it would often poof out to much at the top and look silly. So I began not to care. I used to shower and comb my hair every day, but half-way through freshman year I would skip every other day and show up to school a mess. (This was also partly to the fact that I would always stay on late and wake up too exhausted to shower.)
One day, I had to do a scene in which I had just been woken up, so I decided to go to school in “costume”. My ruffled my hair, put one of my old favorite baggy shirts, but unfortunately, had now developed an ominous grease stain, and wore my checkered pajamas bottoms, and brought a pillow as I prop. As I walked into school, a group of my so-called “friends” literally busted out laughing at me.
Staying true to my bubbly morning persona, I told them all to go to hell, and walked to my first period, where my ever so sassy friend, Kirby, made fun of me the whole class. And you wonder why I didn’t like people? One of my best friends said I looked like a “hobo”, and my vocal teacher decided to put it more delicately as “hobo chic”.
On the rare occasion that I had things to do after school that somewhat resembled a life, I would comb my hair and return back to my usual style, and people would be shocked that I actually looked decent. Let’s just say, I clean up nicely.
* * * * * * * * * *
Freshman year was by no means a bad year, in fact, it was a very good year. Towards the end of the year, I actually became confident in my acting abilities, after a shaky start in the beginning of the year. But more importantly, I became confident in who I was as a person. I actually felt like an individual. This could not have been achieved without the help of my amazing group of friends. There is a lyric to a song that says: “Only surround yourself with friends who call you a superstar.” And that’s exactly what I did. The amount of respect and love in my circle was unprecedented in my life before, and I would dare to say, even in the school.
I grew distant from the majority of my theatre class, for strange reasons, mostly because the other gay boy in our class had taken it upon himself to hate me. Despite his friends actually liking me, it was just awkward to be around someone who you knew just hated your guts for pretty much no reason.
But I found a group of four friends in theatre whom I adored and made me laugh. We loved each other for all of our flaws, but most importantly they were smart and funny. I could be myself with them, and not for one moment did they not understand my sense of humor or personality. We decided to make our gang official, and dubbed ourselves “The Bandersnatches” (after the Lewis Carroll creations).
My only other close friend in theatre was a beautiful redhead girl named, Shelby. Shelby and I were just the kind of people who were meant to be friends. From the moment we met, it was nothing but laughter. We bonded over the fact that we both didn’t take ourselves too seriously, and as others dived into the emotional activities in theatre so much so that it made it appear as if they were trying too hard, we took backseat and watched. Honestly, I think we were the lucky ones. We were able to brush off our fumbles and mistakes without any breakdowns, always knowing that tomorrow we’d laugh our asses off.
Outside of theatre, my circle of friends was very diverse. It was made up of dancers, artists, and instrumentalists. They were amazing, and we just had fun. While all other circles were talking about their art areas and drama, we would sit back, and talk about the most useless things.
I learned not to be afraid to screw up and speak your mind. It’s always better to do something that is you, than tell people what they want to hear. While others around me would try to impress the teachers, I decided I would just be myself, and if that didn’t impress them, oh well.
I’m more comfortable with myself and my surroundings than I have ever been in my life, and it’s all thanks to my incredible friends and my vanilla scented oasis that I call my room. You have made me feel so special. Thanks for making freshman year the best! I love you all.
Your faithful blogster, Jacob.
