Finding my sense of self in high school, running and theater freshman year- When I started high school, I had a goal of becoming an architect and interior decorator.  Freshmen could not take interior design though.  They did however let us take stagecraft.  I figured, that along with my drafting classes would work. It was designing a room on a stage so it would work just as well.  The other part of the class was costumes and make up so I also would get to play with stage make up and play dress up.  Two things I also loved and was good at.  Easy A for sure.  I actually was pretty great at it.  The teacher asked me to start designing for school productions and to be part of the design crew that year.  I ended up doing that for the rest of high school.  My designs went to state level competitions too.  It was pretty cool. I got to help with directing the design team for all the theater and musical theater productions and got to try on costumes and practice my makeup application during rehearsals.  And practices kept me at school until 9pm during productions.  By the time I decided to go out for the track team in the spring, I was spending most of my time at the school.  We practiced a 6am in the morning before school, 3:30 after school and then I had theater stuff after track practice.  I basically only had to go home to sleep.  I discovered I was actually a pretty good runner too.  I was top JV in my first meet.  I was able to keep pace with the upper classmen at practice, but they didn’t like a freshmen overshadowing them so they would yell at me if I at their pace.  So, I stayed back just behind them for the whole session and was content with winning races at JV meets.  At the end of spring the team captain of the boy’s long distance team invited me to be his running buddy for the summer and told me I was going to become first runner on the girls varsity cross country team.  He told me to stop being so timid and run like he knew I could. That if the older girls didn’t like that I was faster than them, they needed to train harder and want it more than I did.  He made me run with him every day of summer vacation and put me on a diet.  He unknowingly helped me kick my eating disorder.  I learned to be healthy because of him and I learned to start sticking up for myself, well at least at school.  He even made me take yoga with him to improve my breathing and striding distance.  He became my music mentor, and one of my best friends and advocates.  He had a crush on one of my friends too. They started dating for a while and even went to our prom together the next two years. He even came back my senior year to take me to prom. By my sophomore year my stepbrother went back to live with his mom and step dad for a while. I bought my own car with 500 dollars I earned working part time at my aunt’s restaurant.  I had reasons to be happy. I had ways to escape all the drama that was my home life and I had real friends and things in my life that brought me a sense of self-worth and pride.  

Next Chapter: Entry Fifteen