Rejection and Self Worth

I often find myself trusting the wrong people too much and the right people not enough.

I've experienced a major learning experience the last few months and learned that even if you think you do, sometimes you just don't know what you have til it's gone. About 3 months ago I made what seemed like a pretty big mistake, but is slowly turning into a blessing in disguise. I told my best friend at college that I had developed some feelings for him and that a lot of our mutual friends had told me they thought he liked me- only to get the response that not only did he not like me back, but he actually liked this other girl instead. It was easily the most humiliating experience of my life thus far, and you could not pay me enough money to go through that again. After that, our friendship was never the same. He started acting awkward around me, even though I apologized, told him it wasn't a big deal. After days, weeks, an entire month away from each other, waaay past the point when it was blatantly obvious I was over it, he still acted weird, and it was still a very uncomfortable situation. I knew after a rejection like that, our friendship wasn't going to be the same, but I never expected it to be that bad. I felt horrible. Not even about the fact that he didn't like me, I got over that like the next day. I felt horrible because I thought I had single-handedly destroyed our friendship in one conversation. I ruined everything, and that was it, oh well right? It was nice while it lasted? I not only lost my best friend, but I had to find out the hard way who my true friends were. I never expected to lose my other friendships too. You see, there's just something about this guy that everyone likes, he's so friendly and outgoing and funny that everyone wants to be friends with him. I know because I remember feeling the same exact way the first day I hung out with him, I was just so desperate to be friends with him, and apparently a lot of people feel the same way. With the exception of my roommates, there weren't really any of our "mutual" friends who stuck with me. Maybe they were just being nice to me to get to him? Maybe they didn't want to be rude to me because they knew how close we were? Maybe they never liked me at all, I just thought they did because I was always with him, and they wanted to be friends with him, so they hung out with me by association. No matter what the reason is, they aren't friends with me now, but they're all over him. 
As heartbreaking as it was to lose the majority of my friends, I'm finding that the whole experience was more of a blessing than anything else, for several reasons. The first being that obviously I found out who my real friends are. The people who don't care who you are or aren't friends with, and the people who don't pick "sides" as if its some sort of war. True friends will be there for you just to listen to you whine about it, and tell you that you deserve better anyway. The other incredible thing I've discovered through all of this is that I am awesome. I know I always say I've stopped caring about what other people think of me, and I always feel like I don't, but when it comes down to it, a lot of my happiness is based on other people, and not based on myself and my personal achievements. When I become friends with someone, I'm basically loyal to a fault. I stick with them no matter what, and never really think of how it's affecting me, which is so stupid, because ultimately, my self worth has to be based on ME. I get so caught up in my relationships with others that I forget to work on myself, I don't make goals, I don't study as hard, I just don't care about #1 as much as I should. And in regards to this particular friendship, I was throwing myself under the bus entirely too much. It wasn't just my fault that our friendship was crumbling, because you know what? It takes two people to have a fight. I apologized for what I did. After that, a lot of it was on him, and it took a while for me to tear down this pedestal I'd built for him.
Basically what ended up happening is after some pretty brutal fights, some serious drama, and several attempts to reconcile and fix any sort of friendship we had left, I decided to just write a letter and lay it all out on the table. I dug into old wounds that hadn't been properly stitched up, I brought up new grievances, and basically told him to grow up and decide if he was really going to be my friend or not, and if not, to stop using me for my stuff and for rides. He never responded back to my face or in a letter or anything, but he did tell my roommate at dinner one night that he always appreciated my honesty. He also started saying hello to me every once and a while on campus, and even hugged me once at church. My roommates and put together a little gift basket for him on his birthday, and after thanking me and saying he loved me on a social networking site, it sort of seemed like it might actually work out and we might actually end up friends again. The only problem is that in the past month since our "make up" I've found myself slipping into these old habits that got me into this mess in the first place. Dropping everything to help him out, letting him use my printer with nothing in return, basically letting him use me. He never wants to spend time with me just because he's my friend, and he never talks to me unless he has to. It's abusive, and unhealthy, and not good for either of us. I've given him 3 months now to "earn" me back, and I just don't think he really wants to. 
Empowering myself has been hard, especially when going through a loss like that, but like I said before, I can't base my self worth on others anymore, it has to come from me. If this boy doesn't see how awesome I am then he's a gosh dang fool and he doesn't deserve to be my friend anyway. He's content with his friends, and that's fine. I'm just tired of being the toy that he sets down for a while, and then assumes will still be there when he wants to play some more. And you know what? I don't even miss it.

Be careful who you call your friends. I'd rather have 4 quarters than 100 pennies any day. 
 

Just Bragging

Eight reasons why I LOVE my life.

1- I love cleaning out my life and starting this amazing new chapter. Just moving away and getting the heck out of high school has changed me for the better in SO many ways. I never would have imagined going to college would strengthen not only my confidence and motivation, but also my testimony this much. I just feel so much better about myself knowing that I have conquered this incredibly hard thing, and that I can live on my own, using my own money for food and fun, and just knowing that I worked hard and earned this. It makes me want to improve all aspects of my life! I cleaned out my closet, cleaned out my music, even cleaned out my facebook likes. I started praying and reading the good book every night again, and I just feel like the old me again.

2- I'm LOVING having so many friends. I feel so loved everyday, like people want to go out of their way to see me, and to spend time with me! What?! I got so used to being the initiator all the time and having to basically beg people to hang out with me all the time, that I forgot what it's like to have real friends. The other night a couple of my roommates, and also our best guyfriend who lives down the hall came into my room at like 11 at night to talk for a bit and a couple of us ended up telling these life stories. I just feel so close to these kids, even though I've only known them for 6 weeks! I also think it's so awesome how easy it is to make friends in college. Like seriously, I'm a pro at the whole new kid thing, (I went to a new school every year from 4th to 10th grade) so I wasn't that worried about going to a new school again, but when you get here, EVERYONE is new! And everyone is looking for a place to belong. I can say "hi" to someone in the elevator on my way to the bus stop and be best friends with them by the time we get to campus.

3- I love the diversity at my school. I promise I'm really working on not hating Utah anymore, but Utah County was just too much for me. The only way I can think of to explain it is just so vanilla. Everyone I knew was Mormon, white, and lived there for a really long time. I'm sure that's really great for some people, and I'm really not ragging on Utah county, it's a nice place, but it just wasn't working for me. There's so much more diversity here! I know like 10 black kids (YEssssssss) and half my friends are not LDS and the majority are from states outside Utah. It's like I feel like myself again, like life makes sense! It's so much more like Flower Mound (where I lived in elementary school), because there's a very large Mormon/LDS community and an awesome LDS support system, but at the same time, I get to be unique and have something special that I can share with my friends! It's so nice to have all these missionary opportunities surrounding me again, just like growing up. ALSO there's some of MY people here!! There's a freaking bluegrass club here. Do you understand how awesome this is? I've met people from Texas, Tennessee, Georgia, and Louisiana. I can say that I love country music and instead of getting grossed-out looks all the time, people respect it, and some people are like "oh, hey! me too!" I finally feel like somebody understands me!

4- I love that I've come out of my shell here. I've said some pretty awkward things and been SO sarcastic, just because I'm so used to nobody listening to me, that I'm sort of out of practice with talking to my peers (hahah). But my friends have been so forgiving and understanding and still want to hang out with me! It just reminds me of who I used to be a few years ago when I came out of my shell for a bit. I was so confident, funny, and I had a lot of friends. Being shy is a lot safer but it sure is boring...

5- I love that I've almost entirely stopped caring what other people think about me. I mean, for the most part I didn't care that much before, just because I hated high school anyways, haha, but now I just feel like I can be myself and people will love me anyways. I think all the stuff I went through in the end of 2011 and beginning of 2012 just left me so jaded, and bitter, and skeptical, and now I've just burst through it, like I can finally be myself again, a person I haven't been since I was 16! It's so freeing.

6- I love that through all of this my testimony has grown and my relationship with my Father in Heaven has grown so much. I used to have such a strong testimony in like, 8th-10th grade and somewhere along the line I just got a little off track. I love Sundays and haven't missed a meeting yet! This has got to be some sort of record for me. I've found that I look forward to going to bed at night just so I can study my scriptures (including my Libro de Mormon!) and pray and just feel this enormous love my savior has for me.

7- I love how easy it is to learn and to get good grades. Now, don't get me wrong I LOVE my family with all my heart, but I think having this chance to get away and sort-of figure out how to do things completely by myself (including motivating myself to study and do my homework) has helped me tremendously. Also just the fact that there is SO much less pressure! It's crazy how over-achieving everybody in my high school was, and here it's just so much more laid back because nobody has a specific reputation or anything that they have to keep up, and there's no parents constantly breathing down our necks telling us to get A's on everything all the time, and the professors are SO much easier to understand. I think loosening the reigns a tiny bit has just made me more disciplined and motivated and I just feel so much more successful in general. TAKE THAT (insert worst high-school-teacher-ever's name here) You can't break me! I knew I wasn't stupid after all.

8- Best of all: I LOVE MUSIC MAJORS. This kind of goes along with the diversity thing, but I really take pride in my weird, awkward, "music-girl" identity, and it's so nice to have people around me who feel the same way! I mean, even just in Utah in general there's a lot more focus on the arts, but even in the top choirs and bands there's always those kids that are just in it for the reputation, or to go to New York on tour. In college in an actual music major where this is what we want to do with the rest of our lives, it's the real deal. These people are so passionate. So passionate, and nerdy, and expressive, and it's inspiring really. I have no problem waking up at 6am M,W,F for my super early music classes, because I know I'm going to a class where people care, and they are serious about being there! I've found it so much easier to write here too! Last school year I wrote maybe 3 songs total. That's including piano solos, country songs, vocal things, all of it. Since I moved here, I've written 5 songs in 5 weeks. I love how easily I can express myself.

I'm so incredibly grateful for this opportunity. I get to live with my best friends everyday, study what I love with people that are really serious about music, and most of all, I'm grateful for the changes I'm seeing in myself. I love being happy :)

College Life

So it's official, I've completed my first two weeks of college.

And I just gotta say...it's not what I expected at all. It's good and bad. I was really worried during registration about being super stressed out all the time like I was last year, so I made sure to not take too many classes or too hard of classes, but now I have the problem of being bored all the time. I only signed up for 13 credit hours- only 6 classes, and so far, none of them really have that much work. I get up at 6 or 7 in the morning (depending on the day) and get done with classes by 12 or 1. And that's with a 1hr/2hr break in between classes, and then my day is done! I usually get home and do the little, if any homework that I have (which only takes me 15 minutes) and then I literally have nothing to do. I've decorated my apartment, taught myself the mandolin, learned how to draw, hung out with friends when they are home, exercised 4 times last week (lost 4lbs!!) and read Pride and Prejudice again.
The point is, if things don't start picking up soon, I'm going to have to figure out something to do with my life. I have been learning GarageBand and ProTools9 better, so that's good. But I can only take so much computer time. Maybe I should get back into solo-artist YouTubing? Or just become super dedicated to this blog thing I've got going. Maybe I'll become famous on the internet and make tons of extra money, and not have to have a job next year? Wouldn't that be nice... Maybe I'll just get a regular, boring job. Then at least I'll be earning money with my time.
I don't really know where I'm going with this post, so I'll just leave it at this, stay tuned for any music I might release one of these days. Cause I have time on my hands.

Studio B

   A couple weeks ago I got home from a trip to Nashville that changed my life.  

I know those are probably the words of every country singer in the history of the world, but I'm completely serious here, it was amazing! I wanted to share one experience in particular that I will never forget. 
So in Nashville there's this extremely famous popular old recording studio called Studio B. (There used to be Studio A, and C but they were demolished years ago). And I got to go on a tour of it. At first I thought it was just going to be a sort-of, go inside the building and learn about the studio and then look through the window at it. So we went inside and I was right about the first part, where we learned about the studio's history and all the artists that have recorded there. But then we went over to look at it and we actually got to go inside. I was so amazed to be standing on that floor in that exact room that 1000 hits were recorded in. I mean we're talking, Elvis Presley, Dolly Parton, Porter Wagoner, Hank Williams and so many others! Our tour guide walked us in and had us sit down and then told us this story that I will never forget. 
In Studio C, there are 4 light fixtures on each of the four corners of the room, and each fixture has 4 different colored lights on it: Red, White, Blue, and Green. Elvis Presley had these fixtures put in, because he was really dedicated to getting his songs just right, and the different colored lights helped set the mood. (Red+Green for Christmas, Blue for sad, Yellow/White for upbeat, etc.) And when he was trying to record the song Are You Lonesome Tonight he couldn't find the right setting. He tried blue, and white, and all the different colors, and then he decided to just turn all the lights off, including the outside lights, the instrument players' lights, and the recording lights. When he did this they were able to do the song in one take, and it was perfect. 
After he told us this story, our tour guide turned off all of the lights and played the ballad for us. It was incredible. I can't even explain how amazing it was to sit in that historic room where so many of my idols have played and to listen to this song that had been so carefully and perfectly recorded. It was at that moment that I knew I wanted to be a musician. I've always been a singer/pianist/guitarist/any-insturment-i-can-get-my-hands-on-ist, and music has always been a huge part of my personality, but it wasn't until that exact moment that I knew, more than anything that this is what I want to do with my life. 
After the song was over, I got to play Elvis's favorite piano and Chet Atkin's favorite guitar. (SO COOL) Here's some pictures of other fantastic things I got to do.

Watching awesome live performances EVERYWHERE

Recording a little song at Ryman Records

Performing on the Grand Ole Opry stage at the Opry House!!

Playing Elvis's favorite piano inside Studio B

Moving on

 

   There's something I've been wanting to write about for a while now, because of the incredible life lessons I've learned from a sad experience. 

But I'm having a really hard time putting into words how I feel, and telling the story without totally exposing people. I'm gonna try though, so here goes. 
 I've been feeling extremely disappointed about the way I ended high school. I hate that I'm going to look back at high school and my four almost all good years are going to be tainted by this horrible semester. It's really gotten me noticing others and how I treat them. People don't remember you for what you said, but how they made you feel, and I just really hope I never treat anyone like this. 
  One of my favorite teachers throughout all of high school completely turned on me just a few weeks before graduation. The only way I can think of to explain how it feels is heartbreaking. I don't know that I've ever been so disappointed in my life. For the most part, this teacher is a truly amazing lady. She genuinely cares about her kids and she always goes way out of her way to help me. But every once an a while (once or twice a term at the most) she'll just randomly get in a really bad mood and class kind of sucks, but I mean, that's understandable. Any woman has mood swings, especially one under the incredible amount of stress teachers go through. But for some reason, during the last few months of school her bad days came more and more often, until it basically sucked every day.
   Then one day she just sort of snapped... She blew up at one of the sweetest girls in the class over something that really wasn't that big of a deal. So I decided I wanted to try to talk to her about what was going on. I explained the situation to my parents and some friends outside the class and came up with a game plan based on their advice and talked to her one day after school. She acted like everything was fine when I talked to her, but then the next day in class it was the same thing again, it was like this black pit that just kept snowballing uglier and uglier. This teacher would be in a pissy mood and then the kids would be rude back and not do what they were supposed to on purpose, then she would punish the kids and be even meaner and then the kids would just be even brattier! It was this vicious cycle, and it was really horrible to end what had been my favorite class that way. To make things worse, I found out that all the time and energy I dedicated to her program was for nothing. Each year and the end of the year she holds this banquet party to celebrate student's achievements and even though I did SO much for her program, including a really challenging job that brought me a ton of stress, I didn't get even a simple thank you from her. She also wrote the most un-personal short message in my yearbook "Alison- You've been fun in class. Hope you have fun at college, good luck with life, Ms. (I won't say her name)" I never thought a teacher could ever make me that upset.
Long story short, Senior ended up really crappy. 
The thing I've learned from this depressing experience though, is to not depend so much on other people for my happiness. It's true that my teacher was really horrible to my class the last half of the year, and it's true that I was really disappointed, but I chose to be disappointed. I gave her the exact reaction that she wanted, (conciously or not) and she didn't deserve that. I have SO many things going for me right now, a fabulous family that loves me, my blessings and talents, and getting to go to college this upcoming fall. If I had spent my time focusing on the wonderful things in my life and not wallowing in despair, my year could've turned out totally different. That's why I think from now on, I'm going to focus on happiness, because being angry doesn't change them, it only affects me. It just isn't worth my time or energy to be mad.

Confidence

      In the past month since I've graduated high school, I've been giving a lot of thought as to why people are the way they are at certain points in their lives, especially teenagers. Not that I didn't think about it constantly as I walked the hallways of my (giant) high school feeling like I was at least five years older than everyone there. 

  What I want to know is, Why in the heck does everyone care so much what other people think of them?

      Our whole lives we are taught to be individuals, be ourselves, and do what makes us happy. Why then, do people seem to find confidence so intimidating? It's something I've struggled with throughout my entire life, and I think the reason for that is the fact that for some reason, seeing someone who is sure of who they are makes people feel inferior.
      When I was sixteen I had a boyfriend (weird, I know), and I was texting him all the time, and a lot of the time it would be some great news like I wrote a new song I was really stoked about, or that I got invited to go be in some cool music group, or go on this amazing tour to Europe, and he acted like he was really excited for me. The problem is though, he didn't ever tell me that what I was doing was making him feel like he was mediocre or second-rate compared to me. Then, one day (seemingly) out of the blue, he came over and dumped this massive pile of problems on me, saying he didn't feel good enough for me, and he felt like I deserved better than him. I had no clue! What I thought was just me telling my boyfriend something I was excited about, turned out to be the cause of a ton of emotional problems for him. Now, I'm not saying it's 100% his fault things didn't work out between us, but the extreme lack of self worth was definitely a contributing factor. We never had much of a civil conversation after that, and it wasn't until just a few months ago that I learned what that did to him. He completely went off the deep end. He started drinking, cutting, and even tried to commit suicide. For me, that is SO hard to comprehend. Just in these last two years of my high school experience there has been this almost epidemic of suicides at my school and the surrounding schools. I can't even fathom someone's self-esteem being destroyed to the point that they feel like it isn't even worth it to be alive anymore. I understand that a lot of people have severe depression, and disorders, and chemical imbalances in their brains-trust me I get that. But I can't see why anyone would want to base their self-image on something so fragile! I mean, think about it, basing everything you are off of what others say or think of you (or what you think they say or think of you)? That's crazy! It's completely insane. And still, a lot of people -especially teenagers- live their entire lives that way. 
     I remember one time in my junior year, I was in a class doing some homework during free time, and this girl on the next row over was just sitting there in her desk on Pinterest when I noticed something she wrote on her hand that I will always remember. Chin up, Darling. It's so easy to forget how beautiful, brave, smart, and loved we are, and how much of our self esteem can rely on our achievements, and our work ethic, and most importantly, the kind of person we see ourselves as. 
      I wish everyone would stop letting other people rule their self esteems, intentionally or not, and take charge of it themselves. It is so incredibly freeing to not give a crap what anybody thinks, and to not have that crazy, constant emotional roller-coaster ride that goes along with caring too much about other people's opinions. There's no way anybody can get everyone in the world to like them, so just do your best and love who you are! And don't hate on anyone else because they have a level of confidence you haven't reached yet.