Now while that all sounds depressing and dark, don’t worry. I’m not that person who wore black for the rest of her life and shut herself off from the world only to be surrounded by the morbid accompaniments of Marilyn Manson following her every step. Actually I am a very bright and bubbly individual, who is often told to try to calm down her excitement with life’s precious quirks. And I rather enjoy the color yellow.
But I mean how could you not to try to make the best of life? Sure I had one of the most surprising and shocking tragedies happen to me at a very young age, but when something like that happens you can roll with it two ways.
1.) You can be that person like I mentioned above (sorry if there are any Manson folks in the crowd, nothing against your tastes in music he probably has some inspiring lyrics, I just prefer the Bobby McFerrin’s of the world.)
or…
2.) You can make a choice. Life gives us another chance after tragedies to follow the sunshine instead of the rain, and I enjoy seeing the flowers bloom, not wilt.
But what you must remember is that this isn’t just my reality. In fact if the credit list were to roll right now I would not be one of the first names to scroll along the screen. When my life changed, many others changed too. Cue the credit list….
Kay
This is our main character. She is my beautiful friend who unfortunately is no longer with us, but I consider myself pretty lucky to have a guardian angel as lovely as her to be looking down on me.
Aztec (no of course this is not her real name, but hey nicknames are fun!)
Aztec and I go way back. We met in the ninth grade and have been friends ever since. And even though we weren’t the best friends right away, we eventually started the whole late night sleepovers, ridiculous makeovers, and crushing on movie stars and Kay, Aztec and I became the three musketeers. At the start of senior year, all due to a boy (which normally is the story) I regretfully decided to break off from the musketeers not knowing what would come in the end. Kay and I barely talked at all, but it was Aztec that despite her many attempts at trying to rally us all together again, tried to keep a common ground and occasionally talked to me acting like what I did wasn’t stupid. I will forever be grateful for her perpetual faith in me and our friendship, if she had just given up like I did, I probably wouldn’t be in the place that I am today. Now she is my best friend and always will be no matter where we are, and hopefully this time my stupid decisions will be kept to a minimum.
Curly
We became friends senior year and she offered me a shoulder to cry on when I felt like I had to start all over in the friend department. We share a lot of the same goals, mannerisms, and fashion choices (thankfully) and that is why we clicked from the beginning. Sure we competed in a lot of our endeavors senior year, we are both musicians, but we always knew a way to put our fighting gloves away and let the other one win every once in a while. Now I can’t exactly say the same for politics…but that’s another blog post. : ) Curly gave me the strength to embrace myself. I did always feel like I could act my self when I was with Kay and Aztec, but I think when you decide to make such a sudden decision at such a pivotal time in your life (like completely changing who you hang out with) you can revert back to that kindergarten mindset of finger-painting with the browns and ugly greens so you don’t steal the pretty colors away from your new friends. Thankfully though, Curly let me use the pink and purple paint and helped me transform my new picture of my life into the bright and carefree one I always wanted.
There are also a few other characters that I will elaborate on later, but this post is getting long at hopefully you have not lost all interest up to this point, so I’ll leave that to another day.
-Lex
