It's just a number

Aside from Christmas and summer vacation, I'm pretty sure there is NOTHING that gets a kid more excited than their birthday. Birthdays meant parties with your friends (a PRIVATE skating party at the Rink in SL if you were lucky), birthday cake (from the STORE if you were lucky), and presents. Personally, I always liked getting cards in the mail because I was weird and liked getting mail (bonus points to Grandma Struck because her cards always came with $5, which was a pretty big deal when you are a kid.) After you get a bit older, the only birthdays that seem to matter are the ones where you gain a cool "privilege" or whatever, like turning 14 (learner's permit), 16 (driver's license), 18 (ability to purchase cigarettes and porn, not that I've ever bought either), and 21 (ability to *legally* purchase and consume booze in the public venues.) After those big "privilege earning" birthdays, the only time anyone seems to really give a crap about a birthday and throw a big party is when your birthday happens to be one in which your age will now end with a "0." It really just starts to become another day of the year where your phone is constantly buzzing with "So and So posted on your Timeline" notifications from Facebook, you go out for food/drinks with your friends, and then come home and go to bed. I turned 23 yesterday, and it literally was just any other day. I woke up, I got ready for school, I went and taught. The only difference is that instead of coming home after school and working on a puzzle and watching Disney movies, I went out in Sac AND in Lake View (party animal, am I right?) I don't feel any different being 23 than I did being 22. It's just a number. Somedays I feel like I'm 60, some days I still feel like I'm 12, but 23 is the real "number." The only difference I can foresee anymore is that I have to remind myself to say 23 when people ask me how old I am.

One Last Goodbye

They say that people come into your life for one of two reasons: they are either a blessing, or they are a lesson. For a long time, you were a blessing, but I guess that blessing ended up turning into a lesson. I hate that things went down like they did and I hate that they ended this way, but I fought and fought for what we had as long as I could. The sad and the stress just became more than I was willing to keep fighting through.

Every Easter, I always buy an Easter lily. I'm horrendous at growing things and keeping plants alive, but I buy one nonetheless. And my lily always ends up in really bad shape, but I keep watering it and pulling off the dead blooms and setting it in the sun so it might have a chance to come back. No matter how much I try, I always end up throwing a half-dead, sad looking Easter lily out. Our friendship was that half-dead lily. I wanted it so bad, and wanted to keep it alive and looking beautiful. But after awhile, I was just watering and taking care of a flower that I knew was gone and just needed to be thrown away. So much time and energy I spent taking care of something I knew wasn't good, time and energy that I took away from the relationships and the friendships in my life that were alive and blooming and flowering. It's not fair to those relationships and frankly, it's not fair to me.

I'm in a hard place right now, because we had so many good memories and good times together. I can't forget about those, and I don't want to forget about them. Maybe that's a good thing, because I can focus more on the good memories we had together, rather than remembering me fighting tooth and nail to fix a shitty friendship that eventually just ended anyway. And I cry a lot sometimes when I think about those memories, and I had to put your pictures and anything that reminded me of you in a box so I wouldn't have to see it, but I hold onto the fact that someday I'll be able to think about those memories, and you, without going through a half a box of Kleenex and crying for 3 hours. It's just going to take some time I guess.

I don't know if you'll read this, or if you even care about me anymore. You always said you did, but words are just words. So if you are reading this, I guess I want to say thanks for the memories, even though they are kind of making my life miserable right now. And I want to say I'm sorry, that my fighting and my love and my caring about this friendship wasn't enough to save it. I know this is what I need to do, but that doesn't make it any easier. Hell, it's the hardest thing I've ever had to do. But there's only one direction to go from here I guess.

- Teacher Lady