grateful for good friends: you guys rock my world

Growing up we're constantly reminded of the importance of good friends. Especially those we have in high school. Friends influence choices and help shape the people we will become. Now I know that not high school friends will be around 10 years from now, but I am a strong believer on the influence they have in our lives, for good or for worse. High school is the time when I really think we start to discover who we are, what we stand for, and what we want to be. It is also the time when we start making the decisions that will directly effect all three of those things.

Fortunately I have a fantastic group of friends who I really got lucky to find. They all are so so good and all make me want to be a better person in various aspects of my life. friends that I can have important and serious conversations with, but also friends who I can laugh with until our stomachs ache and we can't breathe. Kids I feel completely comfortable around.This has not always been the case though. There was a bit of a blip in my life where I did not feel this way about my friends. 

First grade through the first quarter of 9th grade I went to a charter school where I got really close with a really great group of kids. There were no more than about 60 kids in my grade at any point and by the time middle school rolled around there were only 30 of us. Needless to say we were a pretty tight group of friends. We had basically grown up together, we all had at least 4 classes together, all spent every lunch together, and all probably knew way more than we wanted to about each other. The same kids I had seen pee there pants in 1st grade, puke during a test in 2nd grade, had awkward 5th grade romances with, and faint while giving a presentation in 6th grade were all growing up. By the time 9th grade rolled around there were about 15 of us left and it was like having 15 other siblings. 

Anyways...

9th grade I decided I was gonna try my luck and try out for the Bingham High School girls basketball team. That was the school I'd be going to the next year and I was excited to get involved.  It was kind of a shot in the dark considering I'd only played on a team outside of church ball once before, but I enjoyed playing and thought "hey, why not." I was more doing it for the experience as I didn't really expect to make it with my little experience empty list of connections, so I didn't really have a plan for what I would do if I made the team. My school was about a 20-30min drive from my house and would not work for after school practices and games. Welllll long story short I made the team, to my own surprise, and all the sudden arrangements needed to be made. Arrangements that involved leaving my 2nd home of almost 9 years. I had a week of deciding which public middle school to go to(more like which would accept me so late in the school year) and that's when the first disappointment came. Besides my friends at my school the only other kids I really knew who I would be going to school with were the kids in my neighborhood, but they all were going to South Jordan Middle, and I was going to go to Elkridge. Elkridge was more willing to accept me because they were not as overcrowded and since I had to make a quick transition so I could start on the team Elkridge was the viable answer. And so within a week, sad to be leaving my friends, but starry eyed and hopeful for the future and excited for change, I started my career as a 9th grade student at Elkridge Middle School and as Point Guard for the Bingham High Schools Girls Sophomore basketball team. Boy was I in for the shock of my life. If you've never attended a charter school than you do not understand the difference in the environment of a public school. I jokingly refer to it as the day I lost my innocense, I know now I was being a tad over dramatic, but it was a big deal to me at the time. To put it lightly my usual outgoing, loud, and friendly self was more or less shocked into submission and I cried the whole drive from school to practice for the first couple weeks. I didn't know what was wrong with me, I had never had a hard time making friends, or finding my place in a social setting, but the school was soooo big, I was the kid standing in the hallway intersection using a map to find my next class. It was halfway through the year and 9th grade, so everyone my age knew exactly what they were doing and ruled the school. I felt much smaller than I had ever experienced before. The basketball team gave me a social outlet and they were a really great group of girls that I grew very close with, but that was after school. I went to school with a few of them, but they each had their own group of friends they'd had for years that they hung out with at school, and I always felt like an add on when they'd invite me to eat lunch with or hang out with them over the weekend. Probably a feeling I generated inside my own head and was nonexistent outside myself, but I truly did feel out of place. I had some good friends, one of which I'll forever be grateful for taking me under her wing. Eventually I got back into my groove, but I did miss my old friends. Sophomore year at Bingham I quit the team to focus on school and things that would have a bigger impact on my life. It was a good year, I met some good people and and I enjoyed it, I guess I didn't really know what I was missing, I'd forgotten how I'd felt with those friends I grew up with. So yes in the moment I thought I was having a blast, because I was, but it wasn't until the end of that year that I met the people I talked about at the beginning of this post, and life became an even bigger blast. I met one of my best friends in my physics class that year and one by one I started meeting his friends. And one by one I clicked with each. I didn't feel like an add on or out of place ever, even though I hardly knew the kids. I felt that same level of comfortable and belonging I felt with the kids I knew growing up and that's something I had been missing out on for awhile.They're those people you meet who you felt like you've known forever. 

"It's funny because you meet these people, and they make you laugh, and they give you hope, and they make you realize how much more there is to life, and when you're with them you forget how empty you felt before"

So really eternally grateful to those kids who I now call my best friends, because they really are the greatest group
Needless to say I am also so grateful for all the people I've met during the journey, because they all have blessed my life in countless ways.
Shout out to all those people in my life that truly push me to be my better self and live my life the way I should because I couldn't do it without you!!
Much love, muah <3
Jess