Tuesday, July 21, 2009

beginning repairs

I'm not quite sure how to start an entry on this thing, it's been like two or three years since I even used xanga or any blogging site....this is obviously not xanga, but I felt like having a change though I still have both.
Anyway, this blog is part of my attempt to rehabilitate my former self. No one who has known me in Texas has known this former self. A lot of things changed about me when I moved to Texas from California. It was just before middle school, and California had been the only place that felt like home. Not to mention, the school I had been attending around the time of the move was the first school I had attended for more than a year. I had built really solid friendships, some of which (thankfully) I have been able to recover to a certain extent.
I cried when I found out I had to move, and this was for a number of reasons. First of all, I didn't want to have to be anywhere where I had to associate with my father, from whom I had all ready pretty much withdrawn. Secondly, I had really good friends and, minus the visits and encounters from dad, a very good life. I was finally settled some where, and felt at home. Lastly, Texas was an immensively foreign place to me. Texas, and the south in general, was another planet. My only thoughts about Texas were associated with movie characters I had seen, such as Dwayne from D2: the Mighty Ducks. If anyone remembers that film, if you can call it that, they will remember the whole Rodeo/"Ro-day-o" drive incident with him. To this I thought, 'Silly Texan.'
So, first we moved to Plano...stayed there about a year and a half. So, this was like the tail end of 4th grade and 5th grade. Then we relocated to McKinney where I was stranded until college. Despite living in the same city and attending one school for middle school and one for high school, a change in itself, we lived 2 different areas in this time. I lived in one house for middle school, and another one in the country for high school. It is obvious I still lived a very nomadic lifestyle despite being in the same city. Since college started, I have lived in 2 different places and moved into a third living space in 2007. I have been in the same house since late 2007.
It's obvious that I haven't really been accustomed to being in one place for very long and that has caused it's own problems and some good things actually. I'm very adaptable thanks to this lifestyle, but I also tend to feel uncomfortable being somewhere too long and have trouble imagining myself starting over in any place I have memories in. I have to be somewhere completely new. This is why Baylor was a good fit. It was unfamiliar. Thankfully, Baylor became a home to me like California and is some place I will return to periodically.
Anyway, that was a tangent. I am getting back to changes in myself...the old me. The parts of me I left in California. I realize that we all change as we grow, but I believe that I took a lot of negative turns after this move. For instance, this move was the beginning of my loss of confidence in myself. This didn't occur all at once, like most cancers it began very slowly. Unlike moving within California, the move to Texas was a move to an unfamiliar place...a completely unfamliar place. At least in California I still knew the general area (kind of how I lived in different areas of mckinney later on), but in Texas I was out of my element. I also, had to deal with the reverse stereotypes Texas kids had regarding Californians. My way of dealing, was beefing them up. Growing up in the Bay Area, I never really surfed or things like that; but, I said I did. It gave me mystique, and made me instantly cool. That continued 'til midway through high school.
I'm getting tired....so I'll start on this anew tomorrow. After some intensive guitar playing.

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