"We have this strength inside of us and yet we are taught to always sort of keep it down. I sort of found in my life that I've taken a step back and made myself smaller in order to try to fit in. And that hasn't worked. And we have to learn to kind of embrace what makes us unique, and embrace our strength and then if people don't like it, fuck it." - Idina Menzel [Turning 16 in a few hours...who woulda thunk I'd be here after all those years?] 15 was a good age for me. It was revolutionary. It was eye opening. It was depressing. It was thrilling. It was lovely. And holy cRAP I grew. Oh, how I grew. This time last year, I was doing the same exact thing I am doing right now; I was writing a farewell to another year I was to put behind me. I wrote about going to the Grey's Anatomy benefit concert. I wrote about being a sophomore. I wrote about getting to be a Soprano 2 section leader and Commissioner Of Publicity & Design for the first time. I wrote about meeting Shoshana Bean. I wrote of getting solos and learning to use my whistle register. This year, I write about: maybe going to the Tori Kelly concert next week, being a junior, being the Soprano 2 section leader and Commissioner Of Publicity & Design for a second year, Shoshana Bean emailing me the song she wrote for me, getting solos and getting pretty damn good at whistling (if I do say so myself). At this very moment, my right shoulder, my lower back and legs are hella sore & it ain't what you're thinking. I hurt everywhere because I've been choreographing a hip hop piece since yesterday & I was running it for 3/4ths of the time in 3rd period dance team today. I'm on the fucking JV dance team and I'm the gosh darn VP what the hecks. At 15, I learned that I wasn't as shit a dancer as I thought I was my whole life. In elementary school, never in my wildest dreams did I ever think I'd be choreographing a hip hop piece while being a VP on a JV dance team in high school or doing ANY of this crap aforementioned. My life have been a series of twists and turns that have gotten me to this point in time: me sitting on my bed and smiling while thinking of all the crap (good & bad) that I went through this year. I remember last year on my birthday I had 1st period dance PE & Mrs. Swanson sang to me and gave me one of her magical million hour hugs, 2nd period mixed choir sang "For Good" to me, there was a free day in 3rd period English, I had dress rehearsal for our choir Halloween Show & Ms. A made everyone sing "Happy Birthday" to me in a minor key (and it is still one of the ugliest things I have ever heard to this day), I came home around 8:50 PM or something like that to a kitchen table of all the food that I love to eat spread out before me from my family & then I cried while watching Grey's Anatomy. That was a good-ass day, y'all. I hope tomorrow proves to be as lovely as I would like it to be...or maybe even more so. I don't need big gestures or screams across campus to be happy tomorrow...I'd just like to be. To be happy. To be mad. To be crazy. To be quiet. To be imperfect. To be whoever I want to be so long as I am. I am grateful and truly blessed to have been strong enough to successfully make it for this long and I'm not gonna stop until it's time. So, for now, I'm gonna be nine people's favorite thing (rather than a hundred people's ninth favorite thing), I'm gonna krump cautiously to the beat of my own weird-ass drum & I'm never gonna deny that I have not been left unchanged by the passage of life that has otherwise left others unfazed. I have come out of 15 alive, I will conquer 16 and you'll see another one of these for 17. I'm not done with life yet (but if one damn person laughs and says anything along the lines of "Sweet 16? Haha, Dulce 16? You get it?" tomorrow to my face? They are going down. They will not see another year) & I don't think it's done with me.
