Sixteen (Birthday rant)

It's been a weird year.

That's the best I can say it. Because so many weird things have happened, terrible and good, that I never would have expected. I lost best friends and made new ones; I found refuge in new places and was denied in others. I didn't get the things I want but I found new things to want. That doesn't diminish my wanting of those old things, but they are undeniably good, wonderful things.

Yesterday was one of the worst days in the entire semester. Today was one of the best.

I don't know why.

Life never works out the way I plan it, and I think that's a good thing. Even this post which discusses so brilliantly WHY we can't have complete control over our own lives doesn't mean I still don't want it. I still want to make myself a certain way and be friends with certain people and do certain things that I don't know how to control. But at the same time, if I had it my way, I never would have discovered the things I found this year.

It's like the roadmap in my head didn't get anywhere near fulfilled but all the side stops really make me reconsider my thoughts and beliefs and make me a better person.

Tomorrow I'm going to be seventeen. Tomorrow is the end of a crazy, crazy year. It wasn't the funnest or best or happiest year, but it was a hell of a year to say the least. I'm not nostalgic about it, but I'm happy I went through it. I got alot out of it, even with all the angst and the pain and the anxiety.

I learned how not to judge people and to be myself and to actually make sustaining relationships with people. I understand more people now, and find myself admiring people that I never would have considere worth thinking well of last year. 

I found real friends and I lost old ones. 

Nothing deathly happened; no tragedy that ripped my family apart. I've been happily blessed with a lack of such events in my life, but it can't last. 

I guess the crux of it all is that I learned more. 

Tomorrow is the end of my 16th year, and I'm almost sad. I've been through so much and I'm almost sorry to have to part myself with this part of my life. 

But alas, 17 has to make a name for itself. It will have its own angst and happy things too. I don't think I can imagine what my life will be like in a year, how good or bad it will be. 

The not knowing makes me excited though. Because there's so much ahead (hopefully, if I don't die or something awful awful happen) that my boring, mundane brain can't begin to expect, secret joys like my entire AP Lang class throwing me a party for my bday or getting a Twitter or writing nostalgic notes on the yearbooks of seniors. It wasn't anything I expected. 

But I didn't mind it.

So this is sixteen, a messy ride of good and bad, of high expectations and low receptions. I hope I "don't forget what it's like to be sixteen when I turn seventeen." (Sorry I quoted Perks of Being A Wallflower don't kill me) I hope I remember everything the way I remember it now. And I hope things get better.