How I got to being myself

When I was younger, I originally wanted to be a teacher 'cause I didn't know anything else. Music was always a big thing in my life though. My sister, my best friend and I would often make up dances to songs and I remember we were supposed to perform one to our parents and I was scared. I didn't know then but I had my stage fright since then. Throughout my younger years I looked up to the Spice Girls and Gwen Stefani from No Doubt. The movie I remember seeing in theaters for the first time was Grease. As you can see I just grew up loving music.

In grade school, I performed onstage three times with a focus on myself. I had two performances for a school play and once in the talent show. When I did the play, I was a "hula hooper" and during a part of our dance we each had to perform a trick with the hula hoops. Mine was spinning in on my arm since I can't really do much else with those things. So when the time came for our performance to the school, I was doing fine until I did my trick and *whoop* the hula hoop flies off my arm at the teacher. I end up having to finish without it of course. The second show, for the parents, followed the same thing. It only made me lose faith in my ability to perform onstage. Since the practices were perfectly fine and everything. So in fourth grade I got to sing a song from Grease for the talent show. I was really excited cause I wanted to sing it to my crush (who ended up not showing anyway) and to redeem myself onstage. I only had a certain amount of time and to make things worse the crowd was super loud during my entire performance.

After all that I kinda forgot about being serious with music but at the same time my love for it grew more each day. During my sophomore year in high school I accidentally got into a choir class. At the beginning I had every intention of switching out of it but then I started to feel comfortable with the others and really enjoying it. It was then that I really remembered how much I really loved it. Then the sad news came in summer '09 when Michael Jackson died. It felt like someone I knew personally died, which I'm sure many felt, and made me really think about how I wanted my life to end up. I saw how he did what he loved until he couldn't anymore and I thought "Why shouldn't I do that too? Why should I just do what society thinks in what's good for me if I'll end up being miserable my entire life?" So I thought for a long time and at the time I was already thinking about colleges so I really wanted to decide. Then as I went through my experiences in choir and everything I made the decision that I would chase my dreams. Even if I would be poorer than most or something, at least I would be happy and to me that's what matters most in life.

So that's how I got to this point. I wouldn't be going to school at all but my family keeps bothering me about it so I will, even though I really don't want/need to. Hopefully everything will keep going up from now!