#TBT: Where was I in 2008?

Hey, guys – welcome back to TNTH!

So, it’s 2018. It’s crazy to believe that 10 years ago was 2008. 2008 was one of those years you look back on and remember your youth and the memories that are forever a part of that specific year. I thought it would be fun to reminisce about the person I was and the memories that made this year one to always remember. I wrote a #TBT post about 2008 a while ago if you’d like to read a more detail description of this year. If not, here’s a summary of 2008 through my eyes.

• In 2008, I was 14 years old. I vaguely remember my birthday being during the school week and I went to school with my pretty outfit I bought at Fashion Bug and I straightened my hair for the big day. I never straightened my hair in middle school so whenever I did get it straightened, it was a big deal to my friends. Another person in our class also shared the same birthday as me which never happened because I don’t really know that many people who are born in January, let alone on the same day as me. My birthday was a fun day; I got birthday wishes from all of my teachers, I got my various birthday punches (a middle school tradition), and I got mad love by my friends. I spent my after-school hours auditioning for the school play, which was an experience of its own. Eventually, I got the role of “Queen of Hearts” in the production of Alice in Wonderland.
• I was really big on music at this time. I listened to such a variety of music that I look back now and remember a lot of different music from 2008. That summer, though, I started to get into the Jonas Brothers and Demi Lovato, and I was literally that girl. My friends who were still into the mainstream music actually began to judge me for my music tastes, but guess who didn’t give a fuck!
• My 8th-grade class literally made my year. We were considered one of the smartest classes in the middle school yet we were one of those classes that raised hell in our classes. Something would happen every single day, whether it was rumors being spread around about our teachers hooking up, causing havoc in our math class because we never did a damn thing in Math, and even when someone stole a few things from one of my teachers one time, we all stood together like a family.
• The greatest day of 2008 was opening day of my school’s production of Alice in Wonderland. For months, I spent my after-school hours rehearsing for the show, making friends along the way, and it was bittersweet to see the show come to life after months of getting it together. All my friends and family came out to support, I owned the stage whenever I was in character, and it was just one of the things I am so happy I did, even years after the fact. This production really made my passion for singing and acting a lot stronger, and I was excited to continue my studies in performing arts high school that Fall.
• When the weather began to get warmer, my friends and I would always hang out on Fridays after school. We either went to the park in our area and played basketball (I would be the one watching), or we would go to the movie theater in Bay Rudge and watch something. The first ever movie hangout we all went on was to see Iron Man, and surprisingly it was amazing! It was more fun that there were, like, 15 of us in that movie theater just hanging out and having a good time. One of the best movies we all went to see in theaters was Batman: The Dark Knight. Seriously, that movie to me was put together amazingly. It was one movie that all of us wouldn’t have dared to talk through because it was so good.
• In our grade, everyone knew who were the best singers in our grade. I was known to be one of the best. I participated in every talent show since the sixth grade and I was in both of the school productions while being in that school. I was even chosen to sing a duet with another one of those singers for graduation, and we sang our asses off. Because I went to a regular junior high-school that wasn’t specialized, it was a big deal to my friends when I told them I got accepted to Brooklyn High School of the Arts.
• My class was chosen to be a part of this middle school Ballroom Dancing program and I was one of the people chosen to be a part of something called the Rainbow Match Competition. In each round, we were assigned a color and our hand-picked dance couples had to compete with other schools in that category. I did something similar to this in the 5th grade where we made it all the way to the semi-finals; I was assigned as the merengue couple with a boy from my class. In middle school, I was assigned to do the Tango with a boy I really didn’t like because he didn’t take me or the competition seriously. But we did what we had to do, and we ended up getting third place.
• Although I was a singer, I started to take myself more seriously as a writer as well. I was even chosen to share an original poem about ballroom dancing during out school performance. Eventually, I even started to keep a journal that I eventually wanted to make an actual published book in the future. I don’t know if future me would do that now, but I wrote everything down and made sure I recorded the memories I was making in 2008. I even made a scrapbook of all the 2008 memories; I’m glad that I did. It was definitely the start of me writing down everything for the sake of sealing the memories for a lifetime.

2008 was that year I had after having a year of uncertainty and self-doubt. 2007 was a year of tears and fakeness and losing friends for stupid things and 2008 was the opposite of that. I felt more like myself in 2008 than I had prior to that year. I guess I hold 2018, ten years later, to that same expectation. I hope that 2018 is great for its own reasons, but I hope it has the same amount of happiness and positivity that 2008 had. 2008 Liz was a girl who was a force to be reckoned with; 2018 Liz is going to be the woman version of that.

I hope!

-Liz. (: