#TBT: Where was I in 2009?

Hey, guys – welcome back to TNTH!

It’s crazy to already be on the third day of 2019. What’s even crazier is that this is the last year of the 2010’s decade, and this time next year we’ll be in the modern roaring twenties! It’s also crazy to think that this time next year, we were wrapping up the millennium, and we were going to live to see 2010. Remember when people thought the world was going to end in 2012? Look how far we’ve gotten since then. 

2009, for me, was a year of new beginnings, new experiences, new environments; just new everything.

• In 2009, I was 15 years old. My birthday fell on a Friday this year, and my friends that knew about my birthday in high-school wished me a happy birthday, but I did have plans to go with a group of my middle school friends to the movies to see this scary movie called The Unborn. My best friend at the time shared the same birthday as me, so it was exciting to celebrate with my best friend. Plans didn’t go as planned, and I ended up staying home, celebrating my 15th birthday with my family. It was a chill and calm birthday.
• I was a freshman in high-school. My freshman year was definitely a weird one; I didn’t know anybody in the school, and I was surrounded by other classmates who were just as talented, if not more, like me. In the classroom of B25, there were 54 freshman girls and a handful of boys who got moved to another choir so that my vocal teacher can turn my class into Women’s Choir. In Women’s Choir, I was a first-soprano, which ’til this day I don’t even remember how that even happened, but it did. Through difficult coursework and some drama along the way, vocal became that last period of the day that I was looking forward to. I loved singing the songs we were learning, prepping for our first-ever debut at the Spring Concert, and really doing what I loved with people who loved doing the same thing as well. Through hard work and determination, by the end of the school year, I was granted the amazing news that I was now being transferred to the highest and most advanced choir of the vocal program: Performing Choir. I still remember being on AIM telling my best friends the greatest news I could receive as a first-year high-school student.
• Speaking about middle school friends: the transition for all of us in our different schools was harder than I thought it was going to be. Many of us were scattered in different high-schools across the borough, and with that became different personalities that my friends and I were introduced to. For me, I was very quiet and shy, and my group of friends in high-school was a mixture of all majors, but they were super smart. My friends from middle school, on the other hand, had a much more colorful variety of friends, which I didn’t mind at all. For starters, a lot of my friends were now getting into things that my prune ass is now rolling around in her grave because ya girl does these things now as an almost 25-year-old woman. Many of them experienced with weed and drinking and whatnot, and my naive, innocent ass thought I was losing my only closest friends. That summer, one of my best friends came out as bisexual and naive, stupid little ole me thought it was the end of the world. In 2009, I didn’t really know a lot about the world at 15; I wasn’t ever in a relationship, I never was peer pressured into doing anything, and I had a really black and white mindset on the world.
• I experimented on my hair a lot this year. In the 8th grade, I didn’t do anything crazy with my hair, but by the time I was in high school, I wanted to try every hairstyle and every color I could possibly do. At the time, my sister was in beauty school studying hair, so a lot of the time I was her “test dummy”, and I honestly did not mind whatsoever! To this day, I really do blame my sister for getting me so addicted to hair.
• Towards the end of 2009 when I started my sophomore year of high-school, I met this boy who I had such a crush on. He was a senior in my high-school, and he was in both my Physics class and in Performing Choir with me. Through Performing Choir, we were able to become a lot closer, and he instantly became one of my best friends towards the end of 2009. Yes, this is the same guy that is in my life 10 years later. It was exciting to have a guy in my life that was different than the other oys I’ve met throughout my middle school years. Yes, I was boy crazy in middle school and had a lot of crushes, but this one felt different. He had a style that spoke to me: plaid shirts and converse shoes. He wasn’t crazy tall and he felt gentle. To this day, he still reminds me of those qualities that I saw in him all these years ago. It’s crazy to believe that this coming October, it will be 10 years since I’ve first met him.
• Towards the very end of 2009, I got my first kiss. Yes, it was with this same boy, and I remember my best friend at the time being all giddy when she found that I had finally gotten my first kiss from a guy that I really liked! I remember getting on the train to go home that Friday afternoon, literally unable to get the smile off of my face. To this day, I don’t regret getting that first kiss. I mean, it was in a stairwell after our choir rehearsal, but it wasn’t something that I regret doing all these years later.
• On Christmas Eve, my extended family from my father’s side had a party, and all I remember about that night was that I peed myself. Yeah, a whole grown 15-year-old teenager had a goddamn accident. My folks laughed at me, and I was mortified. But it was all good; my mother allowed me and my sister to open our gifts later that night, so I was alright! I vaguely remember that one of the gifts my grandmother got me was this “Desperate Housewives” game thing… to this day I believe that shit was meant for either my sister or my mom.

And that’s about it! 2009 wasn’t that much of an eventful year, but it did leave me with a lot of lessons learned and experiences that honestly began this journey of self-growth and maturing. It’s seriously so weird to know that ten years ago, a lot has happened, yet time seriously just flew by. Let’s see what my 35-year-old self has to say about me now!

-Liz. (: