Chatterbox: Down to Earth

(Warning: This is a vent. It will likely be long-winded, emotional, and filled with numerous nerdy references. I hope nothing in this offends or saddens you. I think that's pretty unlikely, but here's to just in case.)

I just realized I didn't really have friends until this past year. Well, that's not totally accurate. In elementary school, I had those people that I hung out with, talked to, and considered friends. They were smart, nice, people, and took dance with me, but they just didn't quite get who I was.

But with them, I was some different, not-so-real, version of Abi, one that pretended to care more than I did about boys and clothes and pop bands, and pretended not to care as much as I did about books, Broadway musicals, and writing. I still like those friends a lot, and they're fun, we share some interests, and I enjoy talking to them.

And then I went to middle school.

TURNING POINT ALERT! TURNING POINT ALERT! 

See, here's the thing. My new school is a private school very artsy and very nerdy. The essence of me! When I tell people, "I go to [school's name here]," They say something about how lucky I am. They usually mean because of the great teachers, longer summers, and high Ivy League acceptance rate.

Which are all amazing, by the way. (Especially the teachers.) What was really lucky was that I was the only one from my group of elementary friends to go there. So that meant I kind of had to start over in the friend department. 

Don't get me wrong, at first I was sad about this. Later, however, as I met more people, I realized that it was brilliant. If I had gone to the local public school with my old friends, I would have kept on pretending to be Not - Entirely - Abi, and I wouldn't have realized what I was missing.

My new friends are brilliant. They're writers, dreamers, poets, activists, straight A students. People like me who understand the lonliness of not knowing the lyrics to a Taylor Swift song, who write novels and stand up for human rights and fangirl over Hamilton instead of One Direction. They've helped me find who I really was, and stop being embarassed about being a nerd and a bookworm, because they are too. 

And now I know, in greatest confidence, that when I go back to school, my friends and I will talk about things like The Cursed Child, what Latin classes are going to be like, how our stories are going. It wasn't just about finding new friends, it was about finding myself. Because I like Real Abi a lot more the one I used to pretend to be.