June 30, 2015

June 30th

"June 30th. On the sun roof. He woke up suddenly. At that instant a jet from the air base crawled in silence overhead. On the beach, children try to leap into its swift shadow."-Jim Morrison

The lights flashed,
phones went off.
The valley of buildings shook with a tremor.
Police and ambulances scramble.
The air was felt with a life fading away.
I was 19, lost a member of my tribe.
I look back and cry.
I wish I could have one more day,
Just to show you all that I've done.
Thank you for those days you dragged me to school,
Thank you for those walks where we could talk nonsense for hours,
Thank you for being my brother from another mother.

R.I.P. Bryant, 9 years later and it still feels like yesterday. 

June 6, 2015

It's been 10 years

The year was 2000, the new millennium and I was an 8th grader not sure of where I wanted to go for high school and one of my teachers pushed me to audition for a new arts school that was opening in Queens. She kept telling me it would be the best place for me to go, to just try and see what happens. Well I went with a monologue from "Butterflies are Free", and remember having a panic attack when after I was finished and they asked me for another piece. I froze. I was told to prepare one and stayed quiet until I started to tell a story and somehow it worked. A few weeks later I got my acceptance letter and the rest was history. 

Tonight is my high school reunion, and while some people hear that and are like "really you're going?" I'm actually looking very forward to it. In the past 10 years I have gone through some serious life changing moments, from finishing school to figuring out that my dream job wasn't going to cut it as a full time, to the death of one of my closest friends, to finding the career and getting on the track I needed to be on. And Im assuming that to most of my fellow FSSA peers the same can be said, 10 years is a long time and I'm sure we have all grown in some way.

One thing I've always felt bad about is that in those 10 years I let go some of the friendships I had. I'm notorious for not keeping in contact, and when asked if I speak to anyone from high school, I say "well does facebook count?" (And lets not forget I'm in this unplugging from social media process that probably going to make me a complete ghost from people). But yea for those who I was really close with in High School and have not spoken to in years I'm sorry. Life happens and people lose touch and unfortunately there is no reset button. So one hope I have is that this reunion reminds all of us of the good times because our high school, despite all of the drama, was one hell of experience. We went to the Frank Sinatra School of the Arts, we were the FIRST  4 year graduating class. We were together that day on September 10, 2001 (yea I know what the next day was #NeverForget) when that hallway opened up and we experienced 4 years of something different. We were teenagers who witnessed adult drama from our teachers who gave us the lesson that some of us wont ever grow up, to finding the right teachers who motivated and pushed us to become better than what we already were. Cell phones and the internet was new, and we knew how to look things up without google. We had a library with no books, and pulled off stunts that anywhere else would of gotten us expelled. We weren't fighting over who was the most popular, we were an accepting group of people, because we all knew somehow that anywhere else we probably wouldn't have fit in. (At least I'm speaking for myself). 

High School was where Barbi was born. (Yes mi boba I still have this.) 
If I went to a regular high school I probably would of been lost in the crowd.  It helped me  to begin clearing out the mess in my head (not gonna lie theres still some clutter lol) and I discovered my speciality wasn't in acting but more in writing, and not for theater but for films. Hence why in college I got my BA in Film Studies and later on got this gem http://www.imdb.com/name/nm3587567/.  

So tonight lets have a drink and remember the good times. Oh and for those wondering I'm a Pre-K teacher working towards my Masters Degree in Early Childhood Education. I've seriously come a long way from the annoying thug life girl I was in high school.