A New Year

                Happy New Year! As 2013 ends and 2014 begins, I would like to think back not only on this year, but the past few years. I will say this: while in some ways I have been the most unfortunate person imaginable, in others, I have been extremely lucky. I’ve had dark days and days where everything is light, days where the world collapsed around me and days when I could hold up the sky. There’s been so much, and I can’t hope to do it all justice.

                Firstly, I am going to make this clear: Life is not simple and it is not easy, nor do I expect it to be. But sometimes, I expect it to be better than it is. Yet despite that, I’ve found that my bitter experiences sweeten the taste of those beautiful, good experiences.

                So before I start my spiel on everything, I want to say this: Thank you. Thank you to all who have stuck with me. Thank you to all who have ever helped me through anything. Thank you to those who opened my eyes to something new and wonderful when I couldn’t see anymore. Thank you to you who led me when I was blind. Thank you, ones who showed me new worlds before my very eyes. This year, more than any other, was when you all affected me the most. This was my open year, after blinding and crushing pain, after careful recovery, when I needed to rediscover who I was, and all of you who interacted with me helped that. 2013 was special because this is when I found out who I wanted to be and everything I needed to be. There’s still such a long way to go, but I have had the best beginning possible.

                In the past two or three years, I have finally been able to make friends who stay. While there are not many of them, they are there, and for that, I am eternally thankful. Before my eighth grade year, I had never had a friend who stayed—they always left, and I became a bit afraid to make friends. During eighth grade, however, I met the person who was to become my moirail, or my soul mate in a completely platonic sense. It was also during eighth grade that the most difficult period of my life occurred—my “darkest hour”, if you will. In eighth grade, several very important events happened, without which I would not be half the person I am today. I became more aware, more thoughtful. I became Sherlock as well as the Doctor. I lost my hard-driven “me-me-me” ways and instead put almost everyone and everything else before me (which was another extreme that I eventually got rid of). I became truly passionate about violin, and I dove further into physics and astronomy than ever before.

                Ninth grade was more a year of recovery than anything. Eighth grade had been unbelievably harsh on me and the person I was. It completely shattered apart my character and rebuilt it from scratch, on only the barest of bases. It was a very lonely year, but it was expected and needed. Being on the swim team didn’t hurt either. By the time tenth grade started, I was ready to try reintegrating myself into normal society a little more.

                I’m still not a part of “normal society”. I doubt I ever will be. But I no longer make my distasteful remarks about everyone and everything out loud. I no longer make a huge effort to simply get others to leave me be. I don’t openly antagonize people anymore. But I do feel very strongly about being myself around everyone. Anyone who talks to me will get a full dose of nerd an musician. The darker parts of me are usually shut down during interaction, unless you happen to be one of the very few people I trust. In that case, things may be different. Regardless, all of that is still me. I am always a nerd and musician. I don’t say “sir” or “ma’am”, not unless you truly garner my respect. I believe that those titles are honorific and should only be used with those that you truly honor. If you are not one of those people for me, you may as well stuff all dreams of me ever calling you that.

                As far as my family goes, well, they exist. That’s all that needs to be said about them. They don’t need to be mentioned more than that here.

                Now we come to my friends. As the Doctor said, “My friends have always been the best of me.” In my case, that’s true, especially this year, when I slowly started to rebuild myself from the ashes. My friends reflect me. Some of them reflect who I want to be, and others reflect who I was, and all of them help me to become who I need to be. The ones I have right now are the friends that I can’t lose. My moirail, my wonderful, great soul mate (once again, platonic), who is always there, awkward or not. My other two friends, fangirls and always the lightener of moods, the ones who pull me back up when I fall. My friend-perhaps-more-or-less-something, who is confusing and gives me something to hold on to for someone else, but helps me whenever he can. Mr. Astro-Rocks, who is analytical and always ready with some sort of science conversation. Miss Astro, who is the person to go to for random crap, astronomy, and violin, who is my ultimate vent for, well, everything. They are my honorary family. They’re all such wonderful, great people. One of them in particular is easy for me to relate to, because we are so very similar in so many ways; even our dreams for the future match.

                These few years, I’ve also began to finally know what I am truly passionate about. I’ll be the first to say it—I am a jack of all trades. I swim competitively. I do Science Olympiad and I do it well. I love math and physics. I write novels and short stories, and they’re good. I write poetry and am co-editor-in-chief of my school’s poetry newsletters. I paint and I win art competitions. I draw and sketch, and I am good at it. I volunteer at the hospital and in the ICU—the only underclassman to be accepted. I can do calligraphy like nobody’s business. I play violin and am good enough to warrant a violin worth thirty grand (though I got it for much less). I can compose music and once again have won competitions with that. I design robots and build them, and they work. I can do all manners of things, but I don’t want to do them all. I have realized that my true passions lie only in science and music. I love everything else I listed up there, sure, but I would be all right without them (even if surviving without writing would be pretty tough). But if you take away my music, you take away my soul. If you take away my science, you take away my world. So this year, that is what I will focus on—the science and the music. I’m not saying that I will stop doing any of the things I mentioned; in fact, I’ll still do them and so much that I won’t have time to do anything  else, but I will really begin to truly focus on those things that are the world to me.

                It’s also in the past couple years that I’ve finally managed to really start working towards my dream. Ever since I was tiny and little (like, when I was two), I’ve dreamed of flying out to the stars. When I was young, it was just because the stars were pretty and I wanted to see everything that was pretty. When I was three or four, my dad began to teach me about life, death, and the universe, and I started to realize that the stars were far away and so much more than just specks of light in the distance. I wanted to go to them because they were far away. As I grew progressively older, I began to understand more and more of what the universe was.I started to realize how expansive it was, and how much there could be out there. By the time I was twelve, I’d started to truly comprehend what it would mean to go out there. My dream turned into an obsession, and I began to study astronomy in earnest when I was thirteen. By the time I was fourteen, I could name almost every star in the sky and half of their locations.

                That’s my dream. My dream is to go out there in the huge, huge universe and see it. I want to be there. I want to build the machines that will make it there. I want to create FTL drives and build the ships, and more than anything, I want to fly out to the stars. I want to see what there is out there, because there is so, so much and it is going to be so, so beautiful. The universe is so big and grand, and this Earth is so small; how can I be happy with my mind and dreams only staying here? There’s a glorious place out there, just waiting for someone to go out there and discover it, and I intend to be one of those people.

                You see, when you’re young, you think the world is so big and so small at the same time. Everything looks big to you. Everything seems larger than life. But as far as you know, the world only stretches as far as your family and the places where you play. Your fantasies are reality, and that’s your world. When you get a little older, you start to learn about the world, and you start to realize that the world is so much bigger than you ever thought it could be. Suddenly, the world seems so huge, and you feel as if you can never experience it all. Some people stop here. Most people are happy with this stage, even though most of them slowly realize that the world isn’t as big as they first thought it was.

                But there are some people that go farther. There are some people for whom the world isn’t great or grand enough Those people start to realize the universe and start to come to know how tiny and insignificant we are, and suddenly, just this world isn’t enough anymore, because there is just so much more. I’m one of those people. I find different worlds in music, in writing and painting and all my artistic abilities. I delve into a world of science. But I always want to see more and feel more, experience more. I want to write the music of the stars and paint the fires of a supernova. I want to play the beams of quasars in indescribable patterns and walk on the stepping stones of the universe. Because there is just so much out there, so glorious and wonderful, and I have to see it. I’ve seen New York and the Pleiades, Atlanta and the Orion Nebula, China and the Andromeda Galaxy, Chicago and Canis Major, and I know that none of that, nothing, will compare to the indescribable beauty and wonder of finding and discovering the whole wide universe. I want to fly among the stars. That’s why I want to be a physicist or an engineer.

                And since I’ve realized that, I’ve started to actually work towards it. I have started to hunker down and study astronomy and physics, math and chemistry. I took enough extra classes and AP classes to graduate a year early, which is horrifically hard in my school system. I make sure that my grades are up to par and I remember to let the artistic side of me out too, because that’s what I’ll use to describe the universe when I get out there.

                That’s what I’m going to do in this upcoming year. I am going to make my dream start coming true. My violin inspires me, so I practice and I let the music move me to action. I will start really doing calculus until I can do it all, and I intend to read as many articles as I can about modern aerospace engineering. I’m going to take as many AP classes as I can and perhaps register for classes at a nearby university. It’s not that I want to overwork myself, or that I want to be better than anyone else. It’s just that there’s so much that I don’t know and I can’t wait to discover it. Because I will do it all.

                And you know the best part?

                I am not alone.