15 SUCKS

On Monday it was my birthday. In the morning I decided to sleep through first period, but as it turns out, I have really awesome friends. As I was enjoying the extra sleep I heard my phone ring in my bed. I sat up and shuffled through the pillows and multiple blankets on my bed (I love blankets!). Finally, I found my phone lit up with a name across the top. I answered the phone with a groggy, eyes-closed hello. Apparently, all my friends were waiting around my locker with gifts and cards for me. Feeling bad about not going, but feeling good about sleeping, I apologized many times. Then I went right back to sleep.

2014: courtesy of Mom

When I got up, my sister had made me cinnamon sugar ebelskivers for breakfast, which started my day off extremely well. If you haven't had ebleskivers, you haven't lived. Ebelskivers are danish pancake balls, that you fill with anything you want (yes, nutella). I ate those and slowly packed my school bag. Then I was dropped off at school, where I went straight to second period.

I received the gifts my friends brought me including a thermos that looks like a camera lens and a set of card that I got to open at each hour of the day. Each one had something nice written about me inside, which I know was probably not true, but it made my day anyway. After school I went riding and met my family for dinner at Sushi Blue.  To end the night we ate vegan vanilla cake, opened gifts, and took the traditional cat and cake photo that happens every year. (I only posted the previous years because I couldn't get this year's off facebook).

2015: Courtesy of Dad

Fifteen years old means that you get to legally drive a car, you are three years away from being an adult, and that there is a whole lot more pressure on you. Fifteen seems great until you are actually there. The morning of my first day as a fifteen year-old I put on my Mom's light blue sweater, and ran out the door with a bowl of strawberry oatmeal.

At school, it was put to my attention by Aysia that I had oatmeal all over the elbow of my sweater and my sweater was see-through. Luckily, I had a tank top. We went to the bathroom, scrubbed it off the oatmeal and I put on the tank top. By this time the bell rang and I headed to Mrs. Payne's room for math.

I sat down next to Alex and pulled out my homework. As we were working, she asked me to taste her hot chocolate to see how hot it was. I took a cautious sip and told her that from a scale of one to ten, the hot chocolate was an eight. Cool enough to drink, but also slightly scalding. As we worked on our class work, I studied her flash cards for the English test we had the next day. Suddenly, I was jumping out of my chair, yelping and waving my arms. The hot chocolate was spilled all over me, in front of the entire class. (Don't worry Alex I forgive you!) I then spent the rest of the day with a hot chocolate stained sweater.

During PE, we went snowshoeing. We hiked up a torturous and steep hill. At the top, we were allowed to choose if we wanted to go trail blazing or if we wanted to go down the same trail. I convinced my friends to go trail blazing with me. As it turns out, Alex and Elise are extremely good at trail blazing, while I am not. I slid most of the way down on my butt and I fell multiple times. I didn't realize that the tail of my sweater had been dragging in the snow the entire time. So all throughout Biology I shivered in my soaked sweater.

Now, I am nearly a week into fifteen. Which hasn't been too bad. Yet.

To Lose a Best Friend

To have a best friend means a lot. Helen Keller once said, "Walking with a friend in the dark is better than walking alone in the light". Everyone talks about what it's like to have a best friend. That they will always be there for you. They say that best friends are the only people that really understand you. That a best friend would die for you. And they will. I have several best friends that I know that would, figuratively speaking, die for me. As I would for them.

Recently, I found that you actually don't realize what you have until it's gone. I could very well be talking about friends and moving on from a friend, as I have experienced this first hand. And while this hurts, I find that you usually move on from a friend for a reason. But losing a best friend is very different, losing a best friend is like losing a piece of yourself.

I knew that my horse Sarge was going to be put down for a long time. It was something that I knew would happen. I put off the fact that he would be gone, for months. I didn't cry, I didn't think about it. I didn't want to have to deal with that pain for longer that I had to. In the very end, he could barely walk or chew. At nine o'clock on Monday night, I was sitting in my bed reading a book when I realized that tomorrow was his last day. I realized that I had just spent his last sunset with him.

I walked to the kitchen and reached for some carrots, apples, honey, oatmeal, and some salt (Horses love salt). I then cut the carrots and the apples and mixed them with the honey and oatmeal in a big plastic bowl. With a wooden spoon I stirred it all together and added a sprinkle of salt. And then I sat and cried.

You can't change the past, I knew that. But at that moment, I wished that I could go back to when Sarge was still healthy and happy. I wish I could go back in time and spend a whole day with him. I wish I could've gone back and ridden him through the field and braid his mane. I wish I would've done better. Everyone does. I think everyone has a point in there life where they look back and they wish they would've have done things differently. And that can wreck a person but it can also make a person better.

So from then on I vowed to try to cherish everything and everyone. People need to start cherishing what they have while they still have it. Because one day everything will be gone and all that will be left, is memories. Cherish your friends, and try your best to keep them from slipping from your grasp. Hold everything you have close to you and don't let it go, because someday it might not be there anymore.

Many of you may have seen me at school on Tuesday. Many of you may have thought to yourself "Why does she look like that? What is she wearing?". And to those of you who judge anyone by what they look like then you should stop and ask yourself if you really know them. I didn't choose to go to school with watery red eyes, a stuffy nose and a big sweater. I needed to, because that morning I woke up extra early and I walked outside with my plastic bowl.

What hurt most about that morning, was that he looked the same as he always had. He licked as much as he could out of my bowl. And through the darkness I braided his mane and looked into his eyes for the last time. I kissed his face and whispered goodbye. And under the rising sun at 6:30 in the morning, I saw my best friend for the very last time. And walking away, was one of the hardest things I've ever done.

When I moved here five years ago, and I met you, I didn't know you would mean this much to me. Goodbye Sarge, I love you. And I hope there's carrots up there for you in heaven.

Rest in Peace, buddy