NOVNI CLOSING STATEMENT

Since Novni is about to close, I want to document everything I've ever written about here. What events were going on in my life, what was going on in my head, and mostly what was going on at school. This is gonna be a long entry so buckle up.

9TH GRADE

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I walk in, cocky as ever. I hate my ninth-grade self. I had good grades, a good home life, good mental health, and worst of all—a big ego. I had a boy I had a small crush on all through 8th grade, (Nico) who was also one of my only 10 friends. I was writing a small book about some biologist but hadn't really been keeping up with it. I've been in 12th-grade language arts since I was in 5th grade, so writing was always a breeze for me. The book had gotten up to about 90 pages before I decided to scrap the idea. High school started out rough. For the first time in my life, I had mostly C's and D's in the first quarter.

Not to mention Nico didn't want to talk to me anymore. Which was understandable, I wouldn't want to talk to me either if some girl who said she would always be my friend chased me for a year. I was a bitch in middle school. I started out my first Skills For Adolescence class being in a group of all boys. Throughout the class, we mostly held roast battles and thumb wars and slacked off on work. The group was me, Gerald (a guy I sort of knew through a friend, and who went to my middle school) Daniel, (some random kid who had just moved from Pennsylvania who was the funniest person I'd ever met) Jay, (a guy who I was best friends with in elementary school, but we had drifted apart since then) and Ricky (a sports kid who was nice and tried to include everyone). Our little group was pretty sweet to have apart from my normal friend groups. My best friend at the time was Liz, a smart and assertive girl I’d been best friends with since sixth grade.

Elias, a quiet but passionate guy who I'd known since kindergarten. He was my first and longest-known friend. I also had Addi M., who was a great friend of mine I could trust with anything. Alexis, she was Addi's best friend, and one of mine too. Jacob, who was a funny but rude at times guy who was one of Alexis' best friends, too. I had a pretty solid group of friends, and I was optimistic about staying out of drama for the last four years of school. My English class was easy for me, but I sat across from this annoying kid who sat with Elias. He wasn't very fond of my loud personality, but I was always able to make him crack a smile.

After a little while, I figured out his name was Thom. Around this time, I got introduced to Zoe, a loud girl who Addi and Jacob had known in elementary school who happened to go to our high school this year. We entered our yearly field trip, which this year was to a camp about an hour away from our school. We went there at the beginning of the year, even though it rained the entire week. Nobody took a shower because of the spiders and extremely cold water, but we found ways to have fun. I bunked with Liz and Druva. Druva was a girl in Liz and I's homeroom who was quiet and nerdy, but she was still our friend. During the trip, we went to a huge glow stick party with our school. It was fun, and I think there was the time I stopped my fear of dancing in front of others.

After the trip, everyone started buzzing about things that had happened. Mostly because Daniel had been being weird the entire time. I now sat next to Daniel in homeroom, and even though we fought a lot we still put up with each other. Over the weeks I began to soften out. I noticed that high school wasn't a big thing where I had to be the main character. Actually, being the main character sounded scary. I watched meanness and anger erupt in the hallways. Hate speech and suicide and sexual assaults. I didn't want to get wrapped up in it. So I made a plan to lay low unless I was with a group of trusted people. After I had figured this out I sat in between Thom and Eytan at a small table in English class. Eytan was loud and the kind to try to make the whole class laugh, but always failed. His humor was "edgy" and honestly just rude. Every time he began to make a joke, Thom always shut him down. Immediately, strongly.

I admired this in him, a lot. And I knew that he was way out of my league. I had been hurt before, and I didn't want to mind going for crushes who didn't show obvious interest in me. Or I could lose a friend. Like Nico. I ignored the crush for about a month, focusing on other things. At advisory and lunch, I noticed that Thom, Daniel, Elias, Khang, and Drostan were becoming a close friend group. Khang and Drostan were two other kids in a few of my classes. Khang was kind of like a frenemie to me. He was always insulting me, but I knew it was in good fun. My table with Addie D., Addi M., Liz, Jacob, Alexis, and Zoe sat next to their lunch table. We were all pretty good friends at that point. I also had a friend named Juliana who I kind of knew in middle school but was just now formally meeting. she was generous but judged people a little too quickly. It took a lot to gain her trust.

She was a lot like Thom, who was judgemental at first but one of the kindest, most gold-hearted human beings around when you got to know him. In the morning after getting off the bus I sat with Jacob, Rory, Addi M, and Alexis in the auditorium before classes opened. We mostly sat around and talked about random things. One day Addi came up to me and told me (with the help of Alexis) that she was bisexual. I accepted it, despite not knowing much about the LGBTQ+ community. I did my research later that night and was like, "Cool."

I thought about my crush on Thom more, deciding It was getting too big for me to keep a secret anymore. I told my lunch table, who immediately exploded with laughter. Tristan (she definitely wins the award for the funniest person I've ever met) said, "WAIT, NOT THE EMO KID." And everyone continued laughing. It seemed like they hadn't broken his tough exterior. Around this time I had also found out that Zoe was lesbian. I was becoming closer friends with Daniel, and even though rumors circled of us dating. We both knew that we were just best friends at heart. We worked together on projects and talked to each other all of the time, so it wasn't hard to imagine. At this point, it was common knowledge for people close to me that I had a crush on Thom.

Frankie was Thom's best friend. We talked a lot in classes and were in the same friend groups. He's a short little weirdo who always wears a green beanie and sweater. He's funny and has a lot of interesting conversation starters and experiences. We talked a lot about how I liked Thom. And honestly, maybe it WASN'T impossible for us to get together. I mean, it was far from likely, but maybe there was a chance?

Jacob and Addi got together after a lot of awkward virtual experiences and were honestly the cutest couple ever.

Jacob just melted around Addi. And I wanted something like that. It was cute watching teens fall in love with each other. Having first kisses, first crushes, discoveries, everything. Addi, Jacob, and Alexis introduced me to Audrey one day. She was funny, gorgeous, and honestly breathtaking. I wanted to be her. No... I wanted to be with her? No. I won't get caught up in that LGBTQ stuff like my friends. No. I'm fine. I'll ignore it. But just like my crush on Thom, this went far from being ignored. Thoughts of her piercing green eyes, her long brown hair, her striking voice, it all kept coming back. I was bisexual. And I wasn't scared. I should have been.

After discovering my sexuality more things I had been questioning in my mind clicked. Why did I randomly want to be friends badly with pretty girls? Bi. Why did I get jealous of girls so easily? Bi. Why did I have weird obsessions with female celebrities? Bi. It just made sense.

I took a few days before telling anyone. I was going to tell Addi, but she wasn't at school the day I was going to tell her. I asked Jacob to text her, but Audrey was sitting right next to us. She asked what was going on, to which I responded, "You would think of me weirdly if I told you." She responded, grabbing my hand, "I wouldn't. You're always going to be my friend. No matter what." I told her, and she acted completely normal. She just accepted that I had a crush on her and moved on. She said, "Even though I'm straight, I still view you the same. I know you won't try to make a move on me."

And that was that. The third person I told was Daniel. We were sitting in history class when he said, playing with a piece of string he found, "You know, you act like a dude. You talk like a dude. Hell, you even hang out with dudes a bunch. You’re either gay or trans at this point.” I sighed and said, “Daniel, I’m bisexual. I think.” He squinted his eyes and joked, “Do you think our social studies teacher is hot? Because honestly, it’s a smash for me.” And that was how the first day of my “coming out of the closet” went. After a few more days of slowly letting people know, I had figured it out. Everything was going smoothly—for the most part. We had our third-quarter field trip to a sports complex about an hour away for the entire day. That day, I hung out with my usual friend group of Abbie, Drostan, Elias, Thom, Daniel, Liz, Juliana, and Frankie. At our school, we have “teams” or groups of kids you have your classes with. Our field trip was only our team, so Zoe, Audrey, Jacob, Alexis, and Addi M. weren’t there. We did activities together and had a great time, even though it was awkward between Thom and I. He was mostly aware of my crush on him, mainly because of Frankie, who liked to tease us when he saw us together. At lunch, Thom and I sat together to eat when Frankie snapped a quick picture of us and drew a heart around it.

He sent it to as many people as possible. It was mildly embarrassing being asked every ten seconds if I was dating Thom. I could tell he was pissed, too.

We continued being friends though, and he was valuable to me overall. Not just as a crush. When I told him that I thought my parents were homophobic, he sympathized with me and told me it was going to be okay. This was unlike my other friends who were often shielded from the LGBTQ+ community by their religious parents. It’s not that I didn’t like them, it was just that I needed someone who understood. And maybe not even firsthand. He was the embodiment of a golden retriever, and he brightened my day just by smiling or laughing.

Lately, our friends had been saying that I should date Zoe. I had to admit, she was kind of pretty. But I was adamant about staying stuck with my current crush. The end of the school year was nearing, and I had pretty much lost all hope of Thom liking me back. My friends were always talking about how I should date Zoe now, and I was trying to convince myself that Thom was gone. On the last day of school, Zoe walked up to me at our pool trip. She asked me if I wanted to date her. And my dumbass said yes. You see, Zoe wasn’t very well-liked because she was very loud and obnoxious. She was also a perfectionist and would call people out on the smallest things. But I thought she was so out of my league. We started dating over the summer, even though we rarely talked. She would barely answer my texts, and told me that her notifications were always off. I told myself she was a great girlfriend, even though the only thing she would talk about was her mental health. She always talked about her autism (not diagnosed) and depression (not diagnosed) and anxiety disorder (not diagnosed) and her ADHD (not diagnosed). It always pissed me off that she was saying these things, but I dealt with it.

I was also bullied over the summer because I was dating her. No one at school liked her except for our friend group, so people made fun of me for being her girlfriend. She would also always talk about her “horrible family life” just because her parents talked about divorce once. Let me tell you, I hung out with her more than anyone else, her parents spoiled her rotten. They loved each other, were pretty wealthy, would give her pretty much anything she wanted, and would be effortlessly nice to her. One time she flipped them off and they did nothing. She called her dad a dumbass and her mom a bitch and nothing happened. They just accepted it and moved on.

Opposed to my parents. My dad tried to break my arm when I shook his hand too hard, and threw a clay mug at my sister when she was 12. My parents were divorced and both had crippling mental health. I love my parents with all of my heart, but they had unresolved shit. And whenever I would talk about this, Zoe would interrupt me and talk about her “horrible abusive parents” and “toxic siblings”. And how her parents didn’t “acknowledge her autism and depression”. LIKE THEY’RE NOT GOING TO ACKNOWLEDGE SOMETHING THAT DOESN’T EXIST. (She’s been tested, she just didn’t accept the results.) And I’m not one to shame people about their mental health. Mental health is something I value and I believe it’s the most important to take care of about your overall physical health. BUT DAMN.

During the summer, she came over to my house once. I got on the bed to talk to her about music, and she jumped on top of me and started sticking her tongue in my mouth. We hadn’t even kissed yet. She didn’t even ask. She stuck her hand up my shirt, even though I tried to pry her hands off of me. I distracted her for long enough to rise from the bed and change the subject. Later, I told her it made me uncomfortable and not to kiss me without asking again. The next time she came over to my house, she did it again. This was when I started to cut myself. I didn’t know why, I just wanted to. Now I’m noticing it was all because of her.

But I thought this was relationship goals. She hugged me, told me she cared for me, and I loved her. But it wasn’t good for me. I convinced myself I loved her, though.

10TH GRADE

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I got in this year, Zoe hugging me and hanging off of me all of the time. We had a great time with our relationship most of the time, I had to admit. But she started to get more annoying and overwhelming as I was hanging out with her more frequently. I was also getting a lot of panic attacks and being overwhelmed because she had a very loud voice and wouldn’t listen when I asked her to stop yelling. Not to mention she would cry every five seconds. I told her there weren’t any more seats at my table, burst into tears. I told her I didn’t want to go somewhere with her, burst into tears. I looked at her the wrong way, burst into tears.

I couldn’t deal with all of that forever. So, I made up an excuse to break up. She cried and cried even though I told her we would stay on good terms.

I never wanted to talk to her again, though. She was annoying. Like, really annoying. But all of my friends are friends with her, so I decided to just deal with it. The day after we broke up, she would make really weird comments about me. Like, one time we were leaving Liz hugged me. Zoe said, “I guess I shouldn’t hug you because that would be awkward.” WHEN SHE WAS HALFWAY ACROSS THE ROOM. It was just really weird to me that she would even say anything. Helping me through my mental health issues was my friend Kai. He was struggling, too with his transition, and we felt like we could lean on each other.

I was also best friends with Emma now. She didn’t have any friends other than me, but she was funny and passionate. She was often made fun of for being autistic but was a person I could stick to. We had met last year in math class, bonding over our hate of the teacher. She is a writer just like me, so we are collaborating on a book together. We also got close because she is aromantic. I wrote all of the romance scenes for Emma so they would be realistic, while she helped me with plot construction on my own books. I was working on my novel, which is now about 200 pages long. Emma, Liz, Sofia, and I signed up for a state writing competition and all got in. We stayed after school to practice for the December short story writing competitions. Zoe also tried out for the competition but didn’t get in. Zoe was well… not very academically inclined. She was (to say the least) not very gifted at writing and not fit to carry our team to state.

3 days after I broke up with Zoe, Kai and I texted all day while I was sick and he was in boring classes. He was (and is) the kindest person I know. I helped him find the name “Kai” after formally being called “Mia”. And I also helped him tell people that he was transgender and helped him with his dysphoria. I had a huge crush on him. Even though it was only about 6 days after breaking up with Zoe, I told Liz about my huge crush on Kai. One day, we were talking and I asked him who he had a crush on. He told me to go first. We both told each other, and it turned out he liked me, too. It was only a week after I had broken up with Zoe, so everyone was skeptical about the whole thing. I really love him though. He’s a fan of rock music, likes to play guitar, loves baseball caps, likes to skateboard, and his favorite band is Green Day. He’s short and has fluffy wavy hair. His favorite color is black, and his favorite animal is a penguin. He only wears jeans, baseball caps, beanies, and t-shirts. He’s a real cutie.

We kept our relationship private, trying not to show anyone outside of our friend group. We especially didn’t want to tell Zoe. One day, Kai and I were sitting together in a conference room to eat lunch with Juliana and Abbie. We were talking about if we should tell Zoe about our relationship. Abbie told us that it would probably be fine, and Juliana went to tell her. It was in fact not fine. She burst into tears and wouldn’t talk to us for a week. Every time she saw Kai or me she would start crying.

My thing with her is that she feels like she’s the main character. When I got my crush on Kai, she was nowhere in my mind. I didn’t do this to offend her, I did this for myself. He is amazing and astonishing as a person and I love him. I didn’t give two shits about her at the moment. Anyway, Kai and I’s relationship progressed over a few weeks, and honestly, he’s cool. Really cool. The other day I was at a lunch bunch with him and my friends Palesa, Druva, Liz, Addie, and Emma and he was lying on my lap the whole time while talking to our friends. Later, he texted me (very awkwardly) “Is it weird that I wanted to kiss you the entire time we were in that room?”

Before, I had had an entire conversation with our friend Palesa about how to make a move on him. Palesa is the best. She’s smart and a great writer—multiple of her books have been published. She helps me with a lot of mental health shit and also gives me good advice on a lot of things. Around this time, a lot was going on at my home. I had to leave the house with my mom and sister at one point because our dad had been threatening us. He’s great and funny and nice, he was just on new medication. It ruptured my mental health, though. Seeing my parents fighting every two seconds and being more sensitive. They’ve been divorced since I was three years old, but we all live in the same house because they wanted to provide my sister and I with a more “stable family life”.

For the past week, I’ve had a horrible cough that hasn’t stopped. Every few seconds I erupt in a coughing fit. My stomach is bruised from where I’ve been pushing the coughs out and

Tomorrow is the next lunch bunch, and I’m kind of nervous. What if Zoe is there? What if I’m still sick?

Anyway, that was all I’ve written about on Novni. This website will be missed.