Nostalgia Part 1

At the time I start writing this blog post, it is 2:16am on Sunday, June 4th, 2017. I should be asleep, but over the last couple of days almost a week I've been having a lot of trouble sleeping. This isn't my first time either, in fact while I've never been officially diagnosed nor do I take medicine for it I consider myself to have slight insomnia. I say slight only because I do eventually sleep sometimes. There has been a lot of changes in my life in the last month and a recent blof post by Viv has me feeling even more nostalgic than I was already due to my changes.
What changes you may ask? Well for starters I'm moving. Yeah, I know that doesn't seem like a big deal but the fact is that I'm currently 20 years old, and I'm moving not only out of the house I've been in my whole life but I'm moving out of the state.
Let's start at the beginning.
Hi, my name is Nikki and yes this is a nickname, for only those whom I truly trust will be privy to what my actual name is. However you can rest assured that Nikki is not some outrageous name, it is simply a nickname from my real name and many friends and my family irl call me by this. I was born in Nyack, NY in the middle of a blizzard on January 6, 1997 at 11:42pm. I was born prematurely, but I was never supposed to be born alive. My mother went into labor with me in October of 1996 but I was not fully developed at the time and would've been a stillborn. So the hospital gave her medicine to keep me in for as long as they could which was when I was actually born but my initial due date was actually around February 14th. This would not be my last trip to the hospital oh no, for as I like to joke, I've had more doctors than friends. I lived in an apartment in New Jersey with my mother for the first 6 months of my life before moving to The Bronx in NYC where I would spend the rest of my life.
The next ten years of my life would be spent seeing doctor after doctor, specialist after specialist. What was wrong with me? No one knew...everything and yet nothing all at the same time. Eventually I would be diagnosed with excezma, among other things, but back then no one knew what that was. They would see my break out spots (which back then covered almost my whole entire body from head to toe) and they would avoid me like I had some contagious disease. It also didn't help that I had a horrible stutter, was smaller and more frail than the other kids, got sick often, and intelligence wise I was on a different level than most kids my age. I was extrememly advanced and had started school by the time I was 3 years old, then I skipped a grade. Many people told me I had an old soul because I simply wasn't interested in what other kids liked to do and was more interested in what the adults did. The kids just thought I was weird. Tbh this never bothered me and I normally let it just go over my head. I was a very nice and outgoing person and made friends easily wherever I went.
The first time I saw the danger of being like that was when I was in 5th grade. There were four of us and we were all from different races with myself being the only mixed one and people called us the Cheetah Girls. We all sang and danced as well and made a point to all learn the songs and choreography of all the Cheetah Girls' songs. One of the girl's had started to distance themselves from me and I had no idea why until I had gotten a call from her a few weeks later where she told me to "stay away from her best friend." This was stemmed from a misunderstanding and she and I were able to overcome it and actually became closer than anyone. Another girl from that group got upset and was jealous of another friend and myself because we all liked the same guy. We had all made a deal that none of us would pursue him and let him come to us, and we would let him choose and we would have no hard feelings, She was the only one who continued to pursue him and he still didn't choose her so she was upset, even more so when he chose my other friend. But instead of spreading rumors about her she spread them about me, the easy target. It's been so long that I don't even remember what the rumors were tbh.
The next major incident would be in 6th grade. My dad (who I would later find out is actually my stepdad but that's a story for later) had just gotten a new job and to be closer to his office we moved to Beltsville, Maryland. Everything seemed perfect to me, I had my own room for the first time and my own laptop but we traveled the 3.5 hours back to The Bronx so often I couldn't even feel like I had actually moved. I was involved in my schools choir, their theater group and I was a part of the safety patrol. Being a part of the safety patrol is when the problems started because I was good at my job, so I moved up the ranks quickly and I had quickly become a Lieutenant which was the highest ranking the had there. It was when I got my badge that the problems would start. Rumors, whispers and everytime I turned or asked I could feel the stares. The friends I thought I had slowly started to dwindle down, and the girl who I had thought was my best friend turned out to be behind it all...why? Because she had wanted to be Lieutenant. It had gotten so bad that I had to change my number and move.
Next stop was Kississimee, Florida where I would be for 7th and 8th grade and for the first time I actually felt like I had left NYC and moved. Those years would turn out to hold some of my best but also some of my darkest moments and memories. But I'm tired now and will finish the story tomorrow.
At the time of ending this post it is 3:04am on Sunday, June 4th, 2017. Goodbye for now