i've spent my whole life walking in somebody elses shadow, one time or another. there was never a moment when i wasn't the small ant looking up at everybody else thinking about how much i just didn't really matter. at the beginning of the school year, way back when, me and danny were tight and for a minute me and rady were too. i lived in both of their shadows. trying to be the popular football player, the really cool guy. but i was under rady's wing and danny was more so the really popular good friend. they were great to me, i learned a lot from both of them, but we don't talk like we used to. but back in high school, there were guys nothing like them. they pretended to help me out but they were assholes, each and every one of them. i liked the most popular girl in school once, and we got really close. i felt like i was in a sitcom, i would climb through her window in the middle of the day and even in the middle of the night and she'd just talk to me, and we'd watch movies, things were amazing, and when i thought she really liked me, i did something stupid. i tried out for the football team to impress her, and her boyfriend tackled me, and i don't even remember trying out. somebody else had to tell me later. i got a concussion for that girl, and all she could do was send me a text telling me how sorry she was and how she was just meant to be with that stupid guy. i've always been the loser. always the one looked over.
now that i'm back at unc after being at home after some family issues, i remember what it's like to be by myself. i love it, but i'm so different now. when you spend so much of your time trying to be someone else, it's hard to realize who you were. but i remembered. who i was with my friends, and who i was when i wasn't trying to be so amazingly popular is who i feel myself becoming. i still make the same jokes, i still walk the same way, i laugh the same, and i'm still a ginger. i didn't change, and i still became somewhat popular. my friends are like me, they're hilarious. be it eli, or lotty, even though i haven't talked to them in a long time they're just the same as me, and yet more amazing for being my friends. i wasn't trying to be anyone anymore, except for myself. i'm so tired of putting on different masks so i can be some kind of great legend. i'm not a pike, my old friends might be pikes, but i'm not them. i was not made to be a rady laroce, a danny bakersfield, or anybody else for that matter. and if i fall? i've played the fool too many times, i've been catching up for all my life, and it seems, it gets harder to believe, it gets harder, but be honest. if the sun don't shine tomorrow, we'll survive. i love songs like this.
leila is proof that whoever myself is, whoever brock orlando wayfield is? he's a fucking beast. look at that beautiful girl, there's nothing about her that's out of place, not a thing that is wrong. sure, she's 5'2", but she's so out of my league it's unbelievable. but sometimes i wonder how i even got her. actually, all the time. i care about her, a lot, without a doubt, but i kind of wonder why she feels that way about me. i mean there's not anything wrong with me, i guess, but i'm not one of those guys i would expect her to be with. but, leila's not anything what i thought she'd be like. the way she looks shows a different kind of thing, she looks like she'd be one of the girls that i knew in high school, but she's not at all. as far as i know she hasn't dated anyone this entire school year, she keeps to herself and she's just as awesome as she was the first day i met her. she's consistent, she isn't fake, and she makes me feel like i could do anything. i don't care that people are jealous, let them be fucking jealous. every day i get more and more okay with it, and even happy. they're confused, but i'm going to stop wondering why. she's with me, the brock orlando wayfield stated from above. she's up at night making out with me, she sleeps with falls asleep next to me some days, and she's going to be wearing my jersey which would be so fucking hot on game days, cheering me on, and it won't just be my mom from the tv. that gorgeous, short girl has the eyes for me, and that is the highlight of my freshman year. and here i thought it would be my mom sending me special k bars...