Who am I?
As you probably know, I am Alexis. I am a current college student studying nutrition, I am a sprinter on my college’s Track and Field team, I am on my own personal health and fitness journey, a devout, God-fearing Christian woman, and on a journey to better myself and share my experiences with others. I want to tell you how I do life “My Way.” Plain and simple.
This is the woman I am now… but let’s take a step back. You can’t understand me without understanding who I am and where I came from, so here it is:
I’m going to start in middle school because I felt like this is the point in my life where I started to become the woman that I am today. In middle school, I would say I was decently popular. I went to a charter school that graduated middle school about thirty other kids – so me having a solid friend group of about 10 people, yeah, I would say I was popular. I was the person that everyone would always come to for advice, even though, I had no idea what I was taking about, and which was probably not very valid. Yet, everyone still took me seriously and thanked me for what I had told them and guided them through. Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen-year old me thought that this was pretty cool. I wanted to share what I had to say with people that’s also where I fell in love with public speaking, and where I developed my oh so useful skill- writing. My middle school English teacher was absolutely phenomenal. She graded our essays so harshly, yet, that type of grading and criticism led me to strive for greatness every time that I would write an essay and that carried over into my personal writing and into my future. It is what made me fall in love with writing, because I knew that at my level, I was good at it, and could do something with it, yet I never wanted to make a career out of it. It was always just something fun for me. Middle school is also where I truly came to love fitness. I have always been an athlete. In my young childhood, I participated in tennis, gymnastics, soccer, even parkour. In when middle school hit, I started mixed martial arts and I loved it. There is a type of discipline that I never experienced, there was a type of physical and mental demand that I had never needed with any other sport. That was my love and obsession for three years and then COVID-19 hit, that is where we will start high school.
In high school I found out a couple things:
Number 1 – boys: I got with my first boyfriend 7 days into being in high school. Frankly, he was the only boy that had ever given me attention, I went to a middle school with 30 people in my grade, this was all new. Not going into detail, but that relationship taught me a lot about the world. I found out that I was quite sheltered and uneducated on many things that a 14 year-old girl going into the ninth grade should know.
Number 2 – Band: Coming from a such small middle school we didn’t really have very many clubs or sports or general activities that didn’t involve academics. In October of my freshman year of high school, some of my friends were in the band and I decided that with no musical ear or instrument experience, that I should join the school band. So that day I called my parents and had my first lesson. The band director said, “you should be a trombone player” so I picked that up and barely put it down after that. The following year, I joined the jazz band and became section leader. The year after, I tried out for district band and district jazz band and got into both. I didn’t exactly perform amazing, but I was leaps and bounds from where I started and that is all that mattered to me at the time. I started taking improvisation solos, which were extremely out of my comfort zone, but nonetheless, I did it. In senior year I graduated being in the All-Star Band two years in a row and getting the John Philip Sousa Award for the concert band at my school.
Number 3 – Softball: Similarly, (you’re probably seeing a common theme here) with softball in 10th grade, they were short on members of the varsity softball team and I decided that with no ballplaying experience, that I would join softball. Now, admittedly in the beginning I was horrible. My sophomore year, I worked so hard to try to catch up in order to earn a starting sport for my junior year, but still fell short. So junior year I tried to do the same thing and I played in a few more games, but not as many as I wanted. In senior year finally I was able to get a starting spot. At that become one of the most consistent players on the team, not that I was good, but I was reliable consistent, and was never taken out of a game.
Number 4 – Faith: I was born and baptized in the Catholic Church, but whenever I was very young, my family stopped going to church. I didn’t remain a good Catholic. Not to say that I didn’t believe in God, I don’t think there was ever a moment in my life where I didn’t believe in God, but simply believing doesn’t cut it – I never knew that. In 10th grade, I became friends with a group of devout Christians who really changed my outlook on life and the way that I thought. I started going to a club at my school called FCA (Fellowship of Christian athletes). This club gave me an understanding of who the loving Jesus Christ is and not simply the Bible stories that I couldn’t wrap my head around when I was younger. I have cried in that club more time than I have cried outside of it at least in the past couple years. I found a version of myself there that I didn’t know was a part of me – a leader. In that auditorium where we had those meetings I with no real experience in Bible studies, or anything of that sort, I led my first Bible study and prayed out loud to a group of people for the first time. That is also where I found my current boyfriend and I started attending a non denominational Christian church with him and his family. He is also the man that in the freezing cold of November, baptized me as a Christian. For a long time, I felt like I didn’t fit in with the Catholic Church because I had never taken my first communion, I had never gone to Sunday school, I wasn’t a good Catholic, but because I was raised in the Catholic Church I didn’t feel like I was worthy to be a Christian Protestant either. Until I made that decision to get baptized and took my first communion the next day. I realized that no matter what no matter what type of Christianity I participated and identified with in I needed to go all in and Love Jesus with all of my heart.
So essentially that brings me to today, where I am in college. I will go more in depth about my college journey… much more in depth about my college journey… in future posts because I feel like I have made major changes to the woman that I am in just the short semester that I have been at university. But… this is me.
Peace, God bless – Alexis