Board Thread:Season 44: Costa Rica/@comment-4387136-20171214130452

Hey jurors!!! I'm super excited and nervous to be sitting here but I am so grateful that I got to play with all you lovely people and especially grateful to the hosts that brought me back. I had a lot of, basically, breakdowns in my confessional chat so TYSM for the hosts for putting up with me and for hosting this amazing game. It was really hard for me to keep my sanity but I wouldn't change it for any ORG experience in the world!

As a returnee I want to talk about my experience three years ago (which was my first ORG EVER). My first game was riddled with mistakes. I mis-played an idol, I relied on immunity, I got votes every single tribal I went to because I relied on one alliance all season and never really branched out to talk to anyone else. This season I wanted to prove that I am way better than who I was.

Pre-Merge:

I was asked one hour before this season started to jump in and play. I had no idea what to expect but immediately I said

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When the cast was released I saw fresh faces on original Esparza. However, I did see a couple of familiar faces! I don't want y'all jurors to think I relied on these relationships at all. I was scared to have them in the game because Willow had flipped on me in our previous game and Zak & I had this beef from earlier in the year. But these people I had less than stellar game experiences with before ended up being the most honest people and the easiest to talk to. As a person I'm really glad to have a stronger relationship with them than before, and as a player I'm proud that I proved to even myself that past games don't have to mean a lot.

My original plan though was to play with new people! By "new" I mean new to me! So every time I got on a new tribe with people I made sure to talk to everyone. But I never ended up going to tribal until the last swap. This is where my game really took off! I became a swing vote in both my pre-merge tribals. I chose to keep Zak and Morgan in my tribals because I had trusted Zak way more. And Morgan because I could keep an eye on the legacy and I knew he was almost all alone in the game. Voting off Alice & Steffen was really hard because I really liked them but I was always thinking about game.

Merge:

This was probably one of the craziest merges I've ever been a part of. I hit the ground running talking to everyone, even confronting people about what I heard. If I see no bad outcome from confronting said person then I'll probably confront you. Which is when I found out I couldn't completely trust CJ like I was hoping to and had to adapt and find out who really had my back.

And other than F12, I knew who was going home before every single tribal, even if I wasn't happy with who was leaving.

At F12 I knew we were splitting between Nadine/CJ but I thought more votes were going onto Nadine. I tried my best to keep up good relationships with everyone else who wasn't the Zak/Hesh/Willow/Conor group. This group, including me to an extent, had lied about CJ leaving. Which began the downfall of us and the beginning of my breakdowns tbh.

The F11 tribal ended up being one of the most pivotal tribals of my game. It's when I realized I had to become Sandra Diaz-Twine, in a way, and think about myself. Anyone could go as long as it wasn't me. (tbh I'm not a cocky bitch I'll never be as good as Sandra). I kept good relationships with Morgan/Joanna even though I was more loyal to Willow/Zak/Hesh/Conor, so the two of them both told me that Zak was leaving and my alliance was doomed. The previous day my allies all told me they didn't have the Esparza idol or knew where the idol was. So when I heard Zak's name I did something selfish, but completely to benefit my game. I flipped. I went to Rhys, Layla, Joanna, Nadine and made sure that it was really Zak going and not me. And I voted with them to prove that I could be more worth working with than the rest of my alliance. Also because I wasn't ready to go down with y'all (v sorry). When I found out Zak had the idol on him my heart sunk. My biggest regret was not telling him because I was worried since he didn't have an idol he would try to flip the vote on me.

For the rest of the merge I tried to save myself. But anytime I saw a window to make a move I tried to take it! Including until Conor's last breath in the game I was trying to get a 4-4 tie going. And the Nadine vote when I found out they were trying to vote out Joanna (and knowing Joanna was voting me) I pushed for Nadine to go (even though Hesh really didn't want to and I'm sorry we were always so pushy with our votes). That way Joanna now felt against Jon/Rhys. It was a risk that paid off. I'll give credit to Morgan here for being the knowledgeable one about Joanna getting the votes and telling Hesh & I.

I FOUGHT for immunity every single time. I put myself out there getting 1st or 2nd in many competitions. I stayed up for 23 hours at F6 just to insure my alliance of Hesh/Morgan had immunity so we couldn't get screwed if idols were played. Winning immunity was so much more important than just being safe, winning immunity meant I had more options to work with. But hell, I worked ALL weekend on final immunity and still lost and I'm surprised I'm here. The end of the night after final results Morgan told me everyone was voting for me and he was probably too. My heart broke. For the night I felt the pain that many people felt, that you came close or far and it was all for nothing. I spent all the next morning trying to get Morgan to let me do a tiebreaker but he wasn't around much and told me he was threatened by my game. I still fought up until deadline. Joanna and I had previously talked about voting for Hesh, but I was convinced she was lying to me after Morgan told me I was leaving. But thirty minutes before tribal deadline Joanna gave me my lifeline to let me do a tiebreaker. The tiebreaker was about the perception of this game and matching up snipits of confessionals to any of the 8 jurors and I pulled it out and I literally cried in my lil work office when I found out.

Finally:

I think I was more social than my fellow finalists. I put in more effort and pulled out more challenge wins. And strategy-wise I think I did better considering Joanna was voted out and Morgan trying to get me out yet I'm still here. Also I lied a lot less than my fellow finalists, but I still lied. I lied when I thought it was necessary and looking back I'm very sorry if it wasn't. I tried my best to be as genuine as a person and player that I could and even if some of y'all don't like me I can truly say I like all of you,

I look forward to hearing from you all and I'm V sorry if this was too long I just have so much to say!!! 