Who am I? During all of high school, It seemed as if I were hiding behind a mask. When I was at home I was a totally different person. At school I was trying to be a person who could fit in, but the more I tried the more it didn’t seem to work. Everywhere I went I would censor what I said depending on my surroundings and the people that were with me.
Most of the time I would not say anything at all because I was afraid of being embarrassed. I would always have to change my mood when different people were around me. It was horrible; I hated it. I was getting sick and tired of always being someone I was not. It was about the middle of the summer of 1999, after my first year, that I realized that being two different people was the worst thing that I could have done to myself and that I did have other options.
Around that time, a major influence on my life was my best friend, Tony. He taught me that I would only live once and that I should be the person that I was and not someone that just tries to fit in. We were sitting in a coffee shop one evening when he asked me the one question that changed my life. “Who are you?” When I first heard this question I hesitated to answer. This question opened a new door in my mind that had never been opened before. This was the first question that had actually made me think about myself and who I was.
The more I thought about his question the more I realized that I had a decision to make; to be the person who tried to fit in and cared what other people thought or to be myself. For the past 16 years at that time I had tried to fit in, and I had cared what other people thought and this didn’t seemed to work. So, for the first time, I was going to be myself. When I started to be myself, it seemed as if everything was different.
I used to look at what was only on the surface. I would not normally look deeply into a particular subject. When I was myself, the environment seemed as if it had a deeper meaning. Everything I saw, heard, smelled, and felt I perceived in an extremely different way. Because of this, I was able to take what I had learned and apply it to many occasions and came out with pride.