Me
        Who am I?  What has made me the person I am today?  There are so
many things that can shape a person.  I know that my background, my
parents, my bouts with drinking and depression, my love of books and
knowledge, and my search for myself, have all affected the person I am
today.
        I can remember being small, blowing out the candles on my birthday
cake, wishing with all my heart.  I didn’t wish for a new bike or a pony; I
wished for happiness.  I wished that my parents would be happy together, that
they wouldn’t fight.  As I got older, I started wishing for my own happiness,
the happiness of my childhood having been scarred by my surroundings,
stripped away by the nights I lay awake listening to the continuous arguing of
my parents.  I was the oldest, the responsible one.  I was the one Mom could
count on to cry to, the one who was always there to lean on, even as a small
child.  I stood up under this, I was always there, for my mother, for my
friends.  I counseled my mother through the rough times, my friends through
their countless boyfriends, suicide attempts, and parental problems.  I have
always been the strong one, carrying the world on my shoulders.  In these
times, there was nothing I wanted more than to go up to my room and escape
into a book.  Other times, I would go to my room and escape into a bottle. 
Both of these things have influenced me.  All the hundreds of books I’ve read
have made me smarter, and the alcohol has done the same thing.  I have
learned that there is never an escape.  When you come out of it, your
problems are always waiting for you.  So from these times, I have become
stronger.  I am no longer tempted to escape. These things have shaped me,
molded me into the person I am now.  I am stronger because of my past, even
if it may have made me somewhat hard, somewhat cynical.  I have learned
how to rely on myself, never depending on anyone else for my own
happiness.
        There was a time in my life, a hard time, when I didn’t like the person I
was.  I would look at all the shiny, happy people and think, “why is this not
me? Why am I so shy, unsure, ugly, awkward; why can’t I be as confident as
everyone else?”  I looked at everyone, and I hated the person I was.  I wanted
to be able to walk down those halls at school and know people saw me.  I
wanted to be able to talk to people and not feel like a fool.  I thought that
confidence, that poise, was something you were born with, something I would
never achieve.  I wanted to be one of those confident people.  When a person
like that walks into a room, radiant with their own surety, people bask in their
presence.  People are reassured by this confidence, they admire it.  I wanted
to be a confident, beautiful human being.  In my eyes, I was far from it.  It
took me a long time to realize that no matter how confident a person seems
on the outside, they are always quaking with fear on the inside.  I also
realized that when a person acts a certain way, plays a certain part, they
become that character.  “Life is a stage, and all the people merely players”, I
think Shakespeare said.  It’s true.  After that realization I decided to change. 
I’m not the type of person to sit back and cry about my troubles.  I began.  I
walked with my head up.  I smiled at people I didn’t know.  I looked people
in the eye.  The more I did this, the more confident I really felt.  Even if I
never really have been as sure of myself as I’d like, at least no one knows it. 
Amazingly, like the sun on a flower, the more I’ve smiled and stood tall, the
stronger and more confident I’ve become. Through all my acting, I’ve
become that strong confident person I always wanted to be.  
        These are the things I’m happy to have learned in my seventeen years. 
Today, I am happy, I am confident, I am content.  I no longer lay awake
nights with tears in my eyes.  I don’t even have anything to wish for when I
blow out my birthday candles.  It has taken me a long time, a lot of tears, to
reach this point.  There is no guide, no book, that tells a person how to be
happy.  There is no twelve step program.  It is a journey every person must
embark on alone.  I look around me, seeing all the people in their
individuality, hoping that inside none of them feel like I did, wondering why
they aren’t one of the shiny, happy people.   We all have to realize...inside,
few of us are, but we can always change, we have the rest of our lives to do
so.