Necessary changes

My hometown is a small city. There, even though it isn’t the smallest town I have ever seen, it seems that everyone knows everyone. If I went someplace that I wasn’t supposed to, when I got home, somehow, my mother would welcome me with a frown on her face and demand explanations of my whereabouts. Here, where the people frown upon anything different, if you don’t act, talk and dress like society thinks is best, you become the gossip around town and you’ll feel like an outcast. This was one of the reasons why I was never truly happy there, because I always felt I couldn’t really be myself around anyone, expect my best friends.

Then my life changed. I got accepted into college and I had to move to my country’s capital. Summer vacations went by in a blink of an eye and only in September did my nerves finally kick in and reality hit me: I was about to go LIVE, by MYSELF, in a city that I knew nothing about.

What I came to realize is that here you can spend all day walking through the city and never encounter someone you know. Maybe that’s why people here aren’t afraid to be who they really are. In my first week, I noticed that my school had lots of different people, be it punks, metal heads, Barbie girls, all kinds of people, and all of them seemed to get along just fine. This really gives me hope for mankind and makes me realize how stupid I was back in my hometown for being what people though I should be.

I’ve come to realize that I couldn’t continue on the path that I was on. Now, I’m not afraid of society or how people see me; I’m not ashamed of myself anymore. I realize I’m who I’ve got to be and I won’t let my voice be smothered by anyone. I gained the courage to show the world who I really am and that has made me a happier person.