The Person I Am Perceived To Be

The Person I Am Perceived To Be

Walking into a room full of people I have known all of my life, I find

myself feeling lost. Growing up in a small private school I was very

sheltered as a child. It wasn't until high school when I realized what

the world really is. When I walk into my church now I am seen as

someone completely different then who I have become.

When I used to enter the room I was greeted by fake smiles sand polite

hellos. I was looked at as the rebel and the outcast who's mother just

so happened to be one of the most like people around. I started at a

public school my freshman year. I made new friends and slowly started

to break away from the only group that I had know my entire childhood.

My new friends didn't know every little thing about me so that gave me

a chance to start over and become whoever I wanted to be.

I started dressing differently: My shorts got a little shorter and my

shirts got a little tighter. My entire wardrobe was changed in a

matter of months. As the friends that I had known watched from a

distance my whole world was being turned up-side-down. To my new

friends I was Charlie, the cool, a little shy girl that was new

around. To everyone else I was just another young teenager that was

going down the path to destruction.

Around my Sophomore year I got into drinking and smoking cigarettes.

This just drove my friends farther and farther away. On the occasion

that I went to church they would still all sit by me buy I still felt

so unconnected to them. As you grow up though you start to realize who

your true friends are. I started to notice how my heart would cringe a

little when I would hear them all talking about how they were going to

go to the beach that day and then they would turn and walk away. I was

never invited to anything and more and slowly that started to get to