Life Change

Andres Llamas

Professor Rowely

Engl 115

23 September 2012

Taunting Reflection

Many of us as humans desire a chance to change or enhance ourselves. Why is this? Is it because we want to make up for our past? Tweak our perceptions of the now? Ensure a certain future? Why is it that for most, we embark on this journey at the beginning of another great passage in our lives, a passage known as college? Is the need for this change brought on by the simple fact that we are transcending the confines and prejudices of high school and stepping into the free world that we see as college? No matter the reason, a change in some way or another, calls to us all with its promise of a blank slate, a fresh start, and a clean canvas. Change entices because it gives everyone the same and equal opportunity to reinvent themselves and wash away the taunting distain that haunts our present and jeopardizes our future; for me, my distain was that of self-acceptance and coming to terms with who I truly am and who I was pretending to be.

As I stated, many people desire a change in their lives for some reason or another. For me, it was a combination of several things. My reasons ranged from wanting to fit in, to trying to differentiate myself from others, to wanting to be happy, to trying to please others no matter what the cost. At the beginning of freshman year of high school, I tried to make a change. I thought it would be easy seeing as how I was attending an entirely new school, where no one knew me and I could be whoever I wanted, but I was wrong. Although I was in a new setting, inside I was still the same; I still carried all of my same mannerisms. To try and solve my problem, I tried changing my overt appearance. I tried to dress like the new kids, but that didn’t work either. I tried changing the way I spoke and expressed myself but that also did not work. No matter what I tried, it seemed to lead me to no avail. Along with all of my failed attempts, I also had to struggle with the conflict between my true self and my fake self, which would eventually prove to be too much. I carried on aimlessly and mindlessly through that whole year without caring about much, except trying to reach the light at the end of the tunnel, which for me was going back to my old high school.

I walked in through the sky blue doors of El Camino Real High School, to what I thought I would be able to call home, only to realize that home had changed a lot. All of the people I had once called friends, had all changed drastically, while I remained the same. They all acclimated to the new environment while I was stuck in the old one. It didn’t hit me right away, but I was in the same place that I had been in at the other high school; I was new, had no friends, and I still felt out of place. I was again faced with the same problem of having to change. This time I took a different approach, and began with changing who I was on the inside and how I saw things. Before, I always put others before myself. I let people use me as whatever they needed just so they would be happy. So when I decided, “enough was enough” I knew exactly where to start. I was going to put myself first and make myself happy before everyone else. I chose to stop caring about what others thought and what others said, and put my emotions and thoughts first. As soon as I decided to make this change, everything in my life changed. I went from being forgotten and ignored, to being sought out and sociable. I quickly made new friends and got involved in things like my high school swim team where I made even more friends. Everything was finally looking up for me, all except one thing, and I wouldn’t confront that until my senior year.

Going into my senior year, I was the guy that everyone knew, and I knew everybody. I thought I finally had everything I wanted, all except for one thing. Everything that everyone saw or thought about me was actually a lie. For years, I had become accustomed to wearing a mask, a mask that hid from everyone, including myself, who I really was. Everyone saw a sympathetic, genuinely nice guy who never seemed to be able to maintain a relationship with a girl. All of the things they thought were true, except for the fact that they thought my sexual interest was in a female, when it was really with a male. All those years that everyone asked why things wouldn’t work out, or why I didn’t have a relationship with a girl was because I didn’t want one with a girl. I was a gay teenager who longed to finally be able to be open about who I was so I could get to experience that part of myself. I had told a few friends by this time and each of them were telling me to do the same thing and come out.

I have a really “no nonsense; this is the cold harsh reality of life” friend named Angie who really helped me on my journey. Every once in a while when I would come to her telling her of the same desire I had, she would say the same thing, “then just freaking do it!” “It’s your life right? Shouldn’t you be the one who’s happy in it?” Every time she would ask me these questions, and every time my answer was “yes.” Toward the end of my senior year I finally had had enough and came out. I decided to let my boyfriend at the time finally upload the pictures he had wanted of the two of us to Facebook for all to see. To this day, opening that metaphoric closet door that we all have heard of, is the best decision I have made. Since opening it, I finally feel free; I feel free form the judgmental shackles that I myself had placed on the entire situation constantly fearing what others would say, how I would be treated, and what would become of all the friends I had made over the last three years. I quickly realized that the only thing I had to fear was the fear itself because everyone stood beside me. As word got out no one believed it. Everyone was so certain that I was straight and just hadn’t found that right girl yet; when the dust began to settle, I opened my eyes to see that I was not standing alone and that all of my friends, were still there standing beside me.

I also used the mask to hide myself from my family. Growing up Catholic and very religious, you are taught that being a gay man was a bad thing. I was told that others like me would “burn in a lake of fire for eternity” once judgment came; as a young teen these words filled me with fear, not only of what would happen to me in the end but of fearing what my family would do or say if they found out the truth about who I really was. This was another fear that I built up too much in my head. When I did come out, all of my family accepted me just as I am.

When to make this change is a daunting question. Today, many make a change at the beginning of college. Why college? College is the time when people make a change because here, they are unknown. It is a complete new chapter in a person’s life and they have the freedom to mold themselves into whatever they dream. For centuries, college has been described as a place to expand one’s mind and fill it with knowledge and make choices that will shape our futures, so what better place than college? In high school, you have a reputation; everyone expects you to be a certain person or behave a specific way. In college, no one expects anything from you. You have the freedom to become and try whatever you want. In 1984, the author Jennifer Crichton published an article in Ms. Magazine titled “Who Shall I Be,” which centered entirely on change and how there are many different types of change. One of my favorite truths from her article is that, there is no set time frame in which you must change. A person has their entire life to make any changes or adjustments to their character because as long as you want to change something, you can.

Change is something that calls to everyone at some point because it is that sense of refreshing not only yourself but your entire life and perspective. A change can be anything from an external change like, the way you wear your hair to an internal one like mine, where I came to terms with my sexuality. Regardless of the change you want to make, the only way you will come out of it happy is if you make it for you. No one should feel pressured to make a change by a certain time because just as Jennifer Crichton said, “I have the slate of the rest of my life to write on.”