During all of high school, I 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 mode 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 junior year, that I realized that being two different people was the worst thing that I could that done to myself and that I did have other options.
             Around that time, a major influence on my life was my cousin, Ben. He taught me that I would only live once and that I should be the person that I was and not some one that just tries to fit in. We were sitting a in a coffee shop, one evening, when he asked me the one question than 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 I had tried to fit in, and I had cared what other people thought and this hadn '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 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
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