Growing up, at least for me, was nothing short of a nightmare. There is only one thing I would not give up that nightmare for, and that is the "truths" I learned from it. One specific "truth", though most valuable in the world of social stature and social standards, is the truth that conformity is the way and in order to be happy with myself, I had to conform to the unctuous standards of today's society.
             When I realized that life is mostly full of hard times, I found that life itself would be easier if and only if I would follow the crowd and go with the flow: denying myself what I knew to be true, the experience that I already had, and not to mention, my own feelings. I bought everything that I thought would bring me social acceptance, everything that would make me seem just as cool as Blondie in the 1980's. I pretended that I loved N*SYNC and The Backstreet Boys. The word describing the music that I grew up was not even in my vocabulary. Truth was something I did not want to hear about because I was cheating myself out of it by denying who I was for social acceptance.
             What I thought would make me seem cool made me the fool because I never let me be me and I was not happy: dating the right guys, wearing the right clothes, listening to the right music, and being "friends" with the right people made me cheat myself. When people would ask me why I was not happy, I would never answer because I had not realized what I was sacrificing in order to be popular or gain social acceptance, which was supposed to bring me the thing I was surrendering in order to obtain it: happiness. My feelings were, "Love in the time of war? Great joke!" I had thought friendship from my peers was impossible as long as I was fighting myself and not too long after that, I found out that I was right.
             Now that I am myself, I figured out that love is possible in the time of war, because it is the
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