Look at your life

Are there things in my life that I regret? The answer to that is simple. Of course there are. Don't we all have some sort of regrets in our lives? We wouldn't be human if we didn't make mistakes. They each shape us and make us who we are now.Sitting where you are,stop and think. I bet every single one of you can list a few mistakes that you've made right off the bat,so can I. For me it started around the 3rd grade. It started by wanting to fit in and not be different, the feeling of not wanting to get made fun of and it lead on to keeping things from others when I knew in the back of my mind it wasn't right.

Walking through the doors of my new school I never would have known that I would end up turning out to be the one thing  told myself not to become. Having to be in a specific clique at school was never that big of a deal,until I moved to Southeastern. That's how the school worked,find the group you fit into and stay there. I was the new kid,the one who came from a big school and was racially different than 99% of the student body here. That made me weird.From day one I tried everything in my power to get everyone to like me, It wasn't an easy task to try to accomplish. I changed who I was to please the people around me, I'd end up making a certain group of "friends" happy to turn around and find out that others disliked me for being friends with those people

Changing myself or at least trying to change for someone I believed was my friend was one of my huge mistakes and regrets. I couldn't change where I was from, to make everyone else happy. It's who I was and at that point in my life I didn't understand that. The one person I called my best friend in 3rd grade would get upset if I achieved something better than her.She would get upset if my grades were better, if I had more friends than she did. She would basically bully me trying to convince me to change and stop being that way.So do you know what I did? I didn't leave that friendship. I thought I was the one doing something wrong. I tried to change. I let other friends go, just to please one, who couldn't even be a good enough friend to me. I didn't try as hard in my studies, because I didn't want her to think that I was purposely trying to get ahead just to be better at it than her. I changed, not for myself but for her. For about 7 or 8 years I let this so called "friend" make me feel less of myself so she could feel better about herself. It went on and on,until just this year. This year it all changed.Falling into this specific persons peer pressure was the top mistake in my life.

Being the new girl came with some perks every now and then,but for me, there were none of those perks.I was different.I was a different race than almost the entire student body at my home school.I was an outsider. Being an outsider immediately made you the target of all the jokes, teasing and taunting that immature 3rd graders did. Before I had moved to Southeastern,race wasn't a big factor in my life. I didn't see myself any different than anyone else in my classes at my old school. Though at Southeastern it's as if I walked through the doors with a sign across my chest saying, "I was born in another country,I'm the outsider,make fun of me." That's exactly what happened too, I got made fun of. That's a big reason as to why I wanted to be just like everyone else. Then maybe  would fit in and be one of the cool kids.I would speak Spanish to my mom whenever she talked to me. Even around my friends I would speak Spanish to her, until they laughed at me and told me it was weird and it made me a freak. I didn't speak Spanish to my mom around my friends or even at home. They took a part of me away; I regret ever listening to their taunting. It was a mistake to even consider kids like that my friends, when they wouldn't even let me be myself around them. Friends accept each other just the way they are. Well, my friends didn't accept me that way, and I wish I had never befriended them to begin with now.
            Entering junior high I still didn’t know who was I and was hoping that I eventually would. I felt like things would get better. In reality, they got a bit worse. I fell into a few more peer pressures. There are always some obstacles that come into our lives before things can get better. That’s the way I looked at it at least. I’m not saying that I don’t regret what I did, because trust me there are several things that I regret but I’ve learned from them all.           
 Everyone says that we find ourselves as we get older. Whoever said that is absolutely right, I may not have known who I was when I first started high school but this year I’ve found myself. There was no point in trying to act like I wasn’t smart just to fit in. There was no point in acting like I didn’t enjoy school just so they would like me. Even looking back at it now, I still regret acting the way I did. I wish that I wouldn’t have changed myself for everyone else. I wish that I could have known how things would turn out in the end. I do regret a lot but in the end I feel like a better person for at least realizing my mistakes. Catch your mistakes before you end up regretting them just as much as I have.






Vive Ut Vivas <3