Personal Narrative: A Time In My Life

I struggled to come up with a time in my life where I could not be myself. I have had the same job for fourteen years, have been with the same person for more than fourteen years, and have had my friends for longer still. Trying to find a time that I can distinctly remember not being myself I have to go back a long time, probably around eighteen years. The more I thought about it, the more I could only recall freshmen year in high school as being a time where I was living two lives. I attended a high school that not one single person I knew attended, I was on my own. Many of my friends attended the same two high schools and enjoyed the luxury of having something in common with each other. My high school was a specialty school that I choose to attend but none of my friends were able to. The school having different concentrations in different arts almost built a segregated culture. This major spent most of their time away from another major and so on. This built up temporary walls that eventually would come down. However, I think this helped me feel an outsider. There would be no way of me knowing how many other people felt the same way I did during those first few months at school. I think I had a hard time transitioning to the new school primarily because I wished to be at
another school where my friends were. I don’t think I ever committed to staying at this particular school, for some reason I convinced myself that I would transfer to another school eventually. Perhaps a school my friends were attending. While the rest of my high school was busy making friends and building what would become their lives for the next four years, or maybe longer. I was thinking about my other life with all the friends I already had. Sometime during my time at school I accepted that I would be here for the next four years. I had become friends with people and knew almost everyone in the school, it was a small school so this was no big feat. I was now living two separate lives. During school I had a life that was completely separate from my life outside of school. During my four years in high school I might have only seen people I went to school with outside of school a handful of times. The people I went to school with were my friends, but only at school. Outside of school I had my other group of friends. We hung out at night and on the weekends, the two separate groups of people never crossed paths and I have no real reason why. I had just built completely separate worlds in school and out of school. Outside of school with that particular group of people I was unrestricted and could be who I wanted. The group of school friends were good people, but I would say they were more insecure and for that reason judgmental, which meant I was more reserved and less of myself around them. I would not say it was a huge difference the same way Junior in our book had to be completely different people, this was a far more subtle difference. I knew I was closer to my friends outside of school for multiple reasons. We all attended the same summer camp together. When you spend a month of your summer every year together living in tents it is quite hard to not be your true self. This is the primary reason I think we are all so close even today. I have been granted an extremely great group of people around me in life that have allowed me to always be the person I wanted to be.
Unlike Junior in our book I never had to make the choices between identities in the same way. The only thing that can even compare to the book for me was the almost complete separation between my high school friends and the rest of my friends. I can say that I still remain friends with the group of people that I did not go to school with and have only had contact with one or two people from high school. Obviously the people who I felt welcome around were the people who remain a part of my life and those that I always kept myself guarded around faded
away.