When you feel lost, it’s not the physical sense. It’s not that you’ve taken a wrong turn on some desolate road. When you’re lost, you lose yourself. You lose the person you once were and are replaced by whatever is occupying your mind. I have moved sixteen times, and been to ten different schools. It’s easy to lose yourself when you’re afraid of losing what you’ve just gained. New friends, a new house, and a new outlook upon your own life.

I moved to a small town right at the beginning of freshman year. I’ve always known I wasn’t your typical “pretty girl” or “smart girl or “popular girl”. I wasn’t a rebel, an athlete, or artist. I was always stuck in the middle, unsure of where I belonged. Where I lived, everyone was cookie cutter. Smart, athletic, preppy, with a white picket fence and some mixed breed pooch. I entered the school unaware of the strict social cliques and ridged “do’s” and “don’ts” of high school. This is a journal about how I was treated, and how that changed me, how I lost myself in a sea of people who were all sheep. I immediately didn’t fit in. I am about as coordinated as a hippo. Needless to say, sports were not on my agenda. My grades were decent in the English and History departments, but lacking severely in the Math’s and Sciences. My artistic skills are about as detailed as a stick figure on a blank sheet of paper. I didn’t fit the physical mold either. My hair was frizzy, I wore no makeup, and my clothes were a style of my own. Of course, like any cliché high school movie, I got bullied. Mocked, ridiculed, and torn down for being my own person. Everyday I was forced to face people who made me feel like I was not worth anything, simply for being different. So I changed, I changed to be left alone. I changed so people would look at me like I was just another normal teenage girl. I would straighten my hair and wear makeup. I stopped speaking my mind, agreeing with the masses. I lost myself in an attempt to save my own self-esteem. I made myself pretty, or so I thought. Somewhere along the way, I looked in the mirror and realized I didn’t even see myself anymore. I had stopped doing what I loved. I had no passion for writing. I was antisocial and angry. I stopped listening to myself, and I had believed others. The town I lived in was one that stifled originality, and embraced all those who excelled in what was deemed acceptable by my cookie cutter town.

I lost myself. I realized from my time in that small town, I was more. I was worth more, I expressed more, I deserved more than to be hurt because of whom I am and what I’m not. Some people can survive in a world where originality is dead, but I cannot. Insecure teenagers trying to raise their own self-confidence cannot shoot down mine because they have none. Maybe a small town, dead end life is acceptable for some people. I refused to lose myself to something so insignificant and so I didn’t.