Influences - This I Believe Rough Draft

I expected my time in high school to be a lot like what you see on television or read in books. I saw stereotypes of all the kids there being conveyed, and I expected my teenage years to be full of late nights and parties and adventures and recklessness. That slipped ideas into my head and twisted the decisions I made. I admit to making wrong choices, within the last year especially. I had found myself in the company of the wrong group, and allowed them to change me. But through them, I learned to believe that the people you surround yourself with really does impact the person you become. 

Uneventful would be the sole word I would use to describe my first year of high school. I was innocent throughout the year, and too naive for my own good. I had one best friend who I did everything with, who's parents were very strict, so trouble was almost a foreign word for us.  My grades were consistently satisfactory enough to make the honor roll every quarter. I had devoted all of my time to cheer, and schoolwork, my best friend, and a truly tedious relationship that I didn't have time to experience anything else. 

Then sophomore year happened, and it seemed as if everything changed. I lost the one friend I had because her intense passion for cheer and natural talent allowed her to get to a higher level that took over most of her life. Feeling abandoned and thoroughly confused, I set out on an attempt to find different friends to replace the void that she had left. At this point, I just needed something to occupy my time. When fall break begun, I had finally found myself in the company of new people with outlooks completely different from mine. I was immediately intrigued. What I didn't realize, however, is that I had stumbled in with the wrong crowd. They gave me a glimpse into their world, one which moved too fast and burned too bright. Back then, it didn't occur to me that the things I was participating in were damaging me, physically and emotionally. All that mattered was the temporary euphoric feelings I got whenever I was in their company. My outlook to everything was changing. I thought I was better than everyone else that wasn't part of that group. I thought I was invincible. Suddenly, all of my dreams and future plans didn't mean enough to me to outweigh having fun. My grades started to slip. I was defying my parents, and not giving them the respect they deserved. I stopped putting my all into cheerleading, skipping practices, showing up tired from coming home late the night before. I was so full of emotion back then, where one word could turn me from purely blissful to hazardously furious in seconds. It wasn't until I got into actual trouble with the law when I was with them that I finally realized that these people I met were causing me more harm than help. I looked back at my life, which was then in shatters, and was utterly ashamed that I had let it get this bad. 

That's when I did something for the betterment of myself. I let go of all of the people who were in my life during that period of time that I considered friends. Because they didn't care about me quite as much as they cared about being able to have a good time. I slowly started to piece my life back together again. I grew closer to a group of people that I was always sort of friends with, but all but ignored when in a clouded mindset of rebellion. They helped me through it all. Most of them were from asian families like me, where excellent performance in school related things were highly stressed, so they provided me the good influence I needed to get my grades back up. They took me around the island to the beach, to watch movies, to have sleepovers and do normal things for girls my age. What's different is that they showed me how to have fun while being a good person. 

I used to always hear that "friends are the family you choose yourself". I never really put much thought into how valuable that choice of your friends was until I found the right group of people that pushed me to be my very best and excel in the things I do. Only positive vibes and encouraging words were sparked from them in even my darkest days. I believe that sometimes it's necessary to remove people from your life who aren't bettering you as a person. The people you surround yourself with should be reflection of who you are or want to be, this I believe.