Sometimes, lying to yourself is the easiest path to take. Believing what others tell you about the world, society and even yourself is less difficult than challenging those beliefs and finding who you are meant to be. A life like that, however, can only be miserable and unfulfilling. It is imperative to escape the restraints of the convictions of others to find yourself, especially if those convictions harm your self-esteem.
    
At fourteen, I sat alone at a lunch table – in actuality, five people were sitting with me, but I felt less alone in true solitude. I rarely spoke because every conversation included at least one derogatory remark about homosexuality, and I was struggling to accept my first crush on a girl. The four teenage boys uttered phrases like “only gay guys watch that show” and “math class is so gay” with nearly every exhalation. I called the fifth, a fourteen-year-old girl who shared my passions for mathematics and young adult literature, my best friend. Her parents had opted to homeschool her rather than sending her to the public middle school that I attended. She started high school with an odd mix of fundamentalist Christian beliefs and the sixth-grade desire to be popular circulating in her brain. When she wasn’t at a different table or engrossed in her smartphone, she was making the worst of the homophobic remarks. “It’s disgusting,” she would say, her face contorted into that of a person I’d never met. “They’re going to Hell, where they belong. And you’re going there, too, for supporting them.”
    
“What would you do if one of your best friends or family members was gay?” I implored one day after she had finished a particularly brutal sermon. “Would you disown them?”
    
“It depends on who it was.”
    
I still remember the last real conversation she and I would ever have. I fought back my tears for the rest of the school day and spent the subsequent night like I spent most others, pouring my heart out into my poetry journal until the wee hours of the morning. For the five months spent sitting at that lunch table, my existence was a miserable one. I heard how revolting I was so many times that I believed it more than any of my tablemates did. At the same time, I was skeptical. Could I go to Hell for something I couldn’t control?
    
The answer, I decided, was no. Whether or not a higher power existed, I knew that I was born gay. Who I fell in love with was no different than the color of my eyes, hair or skin. I celebrated my uniqueness and self-discovery and, when I found the courage to come out, received overwhelming support from almost everybody. Halfway through the year, I switched lunch tables and made new, supportive friends. I had finally found my inner strength to ignore her words and accept myself.
    
It can easily be said that most fourteen-year-old girls do not lose their closest friends to religious beliefs or prejudices. Many people who face similar struggles let themselves be defeated. With the support of my family and my real friends, I have been able to reject my former best friend’s preconceived notions of homosexuality and become the person I was meant to be. I have since joined my school's Gay-Straight Alliance and become an active leader and ally for countless students that have also been ostracized and rejected for who they are. I empathize with and advocate for others who face bullying and self-acceptance. As David Levithan wrote in Every Day, “If you want to live within the definition of your own truth, you have to choose to go through the initially painful and ultimately comforting process of finding it.” Every person has the right to the comfort found by living within their own truth, even if finding that truth is painful.