In my earlier years, I was never what you could consider a social person. I have always found great difficulty in relating to people, with most finding my actions or words to be bizarre and to a large extent distasteful. As I grew older, I discovered the ability to feign normality and for the most part was able to find friends, fellow companions of a similar nature who were empathetic of the gap in my ability to perform basic interaction; despite this fo there was still this emptiness I found inside me. This emptiness led to a desperation for acceptance by my peers and gave rise to my adoption of a jester-like façade, my take on an offensive character which was to be an outlet for my more obscene tendencies. This character was inspired by an amalgamation of all the portrayals of the psychotics I saw in cartoons and comic books. The Joker, Freakazoid, The Mask, just to name a few of the icons which I based my character on. I admired them for their wit, their cunning, their almost omni-present smile which dismissed seriousness and made light of even the most grave of situations. Through my university life I struggled with separating this persona from my true self, until I met my first real friend. This person called out my dis-ingenuity without being hateful about it. It made me reconsider myself and the way I was relating to the world. However, his honesty backfired. Rather than accepting what I am, I had begun closing myself off, choosing to skip class rather than face the outside world, drowning myself in a cesspool of video games and an internet addiction. It was pathetic. I loathed myself for it, even more so than I did when I was just pretending to care about people. I had gained a considerable amount of weight and had all but given up on finishing my degree. It wasn't until my father a man I both fear and respect greatly, had come to the school and bluntly told me that I was becoming a disappointment. This was my first turning point; I chose to straighten myself up a little bit. I bought a gym membership began exercising, talked to people and by that I mean REALLY talked to people, I knew I had no mental illness that caused my social awkwardness, no it was only a deficiency of my character which could be mended absolutely. By the end of my university days, my false persona had all but faded. I had discovered in myself some modicum of confidence, as while it may be true that I was strange; it was perhaps not such a black and white issue, rather people's weirdness was on a scale, one in which you just had to find other's who tipped it as close to the way you did as possible. There was one problem still present in me though I hate to admit it; I had become shamelessly attention-seeking. After those years of sequestering myself from the world; I was starved for social interaction, the consequence being that I would say and do things even if I believed them to be stupid or wrong, in an immature effort to stir up controversy. I chose to reinvent myself this way, as a way to make myself seem more interesting than I truly was. Even after all that soul-searching and growth, I still wasn't me. I truly believe to this day I would have carried on being that sad despondent person had my brother not intervened. I love my elder brother absolutely. He is braver and stronger than I fear that I'll ever be, while he does have his shortcomings, he like my father was a man I respected. He had realized my growing awareness of my flaws and sought to help me realize my true self. Even as a 20 year-old man, I was behaved liek a child. I had regressed runnign away from my problems as I had done before. He recommended I watched Youtube videos, focusing on channels which dealt with similar problems as I was facing, and sure enough the positive messages and self-help guides soon began helping me in my growth as a person. This was my second turning point as I began to see my own masculinity, change and solidify into something more concrete. My confidence greatly improved , and I was given insight to my own imperfections. Finally at the age of 23 and at long last I was finally happy with who I was. Currently I am enrolled in law school in my home country of Nigeria, even though I had struggled through my life to get here, I have no regrets, that my struggles in finding myself led me to be the person I am today. I now realize that you can only be who you are, and trying to be something other than that is meaningless. I am truthfully not a very good person, but I have accepted that.