Undergraduate / "America's grip on my shoulders" - my indoctrination of American culture, patriotism [9]

This is my personal essay for Georgetown. I have not yet completed it and I am wondering whether or not to pursue completion. PLEASE tell me if I am on the right track! Honest (even if harsh) criticism is welcomed and encouraged!! The essay in its entirety is suppose to convey my indoctrination of American culture, my descent from patriotism and lastly my ascent back to patriotism. THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR TAKING TIME TO READ THIS! I REALLY APPRECIATE IT!

When I was small, I use to love her. She was all I knew; all I cared to know. Then early adolescence struck and I began to refute her; not let her hold me so tight. Her symbolic kisses upon my forehead no longer satisfied the craving they themselves had created. But later still, I let myself fall back in love. This time not blindly but with full awareness of her baggage. I held up a mirror and peered into it. She too was clay, subject to molding. She was America, and looking into the eyes of my reflection, she was only human.

I was born in 1993. Technically speaking, I am a Floridian, but my mother insists I only lived there for a couple of months so the label Philadelphian is a much better fit. But in either case, my mother and I could agree, I was most certainly American. And not only was I American, but my mother, my father, and my teachers and in retrospect, all of the influential figures of my childhood. I was drinking in as much America as I was watered down apple juice. The formalities of being an American citizen were quickly my own: the memorization of the Pledge of Allegiance, rising for our National Anthem, the colors of red, white and blue. I had unknowingly been drafted into Team America who played for the side of the constitution, democracy and capitalism.

Intelligence is the successor of ignorance. Before intelligence, we were all ignorant. In my years preceding high school, I would vouch I was thoroughly ignorant and thusly not aware of my ignorance, (the ironic paradox of ignorance.) This vindication can be supported through my acquaintance with one word: communism. Communism was first described to me as a system where everyone is equal. I thought that sounded a whole lot like a familiar system called democracy. But the inflection of my teacher's voice prompted me to think otherwise. This was no system to align myself with in fact it was something I should be against. That communism, for reasons unbeknownst to me, was some sort of figurative enemy. I was offended. Wasn't my public school education supposed to be unbiased? What was this? And I had an answer. An outrage. How dare I be subjected to predisposed opinions? This was, to me, a powerful example of my American indoctrination. And so my dissent from patriotism began as I began to loosen America's grip from my shoulders.