Undergraduate / Yes, I'm a maverick; Personal Statement [8]

I guess I was destined to be an anomaly the moment I was conceived. Yes, I'm a maverick. I'm very different from the society and the family I belong to. I'm the epitome of people who my society hates. I'm not an average senior in High School. I'm not an average Nepali kid in America who tries to make as many American friends as he can because he has to post pictures on his Facebook profile so that his friends in Nepal can see how different his life is here than that of his friends in Nepal. I'm a seventeen year homosexual teenager who is trying to live his life the way he wants and not the way his family and society wants him to. Yes, this is what my life is like. I walk with a poker face every single day trying to live a 'normal' life (not normal for me but for my family).

I was born a year after the war in my country started. I don't know much about the war and it's effects because I was relatively untouched by what happened during those twelve years but I knew I was involved in the war directly or indirectly. Several families were displaced, many died and thousands lost their husbands, wives and children yet nothing happened to anyone I knew. All of them were safe and even I was safe, until thirteen years later, when someone knocked on my doors and made me acknowledge with a fact that I was aware of but was also in denial of. The war in my country had ceased a few months ago but the war within me had just started to flicker and I knew this was going to have a profound effect in my life, make me vulnerable and shatter the peaceful world I lived in. That strange person who knocked on my doors made me realize that I will never be the person who I'd always wanted to be. My desire to live a normal life had always made me think I was normal but deep down I knew that I was always far from being normal. I realized that my dream would never come true.I won't say it was easy but I accepted who I was and learned to live with the fact. Being gay wasn't hard but accepting the fact that I was gay took me years of courage. I am still closeted but not in denial. However, I continued living my life, hiding my true self and creating another personality in me who would be the 'Ralph' my parents and my friends wanted to see in me. Time flew by, I continued living my life.

These are the first two paragraphs of my personal statement for a college.

Copyright: Ralph Dholakia.