Their eyes scanned over me, judging everything about me, only seeing perfections as I stood up here. How could they not? I was beautiful, talented, at everything I tried, smart, and I was valedictorian. But tell me, why don’t they see my flaws? I have them, you know, just under my skin, they’re there, and they won’t ever leave. My scars of the past.

I wasn’t afraid to be up here, not in the least bit, public speaking was like a second nature to me, the problem was, I never could say what I wanted to say, and I only ever had ease saying what they wanted to hear. That’s why I had so much trouble now, I wasn’t going to say how happy I was to be up here, how someone else probably deserved it, and I was going to say what I wanted to say.

I took a deep shaky breath, “Under my skin there are flaws, many of them. You don’t see them because my “perfect” skin stretches over them. The skin protects what I thought I didn’t want anybody to know. That’s what the skin does, protects. And for the longest time, it did its job; you all saw the flawless exterior.”

I looked up at the crowd; they all had blank looks on their faces. How could I get through to their thick skulls? “Yes, I have made many accomplishments, but I have fallen many times. I don’t want you to see just my perfections, and love me for just those. I want you to see what you don’t think is there, my flaws, my faults, and accept them, and still love me. I want you to see past the beauty that’s only skin deep, to the ugly truth, the perfectly... wait no that’s not the word. The realistically balanced me. Nobody’s perfect, everyone has a few stories, everyone has had their fair share of pain. Most of you have scars, visible ones, like when you fell from a tree, or burned your hand, ones that everyone can see. I however, have them just under my skin, their impossible to see, and it makes it so damned hard. I have done things that shape who I am, some of which I’m not proud of. But that’s what makes me, me. If we can’t accept who we truly are, then can we ever grow, will we ever truly graduate? Yes we leave high school, with the math, and the science, but what about the small lessons, the life tests, and the things that actually prepare us for what’s ahead? If we can’t accept them, we can’t accept our selves, and we leave unprepared. Not ready. Because those lessons, those experiences, shape us. The peer pressure, the parental pressure, hell all pressure, how we react, shapes us. During our learning years we have been under a lot of pressure, and some of us reacted better than others, but our reactions, individual experiences, are ours. Ours to keep. And we can’t ever lose them. We can’t sugar coat them, make them seem worse, we can only learn. Become more than what we started from. That is what growing up truly is, accepting things, and people, and situations, the way they are. I still have a lot of growing up to do, hell I’ve just started. But I’d like to think, I’ve got a good start.”