I used to have one best friend. Until middle school. Middle school changes all kinds of things. For me it was mostly a good change. I used to be really shy, but I've come out of my shell a lot within the past two years. There were some bad changes though. I lost a lot of friends. Some might say that I didn't lose a lot of friends, but they're not looking at it the way I am. I lost those friends to peer pressure. They buckled under it, I towered over it. I'm still friends with them, most of them anyways but we'll never be the kind of friends that we used to be. When this happened last year I had a really tough time dealing with it, I blamed myself for it. Now I see that it wasn't me that changed them, they decided their own path. I found out quickly that the path that I had chosen was a good one, but one that I would be walking alone. I used to think that I needed friends in my life, lots of them just so that I could be happy and be successful in life. I was wrong. I don't need friends to be happy and successful. I can be anything I want to be, and their opinion isn't going to change that. I do have friends, but I'm not that close to them, not as close as I had been to my best friend. People change, in good ways and bad ways. I'm not going to be the one to decide whether their change was good or bad, but I will be the one to decide whether or not I want to be around them anymore. Most of the friends that I used to be really close to I can only take in small doses now. I used to worry a lot about what my friends thought about me but over the past two years I've realized that it doesn't matter what they think, they're either with me or they're not. Every time I think about how much I miss those friendships that I used to have I just remember the kind of people they are now, and I realize that they're the kind of people I don't like. The kind of people that constantly disappoint others. More than half of the people I used to be really close to are into doing drugs, smoking weed, having sex. Those are the things that I have no interest in. I personally think that we're way too young to be having sex, because at this age we aren't able to understand that it's supposed to be an act of love. I'm only almost 14 years old and have a lot of my life ahead of me. I do believe that someone my age can fall in love, but the people that say they have, really haven't. They think they have but that's not what I see. You can tell when two people are in love, and what I'm seeing isn't love it's wanting to love. Love isn't something you can force, it has to happen on its own. Most kids my age don't understand that. Which is one of the biggest reasons I don't associate with most of the people that I used to be friends with, because they're fake. They're not being true to themselves. They have this constant need to fit in and it bothers me. Why do you have to fit in so bad? Why can't you just be yourself? I found that by being myself I've gained good trustworthy friends. Sure most of my friends are adults but I can trust them, I can confide in them and I can know that they're not going to ask me to do things that I'm not comfortable with. I've had so many people tell me that I won't be able to become famous like I plan to, but they're wrong. I can do anything that I put my mind to. If I believe it can happen, it will. I will not give up on my dream, especially not when I'm so close to accomplishing it.