In my writing class, we had an assignment where we had to write an essay on our point of view of freedom. This was my original essay:

She hears the soft snickers of the ones around her. It used to bother her, but after awhile she got used to the laughing, the pointing, the comments. No one notices her for who she is, they only see what she wears, her hairstyle, her face. Her peers have taken away her basic freedoms, the right she has to be who she is. This is the most common form of  people controlling others and basically ruling their lives. I have personally experienced this throughout elementary and some of middle school and now I know what freedom really is to me. In my mind freedom is a time, a place that does not exist. It is a place where everybody can be who they are without judgmental people or ridicule. We can walk past people on the street and say hello or at least smile instead of desperately avoiding eye contact or crossing the street. People help one another so that no one is left behind. As a country, we have fought for our freedom against the restraints of other countries. Everybody thinks that the fight is over, when in reality it has just begun. We have our rights to express ourselves, but people like me have been stripped of these rights by people in our own country. We have our rights to freedom of speech, but I do not see anybody speaking their mind, regardless of what people will say. We have our right to any religion we want, yet people are still hating on and tearing apart others religions. Everybody says we have all of our freedoms, but we are no where close. Although we may have more rights and freedoms than third world countries like Afghanistan or wolds in a dictatorship like North Korea, we still have a long way to go before we are truly free.

I had spent a ton of time and put all of my effort into creating this piece. Then it came to the point where it was two days before we had to turn it in, and I had her read my essay to find things like grammar mistakes and punctuation. She gave it back to me and told me to redo the entire piece in two nights. When I asked her why, she told me it was too negative and she needed it to be more positive. When I wrote my new piece I felt as if I was lying to myself and everybody who read it. Then I realized, I was lying to myself. I hated writing this and even the thought of me creating something like that. This is what i came up with in two nights:

“Soul is freedom, love is power, hope is love. Dreams are revolutions.”-Anonymous. Freedom is a state of mind that exists in all of us. Some of people choose to use it, to embrace it. Others lock it away and become the same generic American teen. Listening to the same music, reading the same books, wearing the same clothes. None of them venture out to use what freedoms they have to be whoever they want to be instead of having the same one track mind like everybody else. In the midst of this cloning generation there are people who use their freedom to be whoever they want, people like me. I use the freedoms I have to listen to whatever I want, to read and write what I want, to wear what I want to, to defy the set standards for a normal American teen. If I am being who I am and I do not fit the set standards of “normal” then forget the set guidelines to living this “normal” teenage life. If this is the path they are trying to set me on, then I want the fastest way in the other direction. I will listen to my music, not the generic pop everyone likes, but real music. Bands like Pierce the Veil, My Chemical Romance, Mayday Parade, and Asking Alexandria. I will read my books, ones like Witch and Wizard, Gathering Blue, and all of the fan fiction I want. I will wear whatever I want, band shirts, leather jackets, cat ears, all of it. Regardless of what people say I am going to be who I am and embrace our freedoms. If I have my freedom of speech I will Use it to speak my mind. If I have freedom of religion I will pray for the freedom of other countries. If I have freedom of expression I will show who I am through my drawings, my writing, and my music.