These past few weeks, I've been waxing philosophical on my Facebook wall. Why? I don't know. All I know is that I've gotten more in touch with my inner "political" feelings, and that I've got another thing to share with all of you. (I hear the collective homophobic groans happening again.)

You know those birthday wishes you make? The ones when you blow out the candles on your birthday cake? Yeah.

On my 17th and 18th birthday, I had only one wish. No, not fame, nor glory, nor riches.

I wished, for my birthday, to become straight.

(And what great good that's done for me.) 

I mention this because it shows how much I *wasn't* a unique person. I desired to conform. I wanted to be like everyone else, because "everyone else" had it good. I didn't want to be gay, because I didn't want to keep myself or separate myself from others. 

The thing is, even though society trains you to "be yourself", society actually trains you to be the exact opposite. It really encourages cliques, groups, stereotypes, etc. Society does not support individualism.

It took me a while to learn that. I learned, on my own, that I had to be myself, and not become or conform to any of the expecations that anyone, not even my parents or friends, had of me. And that became the biggest driving force in my life.

I have become myself.

This development of my individualism is what makes me so vocal with politics. I'm really less of a libertarian, and more of an individualist. I really genuinely do believe that others have no right to meddle in people's lives. People have no right nor claim to someone's love, happiness, or money. You can't ethically or morally force someone to believe or love someone of something. People must make changes of their own heart, not on the external influences of others. (Not even the influence of a gun.)

Only an individual can make decisions for themselves, because only the individual knows and understands themselves on the inside. Forcing an individual to cave or conform and lose what makes that person a unique individual is, quite possibly, in my mind, one of the worst things anyone can do.

Taking my new found individualist philosophy to heart, I took steps to change my life and the position I was in. I changed who I was. No longer am I a closed and quiet person dying for change. I am now the happy, open, and honest person I want to be, and I can truly say that my life is much better as a result.

And all it took was a misguided birthday wish for me to see the light.