pushed open the two wooden doors of Framingham High School and took my first steps into the ninth grade. I was in awe. It was twice the size of middle school, and I wondered if I would ever find my way through those mammoth halls.

I looked at the map that I had received in the mail and navigated towards home room, otherwise peering down at the floor and trying not to stare at the other students walking by. They fit these cathedral walkways: moving pillars, cold as marble, maneuvering along the hall, their faces not only higher up than mine but unfriendly and intimidating.

Their collective scent permeated the air, a conglomeration of cologne, aftershave, and the faint trace of sweat. Now painfully self conscious of my own smell, I wondered if it measured up to those around me and whether I could nonchalantly lower my face to check my underarm.

The guys who passed me (at least, those I noticed with a sense of hopeless admiration) were conspicuously handsome, athletic, and popular. Many of them held a host of admirers gravitating in orbit around their bodies. The girls were unattainably beautiful, laughing as if without a care in the world. They chit-chatted with their entourage as well, and smiled at neighboring football players. All demanded the attention of those around them, of the very environment in which they seemed to fit in so well.

As I witnessed the scene that had opened up before me, I couldn't help but feel the claim of each new article of clothing, each frivolous conversation, each flirtatious glance. It seemed there was no one here I should not be. It took a grip upon my personality, and a chimerical image of who I was expected to become etched itself into my mind.

To realize that image meant forgoing much of who I had been, which didn't seem like such a problem to me at the time. In my own mind, my childhood could best have been described as lonely. I was raised as an only child. My sister, congenial as she was, exceeded me by eight years, and so we had little in common. It didn't help that I dreaded making friends and always felt more comfortable around adults, who seemed to appreciate my company more than my contemporaries. Now there are times, however, when I look back fondly at those relatively peaceful years, solitary as they sometimes seemed and when I hold a great appreciation for all I gained. Yet at that vulnerable age, I couldn't escape the dissatisfaction that came from too easily relating to those outside one's peer group. It made me feel old before my time, an outcast and a social oddity.

It's not that as a child I never wanted to get out more and experience all that elementary and middle school had to offer, but the urge to break out of my box never went unchallenged by fear, which usually won out. I remember one summer evening when I climbed up a pine tree by the house I grew up in. The tree had often served as a refuge where I escaped to read. On that day, when I had clambered up its conveniently arranged branches to the top, I set down my backpack full of books on a neighboring branch and settled down expecting nothing more than the usual.

It was muggy out, though, and the air hung thick and close around my body, immersing me in humidity and sweat. I wiped my damp forehead and leaned back against the trunk to catch my breath. Eyes closed, my mind began to daydream and wander to one particular girl in school that I had gained a liking for, a girl too popular to approach, too aloof to be anything other than a daydream. Then I became aware of voices growing louder below. My eyes opened and looked down, past the branches, to where a group of neighborhood kids were congregating and were about to play a game of street hockey.

There was the answer to my problems, I thought ruefully. I didn't know the boys by name, but I recognized their faces and knew they were somewhat popular. If I only had the guts to join them and learn to be friends with them, I would at least have a lot less trouble hanging out with that girl. My daydreaming about her and the opportunity spread out below was no coincidence.
The impulse to sprint down the tree and run out to them flooded by brain, causing my heart to beat fast with adrenaline and anxiety. It never reached my legs. Ten times I sensed it goading me to go down and ask to play during that game, and ten times I refused. It was crucial, I knew, to take those steps branch by branch into a new and happier existence, but the hockey sticks were collected up, the nets taken down, and I remained, blankly staring at the empty street and wishing they would have played a little longer. Surely then I would have gone down to join them, or so I told myself. Unread book in hand, I climbed down the tree and walked into my house, into another three years of the same old thing.

Books had been my door to other people, to larger possibilities outside of my existence. Story after story projected me into worlds I wished desperately to be a part of. The Chronicles of Narnia, some of the first stories I remember reading, captured me the most as a young boy. The four Pevensie children, swept up into Narnia through the wardrobe, were transported from a gray and stagnant England into an adventure revolutionizing the land claimed by the White Witch. In the end, they took their rightful places on their thrones. I was in my own stagnant England, searching for a Narnia to give me purpose, a journey where I could find my place among the kings and queens of the earth. During a family reunion at my grandfather's house, when I was about nine years old, I crept into the attic where I found, to my astonishment, an old wardrobe. My heart raced as I neared it wishing with all my might, through bated breath, that there was a purpose to me finding it after just having read those books. I opened the doors and looked inside. There were no open roads to another world, no expanse of snow or gaping plains of another realm, only moth-ridden disenchantment. It typified what I felt every time I closed a book, the disappointing weight of realization. I was reminded once again that the hope of escape lay only in the pages that I turned. Outside those pages, I remained the same.

This presented an obvious problem at any quest for a healthy amount of social interaction, never mind grandiose popularity. My ability to conform to the social norms at school was broken, my discontent with this life gripping, and I couldn't leave Narnia behind, or any other fantastic world long enough to make my way successfully up the social ladder until, that is, the life-altering walk through the doors of my high school. Not only did I experience new desires for all things cool, but I noticed too, the students who elbowed and ignored me, brushing past in utter disregard of my existence, themselves eagerly enlisted in the task of fitting in. I noticed, and above all, I cared. It was envy mixed with determination that filled my heart that day. I knew coming home to books would no longer be enough. I realized just how much I had missed, and I longed to reclaim it.

That afternoon after school, I stood in front of a mirror in my room and stared for ten minutes at the image I saw reflecting back. There was the boy I hated: chubby and frumpy in a gray sweatshirt and gray sweat pants. I grew angrier by the minute. I wanted to rip off each piece of clothing and burn it together with a past I felt was impossible to evade. At least I had jeans in my bureau, I thought, some semblance of normal attire. After putting them on, I marched downstairs to my sister and declared to her that I needed change. I didn't fit in where I was going to school and altering how I dressed would help increase my confidence. My sister agreed.

She was a sure door into what was considered cool. She had friends and a real social life, in short, everything I wanted. And her age lent to more experience from which she might help me. She was eager to take me shopping and remove me from my sweatpants mentality. We went out that very night and bought a set of clothes so extensive I swore I could never get through it. But those clothes were, for me, a metaphorical wardrobe I had to get through, into into a world I had never known.

To this day it amazes me and saddens me to think how such a simple change in exterior changes people's perception and treatment of anyone. Fitting in, starting from the outside, drastically changed my life. I never became one of the more popular students in my school, but I became one of the most social, never being exclusive to any one group and able to talk and relate to the nerds, the jocks, and everyone in between. I had broken out of a shell. For all of this to happen without a hitch, I believed leaving behind my books was not only the way to achieve it but the way to maintain it as well, and I never wanted to be reminded of those lonelier days.

At first I was much happier. The new social butterfly felt like he was living up to exactly who he was meant to be. He was wrong. It was true that I had found a way to gain acceptance, but it had cost me my soul, for lack of a less dramatic way of putting it. I had stopped reading. I refused to converse about literature or science, topics I really wanted to discuss but knew would win me the branding of "nerd", and I completely avoided indulging my imagination. But I soon began noticing this new world I had discovered had problems of its own, heartaches that came from opening up one's heart to relationships. It began to rob me of the joy and peace I felt even while alone and hidden within the pages of a book. I had escaped from solitude through Story into worlds I felt a part of, but now that I was not alone, I came across an emptiness I did not expect. There was no longer any magic for me, no mystery or sense of identity. Like a chameleon, I could change my colors to suit my environment and win friends, only to forget the color with which I was created. Through my new found social life, the stories of so many others, crowding in around me and clamoring for my attention, robbed me of my own. There was no middle ground. I was either captivated by creativity yet painfully aware I was alone, or I was surrounded by people yet stifled by the mundane.

It was then that my mother gave me a journal. I was appreciative but unconvinced that it would amount to anything of significance. I had written for school assignments before and had always enjoyed making up stories and writing them down, but a love for the art never struck me. Writing was always superseded by reading, and I most certainly never attempted it on a daily basis. How incorrect I was.

My journal became a window into a past which I had come to forget. It was an exercise in thought and imagination, exercise badly needed, and all the emotions I had when reading those books illumined me again as I used my pen to create my own stories, compose my first poetry, and deal with my struggles and insecurities. I dealt with my new disillusionments as I was sucked up and lost in the amalgam of personality and appearance that was my high school. One day my journal was an artist's canvas begging me to compose. Another day it was a paper replacement for a psychiatrist's couch. But however I used it, the more I wrote, the more I was reminded of how much I loved literature, books, and art.

By this time I had already formed some key friendships so that the prospect of falling back into my old love of books and a new love of writing didn't seem so frightening. Now that I had broken into the social scene and could hold my own, I felt the freedom and urgency to settle down and recollect my old passions, though now in a proper, more well-rounded context.

Since then I have read countless books. I have never again left them aside, nor have I ever stopped writing since I received that first journal, acting in my life as the third wardrobe into a new world previously unimagined and unexplored. In each realm of imagination, relationships, and self-expression, there is something beneficial to the soul to be gained. There need not be war among them, and I have discovered that one can have residency in all three without conflict. I don't want to stop exploring them, and now that I've tasted what they have to offer, I certainly don't think I have them all figured out. I seek to continually enter their wardrobes not only to be changed by them but to change them as much as possible and leave a trail of footprints in each so that others who may be lost in those mysterious worlds might find their way through.