Finding My Face

Have you ever looked in the mirror and not recognized yourself? And not in a self contemplating way, seriously? Like having an out of body experience, like seriously thinking, "is that me in the mirror or a stranger?" Well, this has been happening to me my entire life. For the first several years of my life I felt as if it was a strange dream and then suddenly, at age 8 or 9, I woke up.
All of a sudden my life began. Don't ask me why, because I'm not quite sure myself. Maybe when I got the Holy Ghost and then baptized, or in third grade when i was severely bullied and three family members died including my grandmother, step grandmother, and aunt. In all honesty it's probably all of the above. Nonetheless, here I was awake in a world that I was very happy sleeping through. This new world was scary, mean and hurtful. And here I was awake in it unprepared for the road that God had laid out for me.