Being liked by the other kids at school was an obsession with me. I tried all kinds of things to be accepted. Well, nothing worked, and by the time I was 15, I figured all was hopeless. I even tried, unsuccessfully, to commit suicide.

Thinking that it would make things better, I started using tobacco and marijuana. Well, it didn’t. After a while, I decided to leave Jehovah’s organization to look elsewhere for happiness. I announced to my school friends that I was no longer one of Jehovah’s Witnesses, and they seemed to like that.

An Immoral, Inconstant Life

Eventually I found a job and also an apartment down on skid row, where all the winos and prostitutes hung out. They proceeded to tell me how easy it was to turn tricks for money. With their help, it wasn’t long before I had learned the ropes. I went from being a person who wanted to be liked by everyone and to be happy to being someone who was used by everyone and was very unhappy.

A drug dealer offered me a job distributing drugs. I was also among his elite group who got to try, for free, all the new ‘designer drugs’ that would come along. I now had a new kind of popularity. Everybody who knew me (and there were quite a few) knew that I had drugs. They would come up to me on the streets, in the bars, and even at work, wanting to purchase something from me.

Besides, I also wasted no time getting involved in immorality; it was a way for me to feel liked. And I was liked a lot. I learned to use other people through sex to get things I wanted. For years I lived this way.

Contentment Despite Having AIDS

I know that there are youths in the same position I was, desiring to be accepted by worldly companions. Please, don’t be fooled into believing that what happened to me in the world won’t happen exactly the same to you if you ignore God’s counsel. Satan’s lures may be different, but the results are always the same.