True Friendship Stems from Self-Acceptance

The following is adapted from Tafolla Toro.

Friendship was hard to come by at Tafolla Middle School. On my first day, I accidentally crossed paths with an eighth-grader named José, by sitting at the same lunch table. José looked at me as though I were a stray dog covered in fleas, and announced that he didn’t eat lunch in front of people he didn’t know. That was my cue to leave. I didn’t eat lunch at school again until I was a senior in high school.

The very same day, I swore off using the toilet at school, after a group of kids kicked down the door of the stall I was in. It was a rough introduction to a rough environment.

From those encounters and many others like them, I quickly concluded that Tafolla wasn’t a very friendly place. I got offers of companionship—a guy called Raymond, who wasted no time showing me that he carried a gun, invited me to hang out—but I didn’t want to follow the rules of gang life. Being bound by violent rituals and illegal activities didn’t seem like the way I wanted to create friendships.

My real friendships formed in a different, wholly unexpected way.

What’s Latin Good For?

When I started at Tafolla Middle School, I wanted to study Spanish. I thought it would be a way to reconnect with my Mexican heritage after years of speaking English at home and at school.

My mom was having none of that plan. She was determined that I should study Latin because she believed that it would help me to break down languages and concepts when I went to college. Reluctantly, I accepted her decision. The strange thing is that I met my best friends at Tafolla in Latin class: Big Mac, Martin, Daniel, Ivan, Kevin, and Joe.

In an environment where most kids were looking for the next fight, we were good boys trying to survive middle school. None of us wanted to join any of the gangs at Tafolla and that’s what brought us together. A couple of the guys in our group weren’t in Latin but were good friends of somebody in Latin, so we let them into our non-gang.

We were all readers. We loved the same kind of music and movies. We had similar interests and started to cross-pollinate. If one of us was reading Marvel Comics and another read Image Comics, we compared the heroes and villains and swapped comic books. We listened to punk, metal, and grunge music and introduced each other to our personal favorite bands, like Green Day and Weezer. We watched Quentin Tarantino movies.

By seventh grade, we knew all the rules. We no longer stared at or bumped into someone who would kick our butts. We didn’t go to any of the unsafe places—the bathroom especially—alone. We could let our guard down a little bit because we had our crew and we inherently knew how to act.

Most of the time I spent at Tafolla, I was constantly watching my ass, trying not to get in the middle of violence or bring negative attention on myself. One of the few times I relaxed was when I was with my friends. Hanging out with them, I felt a level of self-acceptance I felt nowhere else around school.

It’s Okay to Be Who You Are

Tafolla was a tough school, and it was packed with people trying to act tough so they could fit in. We all need a sense of belonging, so it makes sense that people who didn’t feel they belonged took the only route they could find. They joined gangs and turned the gang identity into their own.

I never wanted to join a gang, but Big Mac, Martin, Daniel, Ivan, Kevin, and Joe became my de facto gang. They accepted me for the off-kilter guy I am, and I accepted myself when I was hanging out with them.

The point here is that when we’re growing up, no one tells us that it’s okay to be who we are. Many people reach adulthood without receiving this message loud and clear. Whoever you are and whatever your challenges right now, you have certain personality traits that make you special and certain unique abilities that other people don’t have. These are your God-given superpowers and they should be celebrated, not hidden from the world.

Whereabouts in your life are you struggling to accept yourself? Where do you hide who you are because you feel a need to fit in? Conversely, who encourages you to be who you are and appreciates your humor and your foibles? Maybe you need to spend more time with those people.

For more advice on finding a sense of belonging, you can find Tafolla Toro on Amazon.

Lorenzo Gomez III overcame his mental health obstacles to become a proud participant in the transformation of the city he loves—San Antonio. He’s the chairman of Geekdom, Texas’s largest coworking space, the cofounder of the 80/20 Foundation and Tech Bloc, and has served on the board of several non-profits, including SA2020 and City Education Partners. Lorenzo is honored to have spoken at several universities, including Texas State and UTSA, and cherishes the opportunity to connect with students as a speaker at local schools. He’s the author of The Cilantro Diaries, which quickly became a bestseller (and required reading at Texas A&M) when it was published in 2017.