The other day, in response to a slew of articles that came out about my young life, Lin-Manuel Miranda and many others were gracious enough to point out the changes I have made and the humanitarian actions I have been a part of since high school. After listening to the podcast that all of this originated from, we both found the clickbait headlines misleading. It was a story about personal growth and redemption, and people twisted it into us being long-time adversaries.

We have always been very proud of each others' success, and we even joked about these articles with each other on Twitter over the weekend. To this day, I’m appreciative to say that we are friends, we are both staunch supporters of immigrant rights, and we will continue the fight against bigotry in our respective ways. I guess I could've taken the humorous route and said something like, “And you thought it was hard for YOU to get tickets to 'Hamilton.'” I just thought, that without a larger context, something could be lost in all this friendly exchange. I wouldn't want my supporters to get the impression that anyone was trying to normalize childish bullying, especially coming from someone who now fights for others.

People have told me that back in high school they saw me as both a reckless antagonist and a well-meaning vigilante. I protected the people close to me from kids in school and fought hard against outside groups looking to herb kids. But I also had very little patience with many of the kids who went there, and I even took my anger out on those who were trying to help me. I rarely stopped to think about what that person was going through. I thought by showing strength and power, people would fear me and therefore respect me. As a result, I’m sorry to say that I hurt some of the people I should have been protecting. I ended up exacerbating a lot of my problems. And I guess, at 17, it was hard for me to see that the person I was really fighting was myself.

I want to be very clear with my supporters, I wasn’t just a bully as a kid, I was a criminal. I lived a very violent life. I did way worse things that I don’t choose to glorify—things worse than harassing kids and put them in trash cans. I robbed, I stole, I sold drugs, I ran with gangs. I have never hidden this part of myself. In a way, growing out of that helps me relate to the kids out there, sometimes a lot more than people who never experienced these things. But I can’t excuse my behavior by simply claiming I lived in a non-gentrified NYC.

As adults we like to think that children are going to come to us with all of their problems. The sad reality is that they often don’t. I used to see violence as the answer to all my problems with someone else. The sad reality is that when the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail. I understand that there are some people who will never see me as anything more than the angry young person I was 20 years ago. I think that’s unfortunate, however as an adult I have to accept that and hope that at least some of them will look at my life’s work since then and understand that a real change is possible.