A Problem I've Had

I've had some pretty big problems over the past few years. Not necessarily with other people. Though there were other people concerned in a variety of ways, the majority of the problems were with myself. I'm not going to actually go into detail here, because it's over now, but I'm going to be as honest as I will allow myself to be. So here goes:

I've had some confidence issues since...I don't even know when it started actually. I was always a bubbly, happy kid- I was the only one in the class that actually enjoyed show and tell- and I had a pretty big circle of friends. Then we moved  and I guess things changed. 

Nothing was too bad until I started high school. As you're starting in an entirely new place with people from a whole bunch of different places, old friendships die away and other new friends take their places. People drift apart. It's pretty common knowledge and, as I presume most of you are at high school, you may have experienced it. But it happened a little differently for me. 

I kept all my old friends and met a few new people, but not everyone took a liking to me. 

I, being as confident as I was, had no problem being the insane band fangirl I'd always been, however not the way most people deemed "socially acceptable" I suppose. While I obsessed (only in the way of a typical teenage girl, of course) over Short Stack, Simple Plan, Heroes For Hire and so on; 90% of my grade was well into Justin Bieber. Given that I had no trouble voicing my opinions on anything, including him, and that it was a very intense case of Belieber syndrome, we automatically had a rivalry going. Team that with the fact that I was more concerned with books and brains than beauty and boys; I didn't shop at Supre; and that I wasn't their idea of billboard beautiful (think me with braces, bad skin and greasy hair as well as glasses which didn't exactly suit me)...let's just say that there were problems for a good few years. 

Things got bad, and while I won't tell you exactly what happened, I ended up a very unhappy person. I'll leave it there, but perhaps that will explain the strong stance I have on bullying and self esteem issues. At the same time all this was happening, I discovered I had a kind of anxiety disorder. Whenever I was confronted by someone, my hands would shake very noticeably, and when they would call me on it, it would get worse. Not exactly helping the "freak" image, I gotta say...

I guess the problem I had was the self esteem issue. I wasn't happy with myself and the way I came across to other people. Then when I was in New Zealand, I realised that who I was wasn't my problem. I was never rude to anybody, because I knew that would only make my troubles worse, and although I would openly share my opinions with people, I didn't do it in a forcing manner; I kept it lighthearted.