When I moved to the place I live now, I was 8 years old. Though it's a normal age to move, it was still unusual territory for me, like it is with most children moving. I was saying goodbye to a lot of things: my home, my friends, my school, my community. I had a bit of optimism, though. I'd be able to start over here. I could reconstruct my personality, remove my flaws and replace them with good things. That was fine, people would like me that way. People would like me more, right?

When I arrived at school on my first day, it was very foreign. It was my first time having a locker as well as a desk. In my old school, everyone knew each other and everyone was friends with everyone but here, there were cliques. Popular kids, annoying ones, artistic ones, sporty ones. We were only 8 but we already formed what we would be for the rest of our school lives. It was strange for me to not be able to talk to people. It felt like I was intruding on something, like on a private conversation. I decided I would put on the fake personality that I so carefully crafted in my free time.

I talked to some girls at recess, they seemed tight knit and friendly so I decided they would like my fake personality. This personality was outgoing, this person didn't like to draw or write or create music. This person liked whatever everyone else liked.

Luckily for me, it worked. The girls accepted me into their group and showed me around the school. They were nice to the person I made myself into, though I was never sure if they would like the person I really was and I never tested it. That was that.

This went on for almost a year. Every day I'd try harder and harder to be this person I had so carefully crafted that I forgot who I really was. I even pretended to have a crush because they did and I wanted to be like them. This was a challenge when I was trying to understand them and school at the same time. It turns out my old school taught things much differently than this one and I was deeply confused. What were these teachers talking about?

The stress of being this person and trying to understand what I've been trying to learn was catching up to me.

One day, on the second to last month of school, I met someone else. This person was different, they didn't care about how they or anyone else acted. They did what they wanted and not what others wanted. I had fun for the first time in a really long time. I started cracking the shell of who I was pretending to be and grew back to myself. Someone who liked things and not people. This was one of the changes that made me who I was today. Without them, I might've been a completely different person now. I would've hated it, too.

© Samantha. All rights reserved. If you are interested in quoting this story, contact the national team and we can put you in touch with the author’s teacher.