Changing my outlook

I'm now 16 years old, but when I was 8 years old my family moved from Adelaide to Alice Springs in the Northern Territory. 

It was a huge shock for me, as I literally went from one extreme to another.  In Adelaide, it seemed like verything was sugar-coated and I was pleasantly spoilt with love and gifts and the friendship of girls at my primary school.  

When I started at my new school, I had no friends.  There were people that talked to me during class after a while, but it was really tough at first. 

I'll never forget this one time at recess when I asked a group of girls if I could play with them and this girl just replied "no" straight away as if I were nothing to her. 

Eventually I made friends, but I think that the whole experience really affected my confidence and I became very quiet and unsure of myself. 

To make matters worse, I began to notice how my parents had started to have fights more often.  They would fight in front of myself and my brothers, and it was always painful for me to have to listen to. 

It made me feel like I had no say in what was happening and I didn't matter at all.  When I was about 12 or 13 they seperated and eventually divorced. 

Things at school became hard, as it seemed like I didn't see my close friends as much and I felt excluded from the group. 

I started to feel really depressed and lonely.  All the fighting at home had made me really quick to just keep things inside and deal with them. 

I felt like I had no one, until I founds some really great friends at school and I slowly came out of my depression, but not completely.

After a year of trying to get through it all with my new friends, the beginning of this year, we moved back to Adelaide.  It was such a strain on my sense of self and my ability to handle things but in the end I got through it. 

It's been about a month or so since I've felt really depressed and things are looking better.  I still have a lot of trouble being myself and having confidence, but I have a much more positive attitude towards life. 

I don't do much with friends outside of school, but I try not to let it get to me.  I tell myself that all I can do is be happy with the fact that I am healthy and young.  I have my whole life ahead of me - so why spoil it by worrying about high school, when it'll be over in only a year or so?

I've really made an effort to change my outlook on life and I try not to let myself take things too seriously, because I think that's where I allowed things to get out of hand. 

I would tell myself that my problems were just too overwhelming to overcome, when in retrospect they were not as bad as they seemed at the time. 

Talking about it with my mother who I was really afraid to tell helped a lot.  I was really scared to tell her I was depressed because I was worried she'd feel guilty. 

She kind of did when I told her and she didn't know what to say, but just telling her that things weren't okay lifted a huge weight off my shoulders. 

A good friend of mine at my new school also helped me deal with it because when I was feeling really down and was close to tears in the middle of class because I was so absorbed in my thoughts I could talk about it to her.  She's been through something similar so she sort of understands how I'm feeling.

I guess the key is to appreciate the people that care about you and remember that there's always hope and everyone deserves to have friends and enjoy life. 

You just have to find the right people to share your life with, and appreciate the amazing things life has to offer like love and happiness - which everyone is worthy of, no matter what other people say.