When I was little, I used to be very shy. My dad used to be the same and still is sometimes, my mum on the other hand, always tried to push me into opening up.

At first when I was in first grade I did not really care about my appearance or what people could think about me, because I think it is a normal way to act when you are a kid. You think about spending time with your friends on the playground, about jumping in ponds because it just looks fun and all the other adult things and thoughts do not even affect you.

But that changed.

My classmates would eventually start making fun of me, because I always tried to help my classmates that were bullied or in a disadvantaged situation in comparison to the others. This happened in first grade, middle school and high school as well and I just kept living the same déja-vu over and over again. I did not have a strong personality at that time, not that I have it now as well, and that made things even worse. In my younger age I tried not to think about it, but it hurt anyways. I met a lot of friends that I considered to be my real ones, but apparently I was not enough for them and I found out soon that they were faking our relationships the whole time. I felt betrayed even more than others, because I really did not understand what I was doing wrong.

All these feelings got worse with time passing by. As we can all agree, when teenagers start to feel the need of being loved or loving somebody, we all hope to be liked by other guys or girls, but that does not happen for everybody. Not me, for sure. I will not list here all the reasons why I think no one said a nice word to me at that time, but I just know that it felt awful. It felt horrible watching all my other girl friends finding someone to go out with or seeing them taking distance from me and creating deeper bonds with other people. I really started to feel like the problem, I thought that maybe the reason why this situations where repeating over and over again was in the end, ME. It could not make any other sense to me at that time. And that was the exact moment where the whole world felt like falling apart for me.

I remember it was the year 2019, I was in my third year in high school and I found out that my mind is quite good at overthinking every single millimeter of my life (not that it is different nowadays). I started connecting every single comment or sentence that someone had said to me in the past and I kept rewinding the tape in my head millions of times. I started believing those words, I started believing that all the poeple that hurt me in my past were right in the end, I just had to change. I felt like nothing made sense anymore, I did not want to eat, drink, make exercise, walk, wake up in the morning or even breathe, because I felt like all the things that I did and I was doing were just going nowhere and I would never change the way people looked at me. I would always stay the shy, chubby, mediocre, not funny silent girl from class and that would never change. I kept telling myself that i was miserable because I was not even able to do something to be productive, even if I knew it was right and no one else apart of me could do it. I just came to the conclusion that maybe ending my life was easier than living a life like that, where I just kept being a boring human being locked in a room because of the world emergency situation with no light at the end of the tunnel.

Then something changed. I moved to Prague for university and I started a completely new life with new people I did not know at all and I was finally free, independent t, ready to write a new chapter on a blank piece of paper. At first, I cried every single. night, I did not feel in the right place at the right time, I missed my home, I missed my friends, my family; but I tried to stay, my classmates made big part of the job, because they helped me to stay strong and keep going. I even changed for what concerns my personality, I became an extrovert and that made me enjoy life more and to see it from another point of view. I started making new friends and taking distance from the ones that I felt being not right for me and my mental health and I have to thank myself for that. I kept wearing a smile to make others happy before myself, which I know is not right, but it helped me a lot in some sort of way. I felt like I could do something, that I could really make people happy too and I abandoned the thought of being useless once and for all. This town and these people saved my life and I will not thank them enough for this.

I won’t lie, I still cry at night sometimes, I still feel awful some days when I wake up and I wear a mask because I do not want anyone to worry about me, even though I know there are a few people who would be glad to do that. I still not feel happy with myself and not everyone knows that because they are used to the “happy” version of me. I still put others in front of me and I do not know what life will bring to me, but I do know one thing: even though I miss the old self, the shy and ingenious one, I am happy to be here and to live the life I want, it will be hard and it will be a tough journey, expecially because there are still things that keep repeating themselves, but I know everything will be fine in the end, or at least I hope so and always will.

Yours, c.

P.S. Do not try this at home ⚠️