Imagine This: You’re the new kid at the school after been moved 3 times already, no matter how much you miss and wanna see your old friends you’ve known for years you can’t.  As soon as you get to your new school it's mid school year, students already looking at you as an outcast, teachers already give you the look thinking you're trouble and you haven't even gotten out a single ‘hello’ yet. You get to lunch and have no idea where to sit, no one invites you to sit with them they just stare at you. You're behind in class and your teacher is already getting frustrated with you because you don't understand what they're telling. After a week when you’re finally starting to open up and talk to people, one of your new teachers comes up to you and tells you you're too talkative and you make the other students feel uncomfortable and that if you wanted to fit in that you'd have to change ...but when you recall all you did was introduce yourself. You try to express how you feel to your parents and they don't listen to you. You start to think about suicide or any type of self harm as being an answer to your problems. I mean why not considering your parents and new teachers don't care how you feel, and you hardly know anyone at your new school so it's not like you or anyone else would miss each other… right? You end up having to go to therapy and when the teachers at school find out, they look at you like even more of a freak or an outcast. Do you kill yourself? Do you face the struggle and keep trying? Is trying really worth changing your whole self because people won't accept who you are? What is best to do? How are you going to handle all this pressure? What people think of you can really get to you..are you going to let it? Have you ever been in a situation similar to this? If you have, then you know what it feels like to not be accepted by prejudice peers, but then again you should know that by letting others’ judgements get to you, you're not doing anything to shield that negativity you're letting it break you down and hurt you even more than you probably already are.

One reason i think learning to love yourself will help you overcome the thoughts of others is because it's the key to not caring about what everyone else's drama is or whatever it is that they think or say about you. Coming from a person that has been in the shoes of insecurities and depression believe me when i tell you that the world isn't over and that there is a better way to handle and get through whatever it is you're going through. Not only is learning to love yourself going to help you with your social issues it will help you build more self confidence.

Today i'm gonna talk about why i've chosen what i'm sure others would call such an ‘odd’ or ‘depressing’ topic. Luckily im not ‘others’, i'm me. And quit frankly i think this topic is an important & very interesting one that actually needs to be addressed immediately. So many issues fall into the category of being different such as; self-worth, sexual identity or just identity in general,  broken homes or bad parenting, the choice between trying to fit-in or just be yourself, body image & insecurities, Anxiety & self-harm, hormones, bullying, peer pressure & etc. But most common and most important of all. LABELS. Now i'm pretty sure our first instinct as people tends to be prejudist on almost anything in our sight. We see flowers we think pretty. We see a puppy or a kitten and we automatically think opinion, cute, adorable, ugly. These aren't facts. If they were then wed automatically think flower or simply just puppy and kitten. But when it comes to placing our pre judgements on our peers, we base them on how they dress or how they act without, first, actually getting to know them. I believe young people are conditioned in believing in what their parents or guardians taught them, and these prejudice acts have gone on for years, we’ve placed pre-judgements on people and things we either have little or no information on.

Being a teenager who's gone down some extremely bumpy roads and has met people who've taken the same rough route i've noticed that there's always a way off that road by learning to love yourself and the people who help steer you in the right direction. My depression started in 3rd grade. That's when i started journaling, and having crazy mood swings and tearing my hair out. Although no one really noticed until 5th grade year when my principal and mom decided it'd be a good idea for me to go into therapy. It died down for a while but those emotions i had and was feeling was brutally awoken in 6th grade, my mom moved me to a school where i was outcasted and bullied. I felt so unwelcomed. I was so isolated and scared, i wanted out so bad, it was like i was getting suffocated except it was with all the negative vibes that were just punching me right through my stomach and chest. all my bottled emotions, all my negative thoughts. Everything just spilled out and i couldn't pick up the pieces on my own. Self-harm became sort of a distraction for me, but really i was making an even bigger mess. My mom had me see a therapist again, but that didn't really help. For the longest time, i felt so emotionless, like nothing else could fix me, because all my strings broke, because i thought nothing could feel worse or beat what i was feeling. Until i met my bestfriend of 3 years already. She was going through some of the issues as me and we actually helped eachother out with our issues. We learned to respect, appreciate, and love ourselves before we let everyone else's opinions get the best of us.

If it were up to me, trying my hardest to just state the facts and simply just by getting to know someone or something before placing a judgment, would, i'd hope move others to try the same, which would also bring people to being able to refrain from unfiltered opinions.