Video Transcription
Friendship
I was very self-conscious. I wanted to fit in with my friendship circle. It makes me feel ashamed to think about it now. My friends, zany characters they are, I love them a lot. I still have some incredible friendships from school I love to this day. When I first entered high school, I was trying to figure out which group I belonged to. Every school has a popular group, right? I realised like, “Oh, they’re not really the people that I really want to hang out with.” I just chose to go, and in the end, they were kind of like, “You’re hanging out with the weird people.”
But my new friends made me comfortable. It was what I was trying to look for. Since I moved here from Brazil – totally different culture, different language – it’s not that easy to make friends, you know. I’m Raf, and I was born in Brazil. My friends were everything to me – I didn’t really know that because I chose to come to Sydney. As soon as I got here, I realized how much, you know, they meant to me. Making friends is hard; it takes time. At first, it was very lonely, but now it’s fine. You just learn how to not care about these things.
I used to get up at 5 in the morning every day and straighten my hair because I was terrified of being different. I’m Jasmine, and I’m Lebanese. It wasn’t until Year 11 and 12 that I wanted to explore what was around me. So, that was when I started to steer off straightening my hair. I started to branch out, meet new people. I kind of found a place where everyone was like that too. I always want to be the person that’s liked by everyone. I think I have a lot of FOMO. If someone doesn’t like me, that is going to really affect me, yeah. That’s something that I’m still trying to accept.
My name’s Sophie, and I’m from Sydney. My mum was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2015. My friends have been amazing, and I’m really grateful for the friends that I have and the support they’ve shown me through such difficult times in my life. They don’t always understand what I’m going through, but they try to help as best as they can. I actually missed out on so much school, yeah, being sick. I am Emily, I have an invisible illness. People would always come up to me and be like, “Oh, you must be a new student.” And I’m like, “No, I’ve been here for a while.”
I was ready to leave high school, and then when I made new friends in Year 10, it came as a complete shock. Eventually, I did like those people in and especially one person. If you isolate yourself from other people when you’re feeling low or when things aren’t going right, then it will make it worse. It’s really important to find someone that you feel understands you because that’ll help you through a lot of things.
Video by Reach Out
