Stronger than weak

Okay, this story begins in 7th grade, about two years ago. I am a traveler, most of the time, my family moves from place to place all the time. I've grown up in three different countries and been to over 7, which isn't all that, but it's more than most people can say. Now, another thing you should know, I've been homeschooled since the 2nd grade. That is to say, taught at home. There was no tutor or anything, I was taught by my mom. While in the second grade, up to the 6th grade, I grew up in a neighborhood with people I rather disliked. Because of this, when I was taken out of school to be homeschooled, I became reclusive. I stopped seeing my 2nd grade friends, (if any) and resorted to staying at home 24/7. There were some days, I never even got some fresh air. Honestly, I can't remember for the life of me how I survived the boredom of the following three years. It's all a blur. Then, when I was around 10 or 11 years old, I discovered a site on the internet dedicated to a certain popular franchise. I became a hardcore fan of the franchise, and spent my every waking moment on that site, on the internet, typing away my life.

That is more or less the story of how I became isolated. I never really had any contact with the outside world for about 5 years in total, and forgot how to be social. Now, after a certain crisis began in the country where I was staying, my parents decided to move again. As I said before, I'm a traveler so this did not surprise me. We moved to the country in which I am speaking to you from. Now, having been in the previous country for five years, not to mention being isolated, the new environment was strange, but I quickly grew used to it. After settling in my new home, I continued with my usual routine: homeschool, internet, eat, sleep. It went on like this for roughly 10 months.

One day, I finally started to grow tired of my routine. I decided to spend the remaining two months of my school year at an actual school. Just to try it out. The school I went to seemed like heaven at first, as my entire class seemed open to me. Apparently, they hardly ever got new kids and were happy to have one. Then, of course, my anti-sociability kicked in. Despite their openness, my classmates eventually began to shy away. I had no idea why, totally unaware that my behavior was the cause of the problem. During my months at the school I noticed something: compared to the other kids around me, I was rather weak and scrawny. This was because of my lack of appetite and isolation for the past 5 years.

And so began the nightmare: the inferiority complex.

While my classmates were athletic and strong, I was no good at sports. I was skinny and weak. This greatly depressed me for the remaining two months. Then, the summer came. I announced that I would quit school and return to homeschool. I thought everything would work out after that. Alas, it didn't. I still felt bad compared to everyone around me. At one point, even my younger sister seemed stronger than me. (She ate a lot more and was more social, despite the fact that she was also homeschooled.) I began taking Karate lessons in an effort to become stronger. I continued taking karate for roughly 8 months. During this time, I though hard to myself, and I realized that I actually had learned a few things from my bad 7th grade experience. I stopped with the internet obsession and began putting myself into the outside world. I socialized with the kids at karate, I made more friends. Things were starting to look brighter.

Then, during the final four months of school, history repeated itself. I decided to try and go back to that same middle school for 8th grade. My classmates weren't thrilled to see me again, that's for sure. I won't go into detail, but I'll just say it went badly. During my 8th grade experience, I noted that most of the strong athletes went to gyms to work out. Previously, I believed that kids like us were too young to do stuff like that, but apparently I was wrong. I began working out too. School, karate and gym all together was frustrating, but I managed to make a routine out of it until school ended.

Now, we're getting closer to the present. Last summer, without school, gym and karate became easy to juggle, and I found myself with a lot of spare time, since I hadn't made any friends in 8th grade.Over five months, (3 in school and two summer months) I had seen a lot of progress in my gym routine. My muscles grew bigger and more developed, I began eating more, and life started to look up. Every week, I would flex in front of the mirror and see new muscles. I'll be honest, I still couldn't match up to the athletes from my school, but I was certainly catching on.

Then, two weeks before school would begin again, I would make the worst mistake of my life.

You see, my cousin abroad was having a wedding in his home country. I will do my best to describe this country without revealing its identity: It is a warm country. Very, very warm, and it is quite poor and filthy. My dad would be travelling to this country to attend the wedding. Poor, naive, me wanted to see the country for myself and attend the wedding also, so my dad arranged for us both to go. When I arrived, I was completely destroyed by jet lag, and worst of all, the others in the household where I was staying often stayed up until 4 AM or so. The fatigue was horrible, combined with the fact that their food was not top notch.

Now keep in mind all these factors: during my two week stay there, I didn't eat much because the food was not satisfactory, (it wasn't lizard eyes or anything, it just didn't suit my appetite, and I'm a picky person) the warmth was overwhelming, (a good 60 degrees Celsius on a normal day, which is far more than the maximum I was used to) and my sleep patterns were often disrupted for the first week or so, I was already not doing well. As if this wasn't enough, the worst thing had to happen: I caught a disease. I won't specify the disease, (don't worry, it wasn't permanent or painful, really) but I ended up throwing up what little I had eaten over the past two weeks. (I know, gross) The medicine tablets wouldn't stay in long enough, I just barfed 'em back out, so I had to get an injection to stop it.

Keeping in mind all the factors above, I ended up losing almost ALL the progress I had gained from working out over the past five months. I was back to square one. I couldn't believe it. My appetite had grown much smaller, as did my muscles, and I was skinny as a bone again. I felt weaker and I was always tired. Then, of course, there was the fact that I only had 4 days left until school started once again, and I had previously signed up for high school. I wasn't going back to homeschool to be isolated again.

This leads up to the present. My first days at high school, I actually made some friends. I wasn't isolated in the same way that I was when I started 7th grade, so people opened up to me. Using my fast learning skills and adaptability, I quickly grew accustomed to my new school. However, the fact that I had lost everything I had worked week after week to achieve was still biting me. I looked at myself in the mirror every day and felt like an idiot. At the gym, I found that I had to start from square one too, as I couldn't handle lifting the weight that I previously could. High school was far more of a hassle than middle school, and I found myself quitting karate lessons to focus more on studies and gym. All this made me feel incredibly depressed, as I knew that I was far to small and skinny than I should be for my age.

It's been two months since the end of the summer hols. I can't complain about high school, as I am an A student in even the classes I don't like, and I have good friends all around. High school comes with its fair share of problems, but oh well. The inferiority complex is getting better very slowly. I find that I am recuperating from the incident during the holidays. My gym routine is still not as solid as it used to be. My dad uses the car for his job and if he doesn't get back on time, I can't go to the gym, so I miss some days. The inferiority complex is still prominent, and I don't spend a day without staring at the mirror wishing I'd never gone to my cousin's wedding. This is why I write this. I hope to get some feedback or advice for my situation. Perhaps someone who has had a similar experience or has/had a similar problem. I find that not many people understand my problem, and those who try to help me with it are always telling me the same useless things over and over again. I feel stupid and rather exposed writing this, especially to a bunch of people I don't know.