I am a Nerdy, but popular High School Senior. I used to be bullied very often in late-elementary and middle school. But at the same time as this bullying was going on, I was also had many friends (no best friends though) in the "good kids" group. The bullying left me with social anxiety.

Now I am in High School. I've overcome my social anxiety by forcing myself to socially interact with my peers who have always liked me. Even though I was anxious in the past, I was still "very like-able." I've always had good social skills, and overcoming my social anxiety just required gaining self confidence.

Although, I am very unhappy with my current life and often try to rush home to avoid further interaction with others. While developing my social skills, I started to focus on other peoples' emotions and am now very good at quickly making others like me. I am friends with all types of people in my school now, including the "good kids," the athletes, the nerds, the music kids, and the stoners. I am the chess club president at my school, a peer counselor, a nerd, and I also smoke marijuana and go to parties often. Or I used to go to parties often until I've started to feel depressed. Many people give me attention, which I do not want (anymore) because it makes me feel like I'm being constantly judged, even though I'm being perceived positively.

My main issue is that while I used to always follow my true self while befriending others, and no longer enjoy most social interactions. Even with friends. I am able to relate to and befriend almost anyone in my school with my background. I believe that I do not enjoy social interactions, because my mood is very unstable and recently I've been feeling very negative/depressed. This negativity only continues as I force false (but extremely believable) positive emotions, which I need to do often as a Peer Counselor/popular high school student. I am very good at controlling how others perceive me and making a good impression, and am extremely good at pretending to act like my true self when in fact, I am using a false self. I act with the appropriate amount of and type of emotions.

Making people like me is very easy for me, but I feel compelled to constantly analyze social interactions and quickly decide how to act in a convincing way which now feels natural to me. But I am not actually interested in interacting with most of these people that now like me a lot, and it stresses me out to have to continue to be nice to them. I do not want to hurt their feelings or be a bad role model / peer counselor.

I spend hours each day using a false self while seeming to be using my true self to everyone else. I really would just like to tell some of the people who are bugging me with topics that I don't care about (Like League of Legends or some party that I didn't want to go to), "Hey. I don't give a **** about what you're telling me right now. Please stop following me around and bothering me," but instead I continue to interact with them while looking for the quickest way to escape the social interaction while still making a positive impression.

Whenever I get away from all these people that I know and hang out with people that I don't know and have never met before, I feel wonderful and free. But while I continue to live my current life, my true self feels empty and emotionless about half the time. The other half of the time, I feel extremely happy and my normal, "very like-able" self. Although I am still very good at faking strong emotions when feeling empty. I can not stress enough how believable my false self can be. When I get to college, away from all these people that I know, I will most likely be very happy. But until then, I am living a very stressful life and my grades have fallen slightly (from a usual 6 A's and 1 B with AP Classes to A's, B's, and one C). This is also in part due to "Senioritis." I have little motivation to continue to get good grades, since I was already accepted to a great college.