Many people, like myself, feel as if we're stuck between military life and civilian life.

My father retired from the US Army in 1994, just as I was starting high school. It's different when everyone around you has been around, but when I moved to the small town of Washington north Carolina, it was different.

Everyone was greeting each other and talking about what they did when they were younger, while I sat and sucessfully played my role as the new girl, trying my hardest to seem fasinated by the curve of my fingernails.

Just about all of high school was miserable for me. I did, however get up enough nerve to, this year, step out of the shadows (or wallpaper) and make many friends who did not associate with me for the same reasons that I tried to hold myself in the past andantagonize everyone else because of the situation that I put myself in.

Now I am a happy senior with few, but great friends, a boyfriend, and I'm now a PV2 in the Army Reserve.

No matter what your situation, a little bit of will power and the help of God will make everything all right.

Editor's Note: This article first appeared in Military Brats Online.