It was the beginning of my final year at middle school. I was excited to finally be the oldest in the school and to have no older kids looking down on me and intimidating me until I shriveled into a pile of nerves. I hoped that this year would be different. I hope that I would finally get rid of the nagging feelings of anxiety and sadness that plagued my middle school experience thus far. But my hope quickly dissipated when a girl who had bullied me my entire life began to dictate how my last year was going to go. She forced me to hang out with her, threatening to turn others against me if I didn’t do what she wanted. She made me feel helpless and weak, succumbing to her demands for the fear that she would make the entire school hate me. My confidence was non-existent and she used that to her advantage. She made me so miserable that entire year that I finally decided I needed to get away from her before high school.
I decided to try private school. It seemed like the only option at that point to get away from her and the constant anxiety and sadness that she heightened in me. I was sure that private school would be a good change, but things did not work out as I hoped. I met lots of new friends and enjoyed my time on the tennis team, but cliques formed quickly and I found myself floating in limbo between the groups. It also didn’t help that all of the friends that I had grown up with were getting through high school together at my public school, making me feel more alone than ever.
When winter hit and lacrosse season started things got even worse. I was in a terrible relationship with a guy that treated me like crap. I made the varsity team with one other freshman girl, which quickly turned out to be intimidating because the rest of the team was already bonded from the year before and all of my friends were on JV together. I kept everything bottled up during the day, crying myself to sleep every night and digging my nails into my wrists so hard from the anxiety that they would start to bleed. I begged my parents to let me quit lacrosse, thinking that it would help me to feel better, but even that didn’t help. I was already on depression medication for clinical depression and had gone to a few therapy sessions, which I found unhelpful. I felt like nothing was going to make the sadness and anxiety go away.
My sophomore year I transferred back to my public high school and things finally began to look up. The bully I had dealt with in middle school finally took a hint and left me alone, I was back with the best friends that I had grown up with and I met a boy who treated me well and made me happy. The rest of high school went fine, with some ups and downs, but that is to be said of most high school experiences. I still battled depression throughout and to this day still feel it weighing on me, but with the help and constant support of friends and family I feel better than I have in years. Depression is not an easy thing to deal with because it affects everyone differently. Never be afraid to talk to someone about the way you are feeling because no one should go through it alone.
