Around the age of 12, everything in my life started to change drastically. I felt things with an overbearing amount of emotions and I couldn’t seem to keep myself in check. It felt as though everything were moving around me in circles and I was left doe eyed in the center wondering where I was headed or if I would ever make it there. I can honestly say that I never imagined that I would make it to 21, let alone 22. I had this belief that I wasn’t going to live that long and so I never found a best friend, I never looked toward college, and I certainly never saw a future for myself.

Before I knew it, I was eighteen years old looking at myself in my cap and gown about to head down to the High School where the rest of the two hundred sum odd students were gathering. At eighteen years old, I had my worst experience with depression. Everyone was asking questions that at eighteen I didn’t have the answers for. It felt as though the weight of the world was on my shoulders, pressing me down into the earth until I felt I could no longer catch my breath. “Where will you go to College?”, “What will you major in?”, these questions were set upon me by every individual who I came into contact with and eventually I shut down completely. I couldn’t take it anymore all of these questions, and what were the answers? Would I go to college to be a nurse? My mom says I have the personality for it, my Dad says I will make a lot of money. Would I go into the Medical Field at all? My guidance counselor says I should because that’s where the job demand is. I suck at Science, I suck at Math. What am I going to do?

Instead of pursing what I loved to do for fear it was not socially expectable, I chose a field that I didn’t even like. I graduated, I got a job at an OBGYN and I was great at my job. My patients loved me and always asked for me to be there with them when they were getting procedures done. Something was missing though; I wasn’t happy with myself. I didn’t come home each day from work feeling satisfied with my nine-hour day. I hadn’t realized how truly unhappy I was because I kept telling myself that it was too late. I had to worry about my job, my bills, I couldn’t afford to go back to school. One day my boss called me into her office, I hadn’t really known what to expect but I was hurt by what she said next, “Mackenzie, this field isn’t for you. I think deep down you know that to be true. You don’t belong here. Go back to school and choose something you love”, I was heartbroken and angry at this woman for telling me that I wasn’t strong enough for this line of work, but that wasn’t what she was telling me. She was telling me to choose myself, that even though I was good at my job, I didn’t love my job. She had only confirmed what I had already been feeling.

At 20, I started over again, I quit my job worked only part time and I started taking classes at the local community college. Even still after all this I had no idea what I wanted to do. My family was upset because I wasn’t using what I went to school for and it seemed to them to be a huge waste of money. This hurt the most, I needed their support and understanding and I never got that from them. I know they love me and want what’s best for me but clearly the Medical Field wasn’t it. It took them awhile to come to terms with the fact that yes, I was returning to school already seventeen thousand dollars in debt.

I had made it to 20, and I had no idea where I was going or what my life had in store for me. I put myself down countless times, my little sister was now ahead of me, my high school classmates were only a year or two away from graduating from college and I was a freshman (I still am a freshman). I am going to be 22 years old and I am just now finally deciding what I want to major in. I have been a student, a medical assistant, a car sales men, a cashier, a pharmacy tech, and a receptionist. I have done what was required of me to pay my bills and even though I am still a freshman I have accomplished so much more than I had ever realized. At 20, I started an adventure toward making the inside me match the outside me. I plan to live a life filled with all that it has to offer me, I will achieve my dreams, I will get my degree because I want it more than I have ever wanted anything in my life.

The long hours, late nights, studying until my eyes are blood shot and I can’t seem to think about anything other than what I have just stared at for the past three hours. I wouldn’t trade them for anything. My struggles are my strengths. Without my hard work and determination of becoming all that I know I am capable of my talents would be wasted.

When my novel is finally published, my readers will know that anything is possible, so long as you will it to be.

I offer a toast to those who work hard, your diligence does not go unnoticed and eventually before we know it we will once again be standing in that same mirror in our cap and gown, except this time we will know exactly where we are headed.

-The Student