It is the summer going into junior year of school. I am just getting back from touring a prestigious university in California, my mother and I on our way to the beach in Santa Monica, when I receive a phone call that will shatter the lives that we once knew. I had just found out that my older brother Dylan died by suicide and the next thing I knew, I was on a flight home into hell and utter despair. I feel now that I have properly told this story to people hundreds of times over the past two years and the responses I receive are still generally the same. Things like "You're so brave" and "He's always with you" are often said complemented with a tilt of the head and sad eyes.

And I thank these people for the sympathy because I do believe both of those statements are true. But it goes further than that. When tragedy struck my life in the largest way possible, it was almost as if I had lost a sense of self identity and that my entire life was categorized by this one horrific event. I knew that I had accomplished so much in my young life and that I was capable of much more, but it is really difficult to ignore an elephant sitting on your chest at all times.

I knew I had to do something with the irreconcilable pain I was (and still am) dealing with on a daily basis, but where does one possibly start in a situation such as this? Then one day in class, that same year of losing Dylan, an idea came to me and would not stop pestering me until I went through with it. The idea was a Students Against Destructive Decisions (SADD) club for my catholic high school, which had never had something like it before. My pitch was that this club was going to focus less on drunk driving, which the organization was originally founded for, and more on the importance of mental well being and being able to normalize mental illness with younger people.

It was pretty risky for sixteen year old me, being that I was emotionally vulnerable and the basis of the club was the greatest loss I could experience. Nevertheless, it was necessary for me to do. And by educating my peers about mental illness and how to approach it in a positive light, I found that I really enjoyed helping people who struggle with mental health. It came naturally to me because it was the top thing on my mind at all times.

The draw to the mental health field did not stop there. Senior year I decided to take an AP Psychology course because of my genuine interest in the study of the mind and the behavioral processes that go along with it. Not to my surprise, I loved all of the topics we were covering in the course and found myself being able to understand much of the topics without having to review them all that much. In tandem with that, I also started seeing a therapist and psychiatrist more frequently senior year and was able to put my unresolved feelings into words and make peace with some of them.

It seemed like wherever I went, mental health was looming over me and calling me to do something more, but I still was not completely convinced. Before everything with my brother happened, I was keen on being a journalist or novelist, writing creatively to my heart's content. But as my college applications were being completed, I realized I was writing less and less about journalism and more about helping people and de-stigmatizing mental illness.

The idea to major in Psychology occurred to me one day when I was FaceTiming one of my close friends and they said something along the lines of, "Thanks so much for listening, I feel like I'm getting free therapy." It was like noticing something that was staring me right in the face all along. Why couldn't I incorporate my natural writing inclination to the thing which struck my life so suddenly and harshly? It seemed as if a whole world of opportunities had unfolded in my lap and now, I was no longer just the girl with the brother who took his life, but the woman who would reclaim mental health as her own and make her brother proud like he always was.

Here I am, a freshman at New York University, currently on track to major in Psychology with a minor in Creative Writing. I am still not positive exactly what it is in the field what I want to do, but I know whatever my occupation is, I will be helping, educating and normalizing illness because there is no such thing as a "crazy person." I think back to the helpless and lost girl at the beginning of junior year and realize that she is not gone. No, she is still inside of me, just now I took my tragedy and did not let it rule my life. I will rule it.

-For Dylan