This is the most personal thing I will probably ever write.

I come from lots of pain.

Imagine growing up in a place where you receive the best, most expensive education possible. Although I am extremely thankful for it, with that extremely high education comes extreme pressure to be the best of the best. To forever be held up to almost impossible expectations. To feel as if your hardest work still isn't enough.

Imagine having to work twice as hard as everybody else on everything simply because of your mental disability.

Imagine dedicating the past four years of your life to something that you absolutely love doing, all to be taken away from you in a blink of an eye due to the absence of one high school football game.

Imagine losing all of your friends because of it.

To show up at a social event just to see that that same whole group of "friends" teamed up to give you the silent treatment. Backs were literally turned.

Imagine receiving threats over text to not show up to any other social event like that again.

Imagine spending hours spent just crying in your car.

Imagine having a best friend that saved you from all this mess that then leaves you for an unexplained reason, just days before moving to college.

A friend that you thought would be in your wedding someday just suddenly gone.

Then you graduate and your mother gets sick.

You feel as if you could have lost her.

Being home for the summer is just a reminder of all of this. I hate it. I can't get it out of my mind. Not only is this summer a reminder of where I once was. but it also is a reminder of how far I've come.

I finally have friends like me that will support me no matter what.

They lift me up instead of dragging me down.

They accept me for who I am, flaws and all.

Friends that I trust and are loyal.

I moved to an environment where I feel as if I can be my complete, full self and not be judged.

I'm appropriately challenged, and my mental disability no longer defines me.

I am no longer held up to these extremely high expectations that I cannot meet.

Life is good.

The sun shines all the time.

All of the good that I have been putting into this world is finally coming back to me.

So this summer I've been running into people from home that I haven't seen in months. When I get asked how I'm doing, instead of just saying "it's great, how about you?" I would really like to scream "I'm doing better than I ever was."