Don Quixote

22

In 8th grade I wasn't exactly what you'd call an extraordinary student.

It wasn't that I had bad grades or a disciplinary problem, I just wouldn't show up.

Sometimes I like to joke and say I didn't even go to 8th grade because in all honesty I probably only showed up 1/4 of the year in total.

I struggled with confidence back then. I imagine that was half of the reason I didn't want to go. I felt inferior to my classmates (it probably never appeared that way on the outside, I was always dressing up really nice and looked like a stick up bitch).

I would wake up for school and have an absolute nervous breakdown about what to wear, and I don't mean just being indecisive. I couldn't wear the same thing twice in a month, what I wore had to make me look and feel good, I couldn't look too fat that day, and I couldn't get stressed because when I get stressed I start to cry and if I started crying I was absolutely not going.

I would crying to my mom who would scream at me to hurry up and pick something (was not helpful to the situation, I did not need to be yelled at), and I would just decide not to go.

One time my mother had hit me because I was crying. She knew I wasn't going if I started crying and I don't blame her, she didn't know what to do but it definitely wasn't backhanding me.

That happened almost every single day which resulted in me being late and absent a lot which really affected my attendance. Later in the year my parents got a letter in the mail that said I could not miss anymore school or the authorities would have to get involved and we'd have to go to juvenile court.

My parents started making me get up an hour earlier than I was originally so I could wake up, eat breakfast, and pull myself together before school, which actually helped believe it or not.

When I think back to it it actually doesn't even feel like I went to 8th grade because I barely did.

Towards the end of the year I came to school a lot more often than I had in the beginning of the year, not only because of the waking up earlier but also my mental health and confidence increased a lot because I had been seeing a therapist my counselor recommended me after he watched my mother try to drag me out of the car.

In 9th grade it got a lot better. I think I had realized that if I missed too much school in high school I'd get extremely behind and stressed even more than if I missed in middle school, with the bigger work load and everything.

My mom made a deal with me that I could have 1 mental health day a month, and of course I took advantage of that every month.

I also noticed crushes kept me going to school. If I had someone to look forward to seeing I'd be a lot more enthusiastic about going (i had at least 5 hallway crushes and 1 real crush at a time all throughout high school).