Inside My Brain (Rants, Essays, and Random Ideas)

Growing Up and Mental Illness

Trigger warning: depression, anxiety, and other similar things. Stay safe everyone!!

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          The other day I was driving my car at 9 pm, on my way home from dropping my girlfriend off at her house. Usually, when I am driving alone, I turn my Queen's Greatest Hits CD up loud and sing along to drown out the racing thoughts that usually burden me while in the dark. But this night, I decided to keep my music down at a reasonable volume and allow myself to think. One of the first things that came to my mind was: Wow! I'm driving! This may seem kind of stupid and weird, but as I thought about that more, I realized really how awesome and incredible and unbelievable it was that at that moment, I was driving my car, by myself. 

          I realized that I used to think that I would never be able to drive a car. That I would never live to be able to get my driver's license. You see, when I was just starting middle school, I started to develop depression and anxiety and everything was hard. I lost friends, I was starting a new school, some of my teachers were super awful, and overall, the start of middle school wasn't going very well for me. I started to lose hope and I was second-guessing everything that happened and nothing was looking bright anymore. The thing is, I thought that because I didn't have some of the common signs of depression, that I knew of  (such as bad grades, loss of appetite, trouble getting up), that I wasn't. Now that I know more and I've been diagnosed, I can realize that mental illness isn't the same for everyone and yes, I was and still am, struggling from depression and anxiety. 

          Though my mental health is much better now and I have found ways to deal with my issues, many things started to get worse throughout middle school. I would stay up crying at night over thoughts that my friends didn't like me or about house fires and not waking up, I was struggling to figure out my sexual identity and what the heck all of my feelings meant, and being the perfectionist I am, I would cry and have breakdowns over the B I had in literacy and trying to make every essay perfect. And I'm going to tell all of you right now, in middle school or out, middle school sucks ASS. Those few years are the time when everything changes and kids get meaner and school gets tougher and mental illnesses begin to show up if they hadn't already. But the thing is, everything will get better. I can guarantee that 100%. All you have to do is hold on for a while. 

          At the beginning of high school, my mom finally took me into the doctor (after getting a call from my school's counselor about a wellness screening I had taken a few days before) and I got put on anti-depressants. I really wasn't expecting a change at all as I had lost hope a while ago, but when the changes started to come, I was shocked. I no longer worry about natural disasters or if my friends actually like me (or not as often, if I am being completely honest), my anxiety isn't as bad when I need to talk to someone new, and though I stress about classes, I don't really break down over a single essay anymore. I know that the medication isn't the only answer to my changes or the only answer for other people. This huge fix doesn't happen with taking one pill a day. It also happens with growing up and finding great friends, finding yourself and talking to loved ones about your issues. And even though I hate my school's wellness screening with a burning passion for telling my parents about my mental health before I could, I know that without it, I wouldn't have gotten help when I really needed it. 

          I guess the moral of this long story is, things get better. And I hope that if you, like me, are telling yourself that everything sucks and there is nothing to live for, you can read this and see that there is a light at the end of the tunnel.