moon.

panic.

I would just like to say that I lied when I said the next thing I write is going to be something I hope everyone learns from. It's not this, tbh I'm not sure when I'll write it, but I will. I think people need to hear it. I'll let you know which one it is.

The moment I realized, and I mean actually  realized, that there was something wrong with the education system happened during freshman year. It was a few weeks after the New Year and there was a terrible strain of the flu going around. The week before it happened, I only went to school one day, which was that Monday. I stayed home the other four days because I was sick. 

After one day of staying home, you're happy you missed, feeling refreshed and energized for your comeback to school. After two days, you still feel the happiness, although not as much. You start to have a feeling of worry about what you are missing. After the third day, you begin to stress out about all of the homework that you're missing and all the lessons you're not learning, wishing that you could go back to school. Now on that fourth day, you start to have this feeling in the pit of your stomach that doesn't go away even after you come back. Its like the feeling when you want to or feel like you're going to throw up but you just can't. Now I also missed two weeks back or so for a doctor's appointment. I was stressed out for the rest of the week about the lessons I missed in school, trying to teach myself what I missed because the copy of the notes she gives you is never as good as she explains it in person. Because of that, on the Sunday before I went back, I was a nervous wreck. My stomach hurt, I couldn't stop sweating, and I couldn't sleep that night. And to add on to it all, I was still sick; the only reasons for me going back were that my fever went down and I was going crazy over all my absences. 

Just my luck, that Monday that I went back was the day I had my hardest classes; math and science. My first period wasn't anything bad, it was an easy class with a few make up assignments, nothing i couldn't do. But then I got to my second period, math. I got handed about four different papers, all in what seemed like a foreign language. Jumping ahead real quick, I never finished those notes, nor did I understand any of it. I failed the test over it, even after having my teacher try and help me, and to this day I still do not understand that topic. 

What people seem to not understand that in my school, most of the teachers were not good at making you understand what they were teaching. They would teach, stand up at the front of the board and everything, but no one would understand it. And the few people who did would be stuck helping the ones who didn't (which was normally the majority of the class). And being at school when the lessons are taught was such an important detail that if you missed one lesson, you would not understand the other lessons until you moved on to the next section (which includes scoring poorly on the tests/quizzes involved with the section). So, it was very important not to miss a day. 

But I missed four. 

So, getting back to my story, I never finished those notes, nor did I understand any of it. I failed the test over it, even after having my teacher try and help me, and to this day I still do not understand that topic.

Now to the next class, science. I always succeeded in science, mostly because my teachers were great at what the did. But this year, I was struggling, to say the least. My teacher was not helpful, I had to go over to the other science teacher most of the time to ask her to teach me it again if I had any chance of doing well in that class. And the very day I got back, the class was starting a lab. Besides for tests, labs are the things that make or break your grade. With the labs being extremely difficult as well, most people struggled with them when in groups. Since I had not learned the lessons that went along with the labs, I was clearly lost. And since there was a sub that day, I couldn't ask the teacher to help explain to me what I was doing. So I was stuck doing the lab with my normal lab group at the tables. 

I remember looking through my assignments that needed to be made up and stressing out. There was so many pages and homework problems and numbers that confused me. I started feeling hot. I remember I was in a red long sleeve t-shirt and some black Nike sweatpants (since it was still winter and i was sick) and I remember feeling like I wanted to just take off my shirt and my pants because of how hot I was. Then my head started spinning and I had to sit down on the floor behind my lab counter so the sub wouldn't see me and think I wasn't working. I just sat there for a few minutes, wondering what was going on. Could it still be the sickness? I thought, choosing that as the best explanation. My stomach still hurt as well, so it just added onto the case. I also didn't have any water left because I drank it during first and second period, so I finally decided to get up to go to the bathroom and get some water from the fountain. Well as I was grabbing my passbook so the sub could sign it, my vision started to get a little hazy. It wasn't that bad until I got out into the hallway and my breathing started to get heavier. About three steps after I left the classroom, my vision went totally blurry. I was walking with my hands out in front of me because I could not longer see any exact shapes. I found my way to the bathroom heavily relying on the fact that I've done the walk a thousand times, but also that the hallways in my school were all white, so the only coloring was the doors, which were a light brown. 

Once I got into the bathroom, luckily no one was there, I made a b-line for the handicap stall. Once the door was locked, my breathing was so heavy that I sounded like I just ran a 10k, there was snot running down my face, my whole body was shaking, I couldn't stand up straight, and I felt like I was going to pass out. The only way to stop myself from falling over was to sit on the ground against the wall of the bathroom. Now I'm probably one of the biggest germophobes you'll ever meet, and I was sitting on the floor of a bathroom. Granted, they were fairly clean, but still, it was a bathroom. 

It took me about five minutes to calm down. After that, I just sat there for a while, worried about what that just was. Nothing like that has ever happened to me before, and honestly, I was scared. Was something wrong with me? No one ever talked about something like this happening to them before, so I had no idea what it was. But it never slipped my mind. 

When I was finally ready, I wiped off my face (there was sweat beads on it) and tried to make myself look as normal as possible. After I returned, I acted like nothing happened and when my friends asked about it I said that I was bored so I walked around the hallways for ten minutes, not wanting anyone to know the truth.

I didn't know that I had a panic attack until about three or four weeks later.

I was sitting on my couch watching Andi Mack (Ik, I used to watch disney, get over it), when Jonah (from the show) had a panic attack. He explained it as his vision getting blurry and he was stressing out. I didn't connect the dots until the doctor in the show told him he had a panic attack. 

Now, I'm not quite sure if it was actually a panic attack, but after the show, I researched it and came to the best conclusion that it probably was. It hasn't happened since, but I still remember almost every detail about it. It terrified me. I had no idea what was happening and I didn't even think it was normal because no one talks about these types of things. And school was the thing that caused it. The amount of stress that was put on my body because I missed over something I couldn't control was so unbearable that I had a panic attack at school. Now that is what is wrong with our school systems. They put so much weight and pressure on us to succeed that nothing else matters. As soon as the attack was over, I went back to stressing. Because I knew that I couldn't tell my mom to come pick me up because I couldn't miss another day of school. 

So, always choose mental health over grades. Over school. Over anything. Your happiness and your own health should come before all of that. 

oh and btw- I've never actually told anyone this, so congrats, internet, on being the first thing to hear about this (I did tell my mom after it happened though, but when I got home I told her I overreacted and that it was nothing and I believe she forgot about it). Do me a big favor and don't tell anybody.