My High-School Experience

My High School Experience| Trigger Warning

TRIGGER WARNING: DEPRESSION, ANXIETY, POSSIBLE EATING DISORDER TRIGGER, SUICIDE, BASICALLY ANYTHING TO DO WITH MENTAL HEALTH

I know I said I won't be posting on here anymore, and I meant it. I'm just posting this as a wrap up for what high school was like for me.

I read through my old books about school, this one, and the one from my 8th grade year.

And man...life has changed, I'm definitely not the same person I was when I first started writing this. A lot happened and a lot changed. Drama took place and, as I predicted, my life was a cliche throughout high school, but not in the typical happy ending of "she ends up with the popular guy in the school and all the drama ends and she's happy" bullcrap.

Mine ended in a "she realized a lot about herself and the people around her and grew as a person" which meant I dropped people who weren't good for me, and I changed myself when I realized that i was a bad person.

A lot of people will agree, and a lot will disagree because they're my friends. But the thing is, I was a bad person. I was toxic, attention seeking, and sucked the life out of people. And I wasn't just toxic to the people around me; I was toxic to myself.

A few days before 8th grade started, my grandmother passed away. And it was the hardest thing I had to go through. I didn't just have that feeling of loss attached to me, following me every where I went, but my family was tearing each other apart instead of coming together to grieve and remember her.

There was constant fighting, all I remember during those times was fighting, crying, anger, frustration. I remember my mom racing out of rooms screaming "JUST LEAVE ME ALONE" and locking herself in her room the rest of the night to sob because they were arguing. My parents couldn't be there for me and my siblings, and I don't blame them. My mom was unable to care for us because of the amount of depression and anxiety that weighed on her during this time, her mother was in the hospital dying and we were waiting for the dreaded phone call, telling us she passed. And that's hard, knowing a loved one is dying and there's nothing you can do but wait for them to pass. It's the hardest thing in the world. So I'm not mad at my mom. And I'm not mad at my dad either.

My whole family on my mom's side was visiting from out of state, and we had to fit everyone in 2 houses and there is a LOT of us. I slept on the couch for like 2 weeks. My bed was taken, my sister's bed was taken. My parent's bed was taken. We had all the air mattresses in the house blown up for people to sleep on and it STILL wasn't enough. My dad was stressed because of this, we needed more food to feed everyone, so he had to go to work to bring home enough money to feed us. I'm just grateful the people from my church brought a lot of food for us. We ended up with more than we needed by the time my family left. So dad couldn't be there for us.

So I had to step up. I had to look after my siblings and protect them from the horrors that was plaguing our family, and not just them, but my cousin as well, cause she was taking it hard and I realized I was the only one capable of being there for them. So I locked up my emotions. I looked after my siblings and my cousin and focused on just them. I kept them in my room to make sure they couldn't hear the screaming and crying. I was there when they began to feel the weight of what was going on.

And I never cried. It didn't cry until my grandmother's memorial service after school started and it was a waterfall. All the emotions I had been bottling up for weeks finally released and I fell apart so badly that I think it did some permanent damage to the way I handle my emotions and my grief.

It's gotten better over the years but it's still hard sometimes.

8th grade was the start of the storm, I began to show small signs of depression and anxiety but never really acknowledged them properly.
Instead I did the worst think I could have imagined and that was use my emotions as a way to seek attention from others.