Of my seventeen years on earth, I can say, that the year of 2008 was most definitely the worst year of my life. I was bombarded, to the highest degree, with amounts of issues I couldn’t handle. By “couldn’t handle”, I mean I fell apart. I was a solid dispersed in a liquid. It was a strange occurrence. Almost like when you take corn starch and add water. You can roll it into a solid ball with your hands and the second you release the ball it disperses into a liquid. I couldn’t keep my shape. I was contorted, mentally. The problems, alone, weren’t ones I couldn’t handle. But the volume of incidents that flooded my life, in a matter of a year, were what brought my life to its lowest point.
It wasn’t accumulative. I was smothered with a number of problems. Let’s say the starting point was the end of my sophomore year and I finally pulled it together by the end of summer 2009. I was in love. I spent every waking day with my boyfriend while I maintained a 3.6 gpa at a private school, held a job for over a year, and danced on a very eminent competition team. I was happy and satisfied with my life. After a year my boyfriend and I ended. He was my first love and naturally all hell broke loose. This is where the smothering began.
Mr.Bettin, an art teacher at Judge, noticed something seriously wrong with me. I remember on the last day of school he said this to me, “Heal over the summer okay?” I didn’t heal, I got worse. My entire summer consisted of me in a state of mortification. I was completely and seriously, devastated. I came back to school my junior year still a complete and utter mess. I developed a case of hypersomnia. Think of insomnia, then the complete opposite that’s hypersomnia. I couldn’t keep a high gpa, I dropped all the AP courses I planned to take and Mr. Bettin barely let me take his advanced art class. I missed an excessive amount of school and over the summer I dislocated my elbow so I could no longer lifeguard and so, I quit my job. I didn’t have many friends at the beginning of the summer either because when I was with my boyfriend he was my only real friend. I weeded away all my other friends. I had to rebuild friendships and create new ones; the problem with this was my views on friends completely changed after I met my boyfriend. I found myself constantly comparing people to him. I always felt he was a better friend than anyone could ever be and it made it hard for me to make new friends.
I developed some form of depression. My mom and I no longer got along and the rules she set for me were diminished. I hated all her loser boyfriends, and I felt like she wasn’t doing her part as a mom and I let her know it. It became an enormous problem. It escaladed down into my decision to move out. I packed my things before I knew my grandparents would even let me live with them. Being grandparents, of course they let me live with them. I was in for it though. It was like an infomercial. You think you’re going to get something better than what you have but turns out the thing breaks. Living with my grandparents was completely different than just visiting them. Let’s just say it wasn’t the brightest idea to move there. My grandparents forced me to quit my dance team because of my grades. There’s one thing in the world I love more than anything and that is dancing. My grades didn’t get any better, they got worse.
The family fights were outrageous, so outrageous we started seeing a Shrink. My mom, grandparents, the Shrink, and I all in a room, mad at each other. The sessions never went too well and once my mom and grandparents felt insulted by the shrink and we no longer saw him. He did prescribe medication for my depression but I always forgot to take my pill so who knows if it would’ve ever helped.
So here I was depressed, mortified, a hypersomniac, a ruthless teenager, and still issue upon issue dog piled on top of me. I ended up moving back to my mom’s house once we were on good terms and that was the starting point of my healing. Slowly but surely I began to accept the break-up, regain my friends, be on good terms with my family, recover from hypersomnia, depression gone, job gained, and I felt content about things. I still have not fully recovered from that year. Junior year is your most important year and it happened to be the year I fell apart. I’ve grown. It was the worst year I’ve had but probably the most important. Honestly, I’m scared this state of happiness might be temporary. On a positive note, my grades are now higher than ever and I am moving on. It’s natural to be scared that it will all happen again but I am stronger; I can handle a lot more under my belt. I won’t ever disperse into a liquid again. I will always strive to keep my shape solid.
