myinnerselfposts-blog

[myinnerselfposts-blog]

Depression/Anxiety’s effect on me part 1

Hello. I just wanted to take a little time today to talk about my personal experiences/battles with depression and anxiety. For you to understand me a little better, I must give a little backstory. Take it back to the year of 2008, there I was, a little 9 year old boy, full of happiness, curiosity, and a fire for the gaining knowledge with which no one I have ever met to this day has possessed. Entering Kindergarten a few years before, I had held a huge head start than most, if not all, of my classmates. I was able to do division and multiplication up to 10*10 in my head, along with having a much better understanding of logical thinking than my young, barely-out-of-toddler counterparts. Back to 9 years old. One of the most important people in my life, my grandfather, was ill in the hospital. It wasn't anything serious, everyone told me. After all, needing to go to the hospital for being ill wasn't so rare that it should be a cause for concern, or so I thought. I remember the day it happened, late in 2008, when I had learned the news that my best friend, my mentor, my teacher, one of my favorite persons in the whole world, had passed away. I'm not going to go into details of what happened that night, my reaction, or what I was doing when I had learned the news. But the reason I had even brought up these facts is because this is all inter-woven with my eventual downfall into despair and agony.    The days following the learning of the news, I had missed school, stopped caring about learning, and shut myself down from the world. This little kid - one that was destined to go to Harvard one day, a straight A student working 2, 3 grades ahead in some classes, was forced to experience adult feelings much earlier than any human being should ever experience. This was the first death that had occurred in my life, and it hit me hard. My grades slipped, mostly due to grade school's heavy weighting of homework in the grade. This entire time I blamed someone else. It was my teacher's fault for not challenging me intellectually. School is stupid because I know everything. Why do I have to learn about these things that I, of all people, knew I would never use in the "real world". Bullying issues due to my lack of social interactions stemming from my new shut-in life built up. Eventually I had to switch schools. Again, it wasn't my fault. It was everyone else's. The problems persisted there, now slowly getting worse. Not only was I forgetting to do homework, I was forgetting science fair projects, pens, notebooks, and even showers some days. My guaranteed full ride to Private High School A had turned into a hope to get accepted into Less Prestigious Private High School B on academic probation. My dreams ended there as not even LPPHSB would accept me on an academic probation. These days were the first time that I recall in my life that I experienced true depression/anxiety - At least these feelings being prevalent in a similar way to how they are today in my life. Eventually, with a lot of searching, my arrogant mother had finally found a Private High School that would accept me. My excitement lasted for a few weeks, then the same issues had popped up in my life. The inability to do homework, the inability to blame myself, the rebellion of doing homework for material that I knew better than the back of my hand. This turned into bad grades obviously, and very bad depression. I hid my depression very well. To this day my parents don't know about the tears I shed every night, the days I wished for a different life, the months that I had spent looking for a restart button of life.    Sophomore year of high school, however, I met my first love. Lets just call her Laura. I was on the baseball team, and had just received my baseball pictures from the team photographer for the game we had played the night before. In these snapshots, was a perfect picture of me sliding into home plate. I was scrolling on instagram and a "reccomended" popped up (it's a tool installed into instagram which reccomends other profiles based on common interests, location, and mutual followers or followers of followers). I met my first love over instagram, kinda lame right? Well anyways, back to the story. Laura was beyond beautiful. Seeing her smile for the first time, albeit over a picture, made me realize that whether I like it or not, this girl was going to somehow have an influence on my life. I decided to start it off small, by liking a couple of her pictures. She liked a couple of mine. Oh shit, I don't know what to do, I never expected a walking goddess of a human being to actually like my pictures back. Later that day I had decided I was going to DM her (direct message). But not just any direct message, no. I was going to make sure she knew I wasn't like anyone else. So what does the genius himself do? I send her the perfect picture of me sliding into home plate. "Was I safe sliding into your dms"? . It all started from there. A few messages on the first day turned into a few more the next, which turned into talking at every free moment each other had. She had this cute innocence about her, she was vulnerable. Just because she had been screwed over in the past didn't affect how sweet she was of a person, nor did it affect her outlook on relationships. We ended up getting together. I was finally happy for once in my life since my grandfather had passed away. I finally had the motivation to do homework everyday and succeed in school and actually plan a future for myself. In situations that she thought I could be texting her but was doing something else, she would always say the cutest line I've ever heard to this day. "come back". Wow. Someone actually wants me in their life for once. No, someone needs me in their life for once. I won't go into boring details but I eventually fell in love and happily ever after right? Not quite. After not seeing her for two weeks a few months into our relationship, (that's a long time to a teenager!), we were supposed to hang out at my brother's house. The morning of our little "hangout" was like any other, I woke up past noon, and shot her a text instantly. "what time are you coming over" "Im not, and I dont think we should be together anymore". Damn.