English Portfolio

How do you cope when it feels like everything in your life is falling apart around you? School becomes more stressful, but personally, your life is a mess, and mentally, you are completely off the chain. This was my summer before junior year and junior year itself that brought me to rock bottom and ultimately did actually positive change in my life.

I was dealing with my first rough breakup that summer before my junior year of high school with a girl who, even though my hindsight turns out to be super toxic for me, I certainly did not quite fully realize at the time. The thing that I have to point out, however, is that even throughout all of that, I invested in my emotions and worked hard to get through the problems that were never quite fully resolved. When that finally ended, I clearly did not take it well. I basically sat that whole summer thinking about it repeatedly, replaying arguments in my head, blaming myself for everything. I stopped doing things that I actually loved doing and just felt so mentally tired almost all the time.

At the start of school, the effects materialized so that they could not be dismissed. I still remember that as I sat down to start the chemistry examination, which I should know, all was silent except for the scratching sound of the pencils on the examination paper. I was all over the place, yet all I did was look at what was in the question paper and keep going through the same question without making much sense anywhere in the question paper. I was actually feeling the anxiety that I had been having in my chest at that particular moment, as I actually felt my hands shaking uncontrollably in that cursed room. All was nothing, and I was going blank, as if I was going black with my eyes open. I did not actually have problems in getting my chemistry concepts right; the problem was that I was in the room.

These, then, were the norms, and my mental health issues ranged from pretty normal anxiety, lack of concentration, and being overwhelmed somewhere or everywhere. The more I felt these kinds of anxiety, the further away my motivation was. The place where you attend with the intent of growing as a person or growing up was not in school, but it was a place where I was reminded of just how stagnant I was in life. Having it all together and being full of confidence was not going to help me alleviate my life problems.

Although this has probably been the worst period in my life, I am aware that I could no longer afford to not be aware of my mental self or that my happiness depended on another person. I also became aware of my need to set limits and to be aware of my mental self, whether I was comfortable doing so or not. I know that I have become aware of myself, and I also became aware that I have also become cognizant of what I need.

In reflection, some of the hardest moments of my life include summer and my junior year. This does, nonetheless, include some of the most defining moments of how I have come to be the person I am today. Rock's bottom was exactly that, but I learned that struggle does not mean failure, and growth does not come easily to you; you earn it. This experience, as you can probably tell, is important to me as I learned that sometimes, for whatever reason, when everything appears to be falling apart, we can come out stronger.