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Sophia's Story

00:00 / 04:30

I feel like mostly where I really saw change and how I saw myself was in my senior year. Halfway through freshman year, I decided to transfer by myself to my local public school, and that is where I would say everything started to crumble and fall apart. I really struggled with making any friends, especially since it was halfway through the school year. Everybody already had their established friend groups. Then I'm also a very shy person, so that just all compounded into me not having anyone to be with in my classes.

I would avoid going to lunch and eating, and that manifested itself into me, staying home from school. I would not go for days at a time, and I ended up almost failing every single class in my freshman year. And this repeated itself, this process of me staying home for weeks at a time for my sophomore and my junior year, all the way up until my senior year where I really felt hopeless. That that entire the entire process of me, like, not going to school, from freshman year onwards caused me to develop pretty severe depression and anxiety, which that high school experience really brought the depression out. I ended up, in my junior year making an attempt on my life because of the loneliness, because I had saw online, on social media that all of my friends were hanging out on a day that I had decided to stay home.

And that was really just, like, my breaking point, and I felt like everything was pointless and hopeless. Like, seeing the amount of people that came for me that cared about me really showed me that my life was valuable, but I still struggle to find the value. I felt broken. I felt like something was truly wrong with me. I felt like I wasn't meant to live a good life.

I remember I wrote that in my journal. Like, I'm not meant maybe I'm meant to just be unhappy. My guidance counselors had to step in, and they had to place me into this alternative program that my high school offered. And I had gone from honors classes to being put into the college prep. I was I connected myself worth to my academic success.

And seeing that I like, I couldn't handle the work of the honors classes, that just really made me feel just cemented the fact that I was different from my friends, that I was that I wasn't well, that I was not doing well mentally, and that just really broke me. When I first got put into the program, I knew that it was going to help me. I knew that I was put into it to help me. That's what all my counselors said, my teachers, my mom. That's what they all said to me.

So, I started going through the program. I had a lot of support, particular from the program. I director, her name was miss Mac, and she would always give me kindness and give me grace. There would be days where I would go for just an hour, and I would get overwhelmed and anxious. And I would ask to leave, or I wouldn't come in until noon.

She still always welcomed me into the program with old open arms. With her help and also with the help of my teachers, they talked to them about how I was feeling. I felt like they wouldn't give me any grace, but they were the most, they were so understanding. And I think just having their grace, having their kindness, just knowing that they wanted me to succeed really helped give me the hope that I could actually graduate, on time with all of my classmates and all of my peers, that I could actually do the things that I had set out for myself to do at the beginning of the year when I thought that I couldn't get through it, when I thought that I couldn't even, like, make it out of bed. For senior year, me at the end of the year versus senior year, me at the beginning of the year, completely different people.

By the end of the year, I saw that all of my hard work actually did pay off and that I actually was going to be able to walk with all of my friends, to graduate with all of my friends. I felt like, at the beginning, I felt like I wasn't doing anything with my life, but not but towards the end, I felt like there was something that I could be that I could do. Like, even though I had gone through all of this gone through all of this suffering that I could, in fact, get it all done. So, I'm really thankful to those people in my life, that senior year because without them, I don't think I would have managed to graduate on time. I don't think I would have even been able to start my college career when I did.

It just taught me that it's hard for me to rely on people, but I do need to rely on people in order to succeed.

University of Massachusetts Amherst

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