I think that I could be great.

I think that if I tried hard enough, I could do something of

importance in this world. Now I don’t want to be the next president or the next Ghandi, but just
to be great even for a second. Like go to Africa for a year and build homes, install plumbing and
heal broken bones. I dreamed this since I was small, probably because at a very young age I
realized just how small I was. Determined that I could prove to the world that I had some
significance, my dream to make a dent in history was born. I think we all dream about being rich
and famous, but as I got older that dream turned into something different. I started learning
about the ecosystem, pollution, starvation, global warming, war, all the ailments of the earth and
I panicked. There was so much to do, and I had to help. How was the next question that ran
through my mind. I’m not very good at math, science was too difficult to understand, and I’m
only subpar at writing, I thought. So how could someone like me make a difference?

Growing up that drive to become someone great had simmered into merely a
background dream, an afterthought. There were things to do, tests to be taken, work to be done,
who had time for dreaming? My priorities and my attention turned solely to the big, serious
things that I was forced to deal with. I had to make money, I had to get good grades so I could
get into a good school so I could make better money, I had to do well in lacrosse so maybe I
could get a scholarship. That would make me happy right? But they weren’t, they were running
me into the ground. Exhausting me until I couldn’t get out of bed in the morning. I lost all interest
in everything and everyone around me, to the point where I had no friends, no ambition, and no
purpose in life anymore. I had turned to the worst to try and get me out of the grave I was
digging for myself, but it only made it worse. I had become addicted to a lifestyle of adrenaline
and danger. Eventually I got away from the bad influences in my life but that still left me with no
friends and had turned my heart into a heavy stone that sat in my chest. It came to the point
where nothing could make me feel alive anymore, therapy had become useless because I had
given up on wanting to get better. This went on for 3 years. It went up and down, but eventually
at the end of my junior year, I became what I thought to be irredeemable, irreparable, and
irreversibly screwed up. I was done, and thought I’d exhausted all my options. So I did the last
thing I could do to escape the pain.

I spilled the pills out onto the back of my phone, my mind running 15 different directions. My
heart was too tired to care anymore. I stared at the pills for what seemed like forever, but soon
they were blurred by tears until it was just an abstract like photograph. I knew my mom was on
her way home from work to check on me since I wasn’t at school yet, so I needed to make a
decision quick, should I take the pills? Should I throw them across the room? I remember my
heart beating in anguish, how can I stay when it hurts to breathe? How can I stay when I hate
myself so much for being like this? A scream got caught in my throat and I started to tear out my
hair as the hot tears seared down my face. I was done. I scooped up the pills in my hand and
stared at them, all my hate and pain came to the surface, ready to boil over. A monster like
myself didn’t deserve to live. An ungrateful failure like myself shouldn’t be allowed to breathe
anymore. I grabbed the glass of water left on the bedside table from the night before. It’s almost
over, I thought. The pills touched my lips.
 That’s when my mom rushed in, slowly taking in the scene, realizing what I was about to
do. The sobs shortly followed, and she quickly took the pills away. She grasped me tightly and
held me while she cried. I felt like a cement statue in her arms, no expression on my face and
no feeling in my heart. Guilt washed over me like a sheet of rain, she was trying to stay strong
and hold back her tears but not even I could have blamed her for the overwhelming of emotions.
We cried together for a while, until she was able to get up and call my dad. We waited till he got
home and then drove to the hospital. The ride there was probably one of the weirdest
experiences of my life. I didn’t want to be there, I was still in so much pain, but it woke me up. I
started to realize the immensity of what I almost did. What I could’ve lost, the pain I could’ve
caused, the opportunities I almost missed. However when we arrived my anxiety kicked into full
gear, what kind of freak was I that I had to go to some mental hospital? But the people were
kind, and had lots of patience with me. They ultimately decided that I could go home since my
parents would be able to keep an eye on me but they had set up and intense treatment plan for
the next month of my life. When we arrived back home I felt so confused, the last few hours had
completely changed my life.
The next couple of weeks in treatment were some of the most difficult weeks of my life. I
had to go 8 hours a day, 5 days a week. I had to drop out of school and I missed out on a lot of
things. People treated me differently, even the friends who had reached out. They didn’t mean
to but how could you avoid something like this? It was also exhausting, talking about everything
that had gone wrong in my life that had led to the moment of my attempted suicide. They treated
me like a child, scheduling every moment of my every day and taking control over everything. It
was difficult to let go and be vulnerable, but as I did something strange happened. Letting go of
all of these things like school, my schedule, and work really let me focus on me and my mental
health. It was embarrassing at first and a little infuriating, but accepting their help was one of the
best things I did for myself. We all want to be taken care of, we all want to be loved, but as we
get older it gets harder to accept that love. To let people take care of us is somehow a sign of
weakness the older we get. How grateful I am that I let myself be a child again, to unburden
myself from the pressures of the world just for a little while. I still struggle with depression, but I
will never forget the lessons I learned there.
Coming out of treatment was hard too, now I had to apply everything that I had learned.
Except I had something powerful on my side now, it was me. I had been fighting a battle for
years, and the reason I almost lost was because I was fighting against myself. I had been letting
depression bully me into bullying myself. Calling myself a failure everytime I did something
wrong or crushing my hopes when I dared to dream, making me question how someone like me
could be someone great. I taught myself it’s okay to dream big and do big. To love myself
enough to believe that I am great and I can do great things. This will forever be the most
powerful belief I have in this life. Now I don’t tell my story so I can receive sympathy or to grieve
my sad past. I tell my story today so that tomorrow I can remember what’s worth living for.