Intimate Challenge of my High School Years

Every living person has flaws that they try to avoid; covering them up by masking how they feel, burying insecurities within themselves until they implode and are exposed to the world, all the while constantly asking why it’s all happening to them. Most challenges occur during what is supposed to be the innocent and best days of your life, high school. But, I know these gut wrenching feelings of hopelessness more personally than most people, starting with my diagnosis of Bipolar 1 Disorder my freshman year of high school. I had racing thoughts of: “Why me; Make it stop; Please God, make me normal”. Imagine, thirteen years old and a doctor telling you that your brain isn’t working right, you can’t fix it, and it will continue to get worse further along in life. Pressures and challenges of high school simply escalated thereafter during my sophomore, junior, and especially my senior year. Yet, the positive repercussion was that I became a stronger individual that was capable of coping with an incurable illness that I thought would control my life forever.

Entering West Carteret High at the age of thirteen I was very immature, much less prepared for all the requirements and pressures that fell upon me all at once. Being introduced into the segregated groups of the high school society, I found myself floating solo and going in and out of different “clicks”. I was constantly going from extremely happy to irritable, teachers assuming me just being a kid, to extreme moods of hatred, irritability, and sadness which were very much visible by my peers. I was making terrible grades after being an A, B student in middle school, couldn’t stop myself from the need for the rush of alcohol in my system and I easily fell into the party/drug scene. Finally the appointment was made to see a doctor. I was bipolar.

I’m Bipolar? I was literally mentally unstable and unable to control certain urges and how extreme my feelings got. I couldn’t control myself. That tore me apart inside. I hated myself, my parents for having me, the doctor for telling me, I hated life. Going through a mixture of medications trying to find the proper arrangement of pills for my certain illness made me feel like I was crazy or psycho; all of which I was slandered as by other students during my freshman and sophomore years. Grades continued to plummet and I became addicted to anything that would numb my maddening thoughts.

After finding the right mixture of medication, finding my own ways of dealing with this illness, and retaining a good average in school was simply a miracle to me. I was in control of my thoughts, and episodes rarely occurred. I overcame what I thought would burden and keep me from graduating, going further in life and being independent from the need of psychiatrists and loads of medications. I simply overcame myself.