Mental Relapse by Skylar

Mental Relapse by Skylar - February 2017 Scholarship Essay

Junior year is supposed to be the hardest year of school particularly because it’s the year where everyone starts getting jobs, paying for things on their own, and school really picks up the pace with assignments and college applications. None of those things really made junior year hard for me. My struggle was maintaining a healthy state of mind. I had been struggling with depression and anxiety since middle school, particularly self harm.
My junior year introduced a new list of struggles and drama within family and friends. Things kept piling up every day and it was all so overwhelming until the day that I relapsed. I remember using a razor and the next day wearing long sleeves again, feeling ashamed and knowing that I had disappointed a lot of people. It would have been easy to just keep hurting myself to cope with feeling stressed.
Instead, I decided to look at it in a better way. I went two, almost three years without hurting myself once, so why wouldn’t I be able to do it again? I went from pretending I didn’t have the urge to hurt myself to acknowledging my feelings and reaching out for help. Telling my dad about the feelings I was having took a lot of courage and made it so I could get the help I needed.
Ever since I began to reach out for help, everyone has been able to help me recover. My friends are able to recognize when I can’t be left alone. My teachers can recognize when I am struggling and give me a little leeway to work with. My dad was finally able to get me into the doctor’s office where they gave me antidepressants that have really helped to improve my mood. Now, instead of harming myself physically or even mentally, I have learned how to healthily manage my emotions and how to ask for help when I need it.