<p>(I realize this is a hell of a long post, but my story is important to my situation and the input I want to hear from people. I want to hear what people think about it. And a lot of that requires me going through an explanation of how it came to be. Hopefully someone will take the time to read through it, as I believe there are many like me who stay silent or are otherwise misrepresented.)</p>
<p>To begin this description of my current situation, we must first address a huge fundamental part about it that is entirely unable to be avoided in any discussion about my future endeavors: I failed highschool. </p>
<p>Growing up, I have always suffered from severe depression. My first thoughts of suicide came as early to me as Grade Five. From Grade Six to Eight things only got worse, I went through my own spirals and somehow made it to my freshman year of highschool, a little lost and a little broken. I have always had an affinity for English and History, and so I remember easily making the decision that I would take Honors and AP classes in highschool for those subjects. Throughout my highschool career, I performed very well on tests (generally among the top scores), but never did any of the homework, the projects. I received a 5 my English AP tests for Junior and Senior year, and got a 4 on APUSH and APGOV. But despite this, I failed highschool by a whopping three credits (not counting the courses I retook online) and a cumulative GPA that was surely less than 2.0.</p>
<p>My depression never stopped. It ate away at me until in my Senior year I became so apathetic to my own existence that I just didn't care about anything anymore. It turned me into someone I was not, and I had two specific close-calls to suicide. It's a miracle that I'm still here.</p>
<p>I am intelligent. Not because I say I am, but because all the people I've met through the years, the teachers, the students, were consistently shocked to see me spiral down. I had so much potential and everyone was constantly telling me that, but I just didn't care anymore. By my Senior year, I was too broken inside to do anything but loathe myself and my situation. Condemned by bad performance in my Freshman and Sophomore year fueled by the exact same outlook, it was just a vicious circle destined to be repeated and intensified. They said, "You can fix this. I know you can. Don't give up now." </p>
<p>And to cut a long story short: I gave up. I fell hard. As hard as I could have ever possibly fallen in my Senior year. In the final test essay for my English class, I wrote only one sentence: "I failed." At the beginning of this Summer, I came close to attempting to take my own life once more, but I couldn't do it. Not while my mom was depending on me financially with the job I had been working since Junior year. So I didn't. I went on living in what was for me the closest incarnation of Hell one could possibly find. To find dreams smashed into a 4PM-2AM job at minimum wage and having half my paycheck gone so we wouldn't get thrown out of the apartment. And I went on knowing that however long this continued, six months? A year? I would never be able to live an existence like that. Every second was the moment that I confirmed to myself that I would rather die than live that way. I became a silhouette of everything I once was.</p>
<p>Because there were times that I was happy. I am an artist, a writer, an actor, someone who is only satisfied by the creation of something that is enough to make me feel, to make me progress as a person. I threw myself into Theatre and Choir, it was the only thing that let me escape. As I grew further into my depression, soon this would not be enough. I alienated some of my closest friends, snapping at them when I never meant to, I didn't care about the things I loved most. In fact, I hated them. I just wanted to be alone. I -deserved- to be alone.</p>
<p>In the end, I became a husk held to a world I didn't have any desire to stay in beyond necessity. And in the end, I gave up. But I don't doubt that you know that there are some friends, some people, that will never give up on you. And those people didn't give up on me. Following weeks of silence and unresponsive behavior towards everyone around me, I had a kind of intervention, which was important as it served as the first crucial step in releasing everything that had built up and swarmed inside of me for the past years. I began to breathe again. To think about a future.</p>
<p>You can't really just 'fix' depression. It doesn't just 'go away' because someone talked to me. But... It helped. A lot. I've been progressing through things, focusing on my next step. Community College. It's been a horrific struggle of a Summer, I can't stand the sight of my highschool without hating my guts, I wince every time someone asks me how graduation was. But for reasons unknown, I'm still here. And I'm moving forward, slowly but surely.</p>
<p>For all these years, I have felt stuck. Trapped in the cage I had built for myself off of my own despairs. I need to move forward, to move on with my life. Community College is a big step forward, it's a chance to start anew and leave my broken past behind me. I am currently studying to do very well on my GED, so that I can then pursue community college and find my new start on a good note. I need to be doing something other than sitting trapped in my dark corner that I've known for so long. </p>
<p>Herein begins the problems facing me even as I attempt to move ahead. My financial situation is absolutely terrible. I'm a high-school failure working a dead-end minimum wage job in order to save up for Community College that I need to pay for all out of pocket, with my parents financially incapable of helping with a single cent and half of my own paycheck going towards the month's rent. I haven't yet attempted to do FAFSA for a number of reasons, but mainly because I am scared. Scared that it will become a death sentence. I currently plan on going to Community College in the Spring, giving me some time to work up some money to afford it. However, I'd only have enough by then to pay for a single semester (counting in the rough estimated financial aid price they've given). That money eventually runs out. Eventually I have to face up that I'm all out and that I have to go back to the dead-end job to afford the next semester. Wasting away another year if I could even find the strength to last through it all.</p>
<p>It would seem that I am stuck no matter what. I want to believe that there's a way that I can progress, that I can move forward. But there's just so many obstacles in the way of that progress. I care now more than I have in the past two years. I want to have a future, I want to believe that I can come back. But what is there to believe in?</p>