<p>I already sent this. I keep thinking it sounds too much like a sob story. I wanted it to come off with a message of hope...cause that's what I have now...but this was so emotional and difficult to write that I don't know if it turned out ok. I don't even know if anyone else would understand the story. I just suck at pulling an essay together at the end, and the 630 word limit didn't help much.</p>
<p>Oh and I'm sorry if you read this and it depresses you.</p>
<p>In January of my sophomore year of high school, in one of those awkward hours between school and nightfall, I sat cross-legged on my bed and wondered where my life had gone wrong. Since the sixth grade, I had suffered from what I now know is bi-polar disorder. It never crossed my mind, though, that my mindset could be diagnosed in any way. The way I saw it, my depression was just another facet of me that wasnt normal, that wasnt The Way It Should Be. Not much was. I had a name that teachers never got right on the first try. I wasnt white, I wasnt blonde, and I didnt belong to a church, like most kids at my Ohio elementary school. My family didnt understand that I needed peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and blue jeans to fit in. On top of that, I didnt see myself as outgoing, funny, or smart enough to make up for what I lacked in other areas. The pain that manifested itself in scars all over my body, the ever-growing distance between me and the rest of the world as I knew it- these things seemed like they were my fault. And by that point in my life, I had come to accept it.
I had grown so accustomed to my drastic mood swings that on that afternoon, I worried not about my mental health, but whether or not I could exist without the ways I had learned to cope over the years. I had been cutting myself nearly every day. I didnt know why I started it or why I couldnt seem to stop. I only knew that it gave me a sense of order that I couldnt achieve any other way. Just as I hid my feelings and problems from my friends and family, I hid my scars under my clothes. Inevitably, though, one of my classmates eventually noticed new and old scars on my arms. She told my guidance counselor, who in turn told my parents. Just when I felt I had figured out a way to pacify my mental war between depression and happiness, I was told that I needed psychologists, therapy, and medicine in order to become normal again. How could I explain that I was never normal in the first place? That I couldnt and didnt want to be? I couldnt bring myself to believe that my problems could be solved so straightforwardly, and ironically, I never felt more helpless at the moment at which my parents told me that I needed to get help.
At first, I was full of anger towards my friends, my parents, and my psychologists. I felt victimized, but that was tolerable. The anger I held towards myself was much worse. I hated whatever part of me prevented me from being happy. I could not come to terms with my own mind, and all of the mental energy that I spent trying to recover was energy that I did not spend on school, sports, and making friends. It took me long to realize that I could be happier, and an even longer to even begin trying to change myself. I finally understood that no amount of therapy or medication would help me if I didnt want to be helped.
In retrospect, I think that I was most responsible for pulling myself out of the low I had been stuck in for so long. For the first time, I feel strong enough to deal with life in a healthy way. I am beginning to see life in a completely different light, like an infant experiencing the world for the first time. And, secretly, I feel that I can appreciate the world I live in more than anyone I know. </p>
<p>Ack, it sucks, I know. But does it suck enough for it to negatively affect my UC app? :-/</p>