Mental wellness is one of the main components of being a healthy human being. In today's world, an overwhelming amount of people are suffering from mental health struggles, including young adults and students. Being mentally unwell negatively affects every single aspect of one's life. Mental health and wellness is a topic that is very dear to me because I have been severely affected by mental illness since I was very young. Already, life can be stressful enough. If you were to combine internal mental and emotional struggles with external everyday tasks and hardships, you would be overwhelmed, drained, and hopeless. I have had my fair share of this experience. I began exhibiting signs of mental illness at the age of seven. At that age, I began to struggle with suicidal ideation and urges. The environment I was raised in contributed severely to the deterioration of my mental and emotional health. My parents had an extremely aggressive and unhealthy relationship. I witness nearly every screaming match they had. They struggled financially for the majority of my childhood. I was molested by a family member and a friend of my parents'. A multitude of other factors and events contributed to the issues I struggle so much with still. I first began self-harming in the sixth grade. I was being severely bullied. This, along with what was going on at home, took my focus away from school. I didn't really care about anything except wanting to end the miserable feeling that had overtaken my entire being. How can you focus on learning the multiplication table with so much else happening in your life? My learning was impacted by this and I was behind my classmates for a good while. Throughout middle school and high school, I still struggled so much with my mental health. My homelife had improved, but that didn't undo everything that was already done. I did focus a lot more on school and even started to enjoy it. It became a distraction from my thoughts and feelings. I could not control the suicidal urges and thoughts I had, but I could control the assignments I completed and the grades I got. However, with growing up comes new experiences. Mine included experimenting with drugs and sex, as most teenagers do. Nearing the end of my junior year, I attempted suicide and I was hospitalized. Nearing the end of my senior year, I was raped by a boy I was dating at the time. All of this is to say, I have struggled so much with my mental health. While I did eventually turn to school as a distraction, there were many times when I was doing so bad that I completely neglected my schoolwork. There were times when I couldn't bear to leave the house so I would make a concoction of applesauce and oatmeal and vegetables and put it in my toilet to make my mom think I had thrown up because that was the only way she'd let me stay home from school. I know what it is like to hurt. Because I know what it is like to hurt, I practice kindness in every aspect of my life. I do not know what others are struggling with, and I do not want to exacerbate it. During my senior year, my English teacher and I tried to start a mental wellness club but it was unfortunately rejected by administration. I want to give love back to the world in a way that I wasn't shown. Everyone deserves to be okay.

Throughout my life, I have always wondered what true success is. In my 18 years on this earth, I have concluded that success is subjective. What I define as success may be something totally different to someone else. After years of trying to figure out what I want to do with my life and what will make me feel successful, I have decided that I want to be content. To be content is what I strive for. As someone who has struggled heavily with mental health since I was very younger, what matters to me most is that I like my life, I am kind to others and myself, I am able to support myself, and that my life is full of love. I do not have to have an extravagant life or be insanely wealthy to enjoy being alive. In May of 2022, nearing the end of my junior year in high school, I attempted to take my own life. There were a multitude of causes behind this attempt of mine, but all of these things just bled into one main reason: I was miserable with my life. I was hospitalized for almost a week. During those days, I came upon a few major realizations: 1. I could not change the things that were out of my control, I just needed to learn to accept them. 2. I cannot undo what others have done to me, regardless of how much I suffered. I simply must learn to go on living. 3. I am so loved and I do have so many wonderful people and things in my life. Being able to notice these things was a huge success of mine. These realizations changed my perspective on my life immensely. To me, success is something that is continuous throughout one's life and simultaneously an end goal. Ongoing success in my life looks like being a better version of myself each day: making better choices than yesterday, choosing kindness and patience even when I do not feel that they are "deserved," taking care of myself, dedicating time and effort to my education, career, and goals, and doing things that my future self will appreciate. End goal success in my life will be the day that I can say, "I am happy with this life." Everyone's goals look different, and what is terribly important to one person may not matter at all to another. To find true success, one must look inward and decide what is important in their life, what makes them feel good, and why. Everyday, it is so important to do things that help your future self and life, and ultimately make you a better person.

I am someone that worries a lot. Ever since I was young, my mind was filled with constant worry. I worried about everything you could possibly imagine. A very strong worry that I still have today is finances. I vividly remember what brought this about: I was seven, sitting in the back in my carseat. My parents, both in the front, were having a screaming match. They argued a lot around me, so this was nothing new. This time, however, they were arguing about how my mom had gone and gambled away all of our money and now we couldn't afford to keep our car or our house. I remember my body filling with anxiety in that moment. My head flooded with questions. Where would we live? How would I get to school? Would I have to walk? If I walked, what if someone kidnapped me? Do we have enough money left to get food? Will we starve? Will they sell me for food? I pondered so many scenarios and possibilities that it gave me a headache. Why was I worrying about so much at seven? I always wished they had kept their issues private and left me out of it. Ever since that moment, I have harbored an immense worry about finances, and I was always so envious of those who were wealthy and well off and didn't have to worry about these kinds of things. I try to spend the least money I can and put back as much possible. I don't know when an emergency will happen. When I got into high school, I decided I was not going to go to college. I did not want to take out any sort of loan ever for anything in my life. I could barely fathom it. My parents had been paying off their student loans since I was born, and they still owed so much. It seemed never-ending to me. During my senior year in high school, it was required that we take a financial literacy class. I was very excited and thankful for this. My parents, as is evident, were not very financially literate and made poor decisions when it came to money and expenses. In that class, I learned so much helpful information and advice. During one class, my teacher said something that changed my outlook completely: "It's okay to take out loans. This is not a bad thing. Nearly everyone has to take a loan at least once in their life, unless they are crazy rich." My whole life, I thought taking out loans was just this evil thing that doomed you to debt for the remainder of your life. I didn't realize it was so common. Ideally, no one would have to take out a loan in their whole life, but that is not realistic in our world. With those two sentences, my teacher eased a fear that had been ongoing within me for years. I am forever thankful for that.

In May of 2022, I tried to kill myself. I took an excessive amount of my mom’s medication, hoping that I would have a seizure in my sleep and die. I have dealt with suicidal thoughts and tendencies since I was seven years old. When I was three years old, I began to be sexually abused by my older sister. This lasted until I was 5. When I was 7, I was molested by a teenager at my church. When I was 15, I was raped by a boy I was in a relationship with. My whole life has been a cycle of having my body used for the pleasure of others, and having my autonomy stripped of me. The first suicidal thought I remember having happened when I was in the second grade. I failed a math test. I came home and filled the bathtub with water. I tried to drown myself, but I couldn’t hold my head in the water long enough. I decided on tying a plastic bag over my head, hoping I would suffocate. Right before I thought I might pass out, I removed the bag from my head. Only recently did I realize this was very abnormal behavior for such a small child. When I was 11, I began cutting myself. I did not know why my heart hurt so much everyday and why I felt such an intense amount of emotional pain. I needed something to relieve myself of this, and I had found it in self harm. For so long, I have struggled with very severe depression. So much of my life has been spent wanting to not be alive. I didn’t believe the amount of distress I was in was humanly possible. For so many years, every waking moment was so miserable for me. In April of 2022, I started Prozac. My parents were always anti-medication and did not really believe in mental illness at all. They just thought I wasn’t praying enough. They thought I had insufficient faith in God. Finally, they realized how miserable I was. There was barely any skin on my body that wasn’t covered in deep red cuts. While I had dealt with suicidal thoughts and tendencies for so much of my life, I carefully planned out any attempt of suicide. Being on Prozac was my savior, until it wasn’t. Along with my depression, I experienced very intense ups and downs. The moments not spent wanting to die were filled with ecstasy and euphoria. Prozac neutralized my mood and also made me very impulsive. One night, I had gotten in a very bad argument with my parents. In my head, it was the end of the world. To me, any negative interaction or happening was the end of the world to me. When I went to walk back to my room, I went to my mom’s bathroom instead. I collected any pill bottles I saw. I took them all to my room and Googled the side effects for all of them. I chose to take the one that had the most lethal ones. I do not remember how many pills I took, but it was nearly the whole bottle. I went to sleep that night so happy. I was excited. I hoped I would seize in my sleep and not wake up. I wasn’t scared like the times before. I welcomed it. I welcomed anything that would bring my any sense of peace, any distraction from this constant pain. Evidently, that attempt did not work, as I am here writing this essay. I was hospitalized when I woke up the next morning. My parents came into my room to wake me up for school and realized what I had done. In the aftermath of my attempt, I discovered so much about myself and the world around me. In the hospital, I made very good friends. I ate well. I read so much, one of my favorite activities. I met so many people. We danced and sang. I wrote poetry. I did so many of the things I loved. I did so many things that made life hurt so much less. Also, in the hospital, I was free of any of my responsibilities. I did not have school to go to. I did not have work to attend. I did not have chores to do at home. These things all overwhelmed me immensely. After I left the hospital, my life just sort of started looking up. I was noticing the beauty in life more and more everyday. I made a list of the things that made me happy and the things that made me unhappy. I tried to replace the bad things in my daily life with the good things. I don’t really know what switched inside me, in my brain, after that stay in the hospital, but I am so grateful for whatever it was. I did not know that I would make it to 18. I barely thought I’d make it past 10 when I was younger. All of it is so difficult to put into words. All of the pain, because I don’t know that there are words for it. But I am better and I am here. I am in college. I did not know that I would ever see college. I am working a job that I love. I have a better relationship with my parents and I have such wonderful close friends and the sweetest boyfriend. My depression is not totally gone, not even close. I have very harmful thoughts still and I struggle everyday. But I am better and I am doing getting better everyday. I am putting the work in. It took the lowest point in my life for me to be able to look up.