I sat there staring out at the thin line of trees between my car and the CalSag. I watched the cars pass in front of me, trying to prepare to face the day ahead. When the clock struck 8 AM, I dragged myself up the steps of my high school. I hated who I was and had so much anger and pain, but I held it all in. I faked smiles and kept my grades up so as not to raise any suspicion. As the youngest kid, I had to be okay. I had to do my homework and have friends. I had to be the best athlete like my brothers before me. My head was screaming, but I did it. When it came time to pick a college, I waited as long as I possibly could without it being suspicious. I didn't want to pick because I didn't think I would be alive long enough to get there. But I did. I finally sought help in my second semester after barely making it through the first semester. I put in the work. My mental health journey has been hard, and some days it feels like I've been swimming backward underwater. As I learn to cope with and battle my depression and suicidal ideations, I lean on my friends, who are more family than friends, and depend on my Lord to guide me through the deep waters. Like every other kid, I wanted to be a teacher, a doctor, or a vet. As I grew up, I lost any idea of a future. I had no idea who I was or what I wanted. Playing soccer and running were the two things that I knew brought me a little joy, and I had always been fascinated by medicine. For good or for bad, I tend to put my own issues aside and lean into helping those around me. I found the perfect career, athletic training. I spent my fair share of time in my high school's athletic training office with my own injuries, and I saw how much of an impact a good athletic trainer makes for a team or for an athlete. I want to work with high schoolers who are in a pivotal time of their lives. So many high schoolers are like me. They are hiding who they are and how they are feeling. They feel like their whole worth is what they can do, the grades they get, or the points they score in a game. I want to be there to tell them that that little voice in their head is wrong. Mental health and suicide have for so long been stigmatized as not real or something to just suck it up and move on from. Suicide is seen as weak and a cop out for going through a hard time. But the truth is that suicide is the result of an internal war. Suicide occurs when the voices in your head become louder than the voices of everyone and everything around. My generation has started to break the stigmas. We have started to shout over the voices that tell us that we are making things up. If we started to care for our mental health the way we care for our physical health, the world would become a better place. We would find be more understanding and compassionate to each other. We would find joy in the mundane. Suicide can be prevented, but we have to take notice. My mental health is important. My mental health deserves to be cared for.

As a collegiate student-athlete, my time is constantly filled with homework’s, practice, recovery, and fueling. It’s hard to make time for the simple joys of life. I am a student in the John Wesley Honors College, and I work 2 campus jobs. My days are filled with stress and a constant pressure to perform. I am blessed to go to a Christian school and have amazing friends, teammates, and coaches to lean on, but despite all these people, I often find myself in the depths of a mental health episode. I have lived with anxiety and depression since middle school and I didn’t seek help until college. I leaned on my sports to get me through the week and learned how to do school just the right way to get the grades I needed. I suffered in silence pushing myself to my breaking point. My senior year of high school I started having suicidal idealizations. I wanted nothing more than for all the pain and mental suffering to go away, but somewhere God was telling me not to do it. It took me a long time to pick a college and choose a career path. Eventually, I chose to pursue athletic training through Indiana Wesleyan University. As an athlete, I spent a lot of time in the athletic trainers office and fell in love with medicine. I saw athletes come in physically and mentally defeated and I wanted to help. I threw myself at my studies, trying to give myself a better reason to live. I loved the sports I played and wanted to be able to thrive. I run cross country and track for IWU and I absolutely love the team. However running has become quite a difficult challenge both physically and mentally. Since my first cross country season, I began dealing with on and off injuries landing me more and more time in the athletic training clinic. I struggled to get back to running and in the fall of this past school year, had knee surgery. I’ve been recovering ever since and have really struggled mentally with not being able to perform in a way that I know I am capable of. However the injury lead me to grow close to my athletic training staff and allowed me to focus on school. I learned so much about the inner workings of the career and it made me want to pursue it more. I still struggle with mental health, but I know that these people will be there to care for and support me. I want to be that person in an athlete’s life.