We are so foolish with our youth. We introduce them to all of the hurt of the world at such a young age. We are the generation that has parents with the highest divorce rate. We are the generation that has record-high accounts of depression and deteriorating mental health and yet most of us have not even hit the age of 20. We have lived through school shootings and bomb threats. We have been so desensitized to death. But, our parents, our teachers, expect us to fall in love with euphoria, but we so foolishly fall in love with melancholy. First, you experience the honeymoon stage and progressively you just get so comfortable with melancholy that you can not seem to find a way to leave it. I think that it is not just me who has experienced this grim relationship. I can vouch that nearly everyone I know has had this experience and yet adults still fail to believe us. When I first moved to Georgia in the eighth grade, everyone was so new and I was so lost. I could always feel someone staring at me. Everyone was judging me. I had caught my first glimpse of melancholy on that first day of school. It began with snide remarks from my classmates that progressively got worse. I had to build a thick skin to stay afloat. For a while, it seemed as though he had disappeared for several months. Yet one day, as the eighth grade was nearing its end, melancholy walked back into class and caught my eye. It seemed as though it followed me everywhere. We began to spend 24/7 together and eventually melancholy became a part of me. When I was with my friends, he seemed to give me space but he would always come back. I fell so foolishly in love with melancholy. I became so comfortable with the bond I had created with sadness that I couldn’t let it go. It was my safety. I felt safe in melancholy. As high school progressed, melancholy became me. I do not know when it happened. Maybe it is because of the racism I faced when I was forced to carry cotton in my history class. Or maybe it was because I was always asked if I ate dogs. The simplest of insults about my anxiety-induced stutter pushed me closer and closer to melancholy. There was so much surrounding me all the time, whether it be physical or mental, I was completely engulfed in a neverending dark void overwhelmed with the world. However, one day I reconsidered my life. I simply took a break: a break from melancholy, a break from people, a break from the hectic world around me. I reflected upon my past and present. I think melancholy is a part of everyone’s lives. It is what you do with melancholy that matters. It is how we grow from our experiences that define who we are. Manipulating melancholy into euphoria takes time. However, I am slowly becoming infatuated with the warmth that comes with euphoria, ready to look at life through a new lens, celebrating the new possibilities of my life. As of 2022, I have been diagnosed with Bipolar disorder and recurrent depression. It is how one looks upon life that defines what happens to them.