I have had anxiety for as long as I can remember. The earliest moment that I can recall is when I was in second grade. I was in the student council and we had to present a bullying prevention scenario in front of an entire auditorium filled with all grades. Although I only had one line, I remembered having a tense feeling in my chest and felt tears forming in my eyes. Another moment I remember is when I was in choir in fourth grade and I volunteered to dance around with a nutcracker during the performance of "The Nutcracker" at my school. There were two other people holding nutcrackers with me, but I was assigned to hold a gold colored one as opposed to a bland, normal colored one. After finding out that I had the only gold one, once again I had the same physical symptoms and frantically kept asking one of the other people to switch with me because I feared standing out. All of my anxiety experiences have resulted in my performing poorly or getting criticized for being the way I am. I am not exactly sure of WHY or HOW my anxiety started. I truly do not know the direct cause of it. All I remember is experiencing it for the majority of my life. To this day, I still do have anxiety at just about the same severity as I did in second grade. At 19 years old, I am constantly criticized for cancelling plans last minute, but in reality no one knows what goes on in my mind. When I agree to the plans I may seem fine to go, but as the moment nears closer, I start to panic at the thought of it. When I worked as a cashier I had to take small breaks every hour to cry in the bathroom because I was so stressed out from the business and was riddled with anxiety. After that, every single time before my shift at work I used to get anxiety just from thinking about how busy it may be that day since I worked at a large retailer. This prevented me from working for months since I was too scared to go in because I always expected the worst even before I had to leave the house to go there. This resulted in the loss of months worth of money. I have missed out on so many great opportunities because of my anxiety. From losing friendships, to even losing the respect of family members. No one wants to make plans with me because they fear that I will cancel on them last minute because of everything going on in my brain. College was never an option in my mind until last November. Since my parents never had been to college, the concept of going to college scared me. My mom couldn't reassure me that it wasn't bad since she had never been. If she couldn't reassure me, then who could? How was I supposed to find my way to classes? How would I get along with my random roommate? Eventually she pushed me to do what she never did and convinced me to go even if I didn't know what I wanted to do yet. Today I am a freshmen in college without a major but I have managed to navigate my way despite not having any guide.

One of my main struggles in my life has been my mental health. From the age of 8 I knew something was different with me. At that point, I had lost my father about 5 years prior to substance abuse. I don't remember him since I was only 3 years old, but his death has had lasting impacts on me for years. As of 5 days ago, it has been 16 years since I lost him. I presume that my mental health struggle started from that loss. I never thought that losing him would be considered trauma and I felt like my grief was not valid because I never knew him. However, looking into it I realized that trauma does not always have to be something like abuse, it can be various things including the loss of a loved one. Growing up in a low-income family with a single mother was hard, and living without a father was even harder. Feeling like you were constantly missing something in your family was difficult. All my friends had stable families with lots of siblings and parents who were very much alive and still together. I constantly felt out of place. Whenever I went over their house, I became envious of their relationships with their fathers. During the COVID-19 pandemic is when I started to notice my struggle with mental health getting worse. I started to resent my father for leaving me and getting a mix of emotions. I was sad that I did not have a father figure, but also mad because I thought that he did it to himself. Technically that statement is true, but genetics played a big role in it as well. My father was a very heavy drinker which was even stronger with the addiction gene. Eventually his fate was sealed when he got cirrhosis of the liver from his addiction to alcohol. All of his siblings and family members had also passed away from the exact same thing, but he was the last one to do so. As I got older, I made it my goal in life to break the chain of alcoholism. I vowed to never touch drugs or alcohol in order to prevent the cycle from continuing. So far, I have stayed true to that goal and will continue to follow it. I do not want any of my family members to experience another loss. If I have children I especially would not want them to lose their mother in the same way that I had lost my own father since it has had long lasting effects even 16 years later.

One of my main struggles in my life has been my mental health. From the age of 8 I knew something was different with me. At that point, I had lost my father about 5 years prior. I presume that my mental health struggle started from that. Growing up in a low-income family with a single mother was hard, and living without a father was even harder. Feeling like you were constantly missing something in your family was difficult. All my friends had stable families with lots of siblings and parents who were very much alive and still together. I constantly felt out of place. During the COVID-19 pandemic is when I started to notice my struggle with mental health getting worse. With no other option but to ruminate in my own thoughts, they overtook me. When the feelings got unbearable, I decided to use my resources and find help all on my own. This was when I was admitted to a behavioral health center at 14 which was a critical part of my journey. Previously to being admitted, I thought behavioral health facilities wouldn't be able to help me. Little did I know, it was the gateway to my willingness to seek help for myself when needed. This stay at the hospital was a great experience for me, as I learned a lot of healthy coping skills that I could use in my daily life. And I did. Things were perfectly fine for a while, I was less stressed and utilizing my support systems and all of the skills I had learned in the hospital. However, recently I had recognized that my mental health was starting to decline. Previously I caught it very late, but this time around I took action beforehand. This led me to a partial hospitalization program which was an even greater success than my inpatient stay in 2023. This program lasted around 11 days as opposed to my 5 day stay the last time. I came out with a stack of papers compiled in a folder and this time I was even more determined to put the skills to use. As of now I am doing so much better, and advocate for mental health at any opportunity I can get. If you asked me in 2020 where I would be 5 years from now, I would have probably responded by saying "A high school graduate who lives at home and is working a full-time job and is mentally struggling still just as much as I am now." Seeing where I am now, past me would have never pictured the life I live now. I am doing much better mentally, I have a therapist, and I am taking all the right steps in continuing my mental health journey. I especially never pictured myself going to college since my mother never went so it was a new and scary experience that I did not want to face. But with the support of my family, I decided to take that leap. Currently I am a college freshman who is independent and thriving.