I lost a sister and battled depression in elementary school. This impacted my health, choices, and actions. If you’re in your deepest part of depression during your youth and want to start your journey to brighter days, it will take time and require your actions, choices, reflections, and self-care before your scars will start to heal. Growing up I didn’t have the most stereotypical childhood. While I did have some aspects of it; such as going to school like a normal kid. We had family traditions, a nice home, neighborhood friends, but I still had my issues that overlapped creating my journey.
My journey started in elementary. I was determined to have friends and to fit in. I wasn’t really the social type or had a gift in doing so. Not accomplishing anything, I started to reflect that onto my self-image and thought to myself that I was just a weird kid, concluding that nobody wanted to be friends with me.
Having no friends, I struggled to find a distraction from being lonely. Because of this. I would use schoolwork to escape my head and loneliness. While I had no gift in making friends, I had a gift of being smart and educating myself and found it comforting. My family really loved what I was doing, and because of that I started to develop a fear of letting them down. I would say things that just blurted out from my mouth such as I was going to be president or how I’ll start my own business things I thought would make me sound smart and I wanted to dedicate my whole life to those things. I would have anxiety attacks if I didn’t understand something that was slightly confusing to me and doubt myself that I was a complete failure and I was going to let so many people down.
To add more on my back is that I started to develop body dysmorphia during. Being underweight, and skinny, giving me a feminine appearance something I’ve been struggling with my whole life. I would look at my facial features and guilt trip myself. I was a Black child in a mostly white populated school and that increased my dysmorphia because I was seeing myself much more differently.

The day my depression kicked in really hard was, specifically on Aug. 3, 2020. My older sister Mia passed away. I was 10 years old. I really started to change so much. I wasn’t eating correctly, I developed insomnia, I was covering every inch of my skin, I stopped doing things I was interested in, and I was just sitting in my bed most of the time at home rotting waiting for someone to come and help me and if I wasn’t thinking that, I would be just accepting the fact that this was my life and nothing would change. At that point I had no friends, many insecurities, my mind was full of fog, I couldn’t sleep for hours, and I started to develop suicidal thoughts and on top of that I was going through the start of puberty. I lost my passion in learning, lost my interest, and hobbies. I was damaging my own head. I didn’t feel like the same person and just a complete hot mess. Sixth grade year I never showed up for school and ended the year with all Fs. I didn’t care about friends, learning, or other harmful or non-harmful, I wasn’t religious, I wasn’t addicted to anything, I just didn’t care or other ways people coped with their depression, I just didn’t care about anything. In seventh grade I was finally forced to start going to school with the exact same mindset.
The first signs of when things started to change was in middle school. I finally was able to connect with friends and other people around me, I started to find therapeutic ways to help with my anxiety, and importantly I dove into music and writing. In music analyzing it influenced me so much and seeing how other people overcame small and big things in their storytelling that happened in their own lives to the point I became observant of everything and even improved my writing skills inspired by other people’s writing. From there I was able to start growing again and kept myself at a pace. By the time in eighth grade, I started to have straight A’s again, had great friends I kept myself away from that kept me down, I started to wear and do what made me comfortable, turned away things that would not help me at my point, and constantly progressed and learned lessons that kept being thrown at me.

Early advice I’d give specially for those who are grieving at a young age. It’s ok to cry and feel hurt when you lose someone special. Holding back your tears will hurt you just as much. If you lose someone it’s ok to talk about it with other people who can help you get through it. It’s also ok to spend hours crying and processing the situation, and to take a break from everything that has happened away from social media or even stepping outside your house. Trying to hold back grief will cause too much stress on yourself. According to mayoclinic.org holding stress or having elevated stress puts you at a higher risk of anxiety, heart disease, sleeping problems, depression, and much more. It’s best for you to grieve and let out your emotion. More advice for people is to do your best to pay attention in school. To make it some of the best years of your life it’s best to pay attention to everything. I do skip class a lot and I wouldn’t recommend it. You can miss important work for some of your classes and fall behind. Your grades are an important part to make sure you do your best and enjoy your classes. Grades can also be stressful and hard to fix when a class isn’t your specialty but it’s perfectly fine to stress and ask for help when you need it to help improve yourself to get into classes you love and into your dream career.

Stay away from things that will harm you. A big example of something to stay away is smoking and vaping. I personally never have done it, but I have seen results of addiction of what it has done to people. It can cause lung damage, stress increase, heart issues, or even popcorn lung. Smoking and vaping do not help decrease stress it increases it according to truthinitiative.org and causes addiction. People may try to pressure you, or you may seem like you want to be cool and try it but it’s better for your mental and psychical health to not do so. Stay out of unnecessary drama. Drama can cause conflict between you and many other students who can get angry to the point of physical harm to one another. Its also best if someone is doing something to you to get help instead of harming another student. Find a friend group who won’t get you into trouble so you can have a healthy friendship and a long one.

For those who want to fall in love at a young age is to know who you want and know your own worth for it. I never have experienced nor really want or have a reason to. But I observe peoples’ relationships. Falling in love may be difficult but shouldn’t be a priority when you need to know how to love yourself first before anybody. Wanting to be in a relationship with anybody can lead to something unexpected either working out or not. Get to know them. Don’t just past every stage there could be before you make a final leap into a relationship. Know they will be good for you, treat you well, and want to be serious. See them from a point of view they will also see yourself in. If things do turn out to be for the unexpected its ok to back away from it. Sometimes you got to trust your lonely and realize when your self-worth is something only you can please. Don’t try to stay in something that isn’t going to work out even if you’re going to miss, hate, or continuing love them. Save most of your love for someone who will stay there when you’re older and most importantly for yourself.

Be yourself. Many kids my age try to fit in by trying to act like other people. Its really okay to be yourself even if other people find it weird or awesome, fit into your own taste. You are your own unique you and trying to be someone else takes away from that. I had really struggled with this and wish I really didn’t. I wanted to be like other people and discouraged myself for it, but when I found myself, I loved being different from other people. Do stuff that might be quirky to other people because it might be cool to someone. Be a wild thing and outreach your boundaries being weird because that’s cooler to not care what other people think of you as a person than trying to fit in and be cool.

Fear is a normal thing. I also have had challenges trying to overcome mine such as loud noises, dogs, heights, flying, vomiting, and death. Which some I’ve had to accept and some I’m still learning or faced my fear. Don’t try to look at it as if it’s you being a scared or weak but as you’re not used to something yet and you’re not understanding or learning it yet. And some fears are completely natural and ok to be scared of because you may not like it or you just don’t have enough courage built up to overcome them. Try challenging yourself to beat whatever your scared of or take your time.

Finally, it’s best to stand your middle ground as a person. You are going be and feel a mix of emotions and be anything to someone in their story good or bad, but you will be important in someone else’s story and your own. Don’t try to keep your reputation as one thing. You’re going to constantly learn, change, and accept things every day and it’s best to find peace in that. For when something does happen anything is valid for how it goes because you’re going to learn from it. You’re alive for a reason and there are people who care about you even if it takes time to accept that. If you need someone to help you with it take these words of advice and try it.