When I Realized I Needed Help

In light of an article I was working on with my school paper’s editorial board, along with it being the second-semester of senior year before decisions, I thought it’d be appropriate to talk about this topic:

Mental health.

And no, this is not my preachy, self-serving perspective, need for you to relax and calm down about decisions or whathaveyou. No, this is an acknowledgment, an acknowledgment of the very real fact that there are moments where you don’t know what’s next, what your future might be, how you’re going to get through something. That is the story I want to tell today.

During the start of middle school, I dealt with a lot of personal conflicts. I was one of the so-called introverted students who attempted many times and failed to understand many of my peers. I couldn’t have conversations about young teen things because I wasn’t interested in those things. I was fascinated with tech, with Apple, with history, with politics. And for that first year of middle school, I had no one to share my passions for.

Except for our IT specialist at our school.

For whatever reason, he connected with me, never hesitated to talk the latest tech with me, and perhaps most of all, never questioned why I wasn’t spending time directly with kids my age. He was the one who made me not completely despise coming to school every day. I’d be alone in the library, just on my computer, waiting for whenever he came back to his office, and I went directly to hang out with him.

Yet I still faced a lot of issues at home, at which points I felt as though I didn’t belong or have a place anywhere. And as an early age student, I went through every possible thing you could think of. I had testing done on me and went to a social interactions class where I was the only non-white kid amongst very privileged, spoiled kids who just made no effort to really connect deeper with the world around them. None of it helped.

At points, I didn’t know my place on this planet, I didn’t feel as though I deserved a place in the fortunate circumstances I was granted by virtue of being born.

But one day, our school counselor made a referral for me to see someone, to see a therapist.