How My 9th Grade Changed My Life

In 2014 while coming to this school I wasn’t in a good place mentally. I had been struggling with depressive tendencies for a number years prior to my freshman year. However, 9th grade was essentially my breaking point. Overall, the year isn’t something I’m proud of but it has and will continue to influence who I am today. My best friend at the time wasn’t a good person either but for different reasons. She did everything in her power to bring me down in order to feel better about herself and I allowed her to because, in a way, I thought it was what I deserved. I was an extreme introvert who panicked and cried anytime I had to speak in front of others. I remember the first time I had to actually present in front the class. It was during Mr.
Peeler’s seminar and we had to make a powerpoint about who we were and what kind of things we liked. I remember being petrified that everyone would laugh at me so I spent hours trying to make it look cool in order to impress everyone. Finish dis l8r
It was also the year I reached the lowest point in my life. It’s certainly not my proudest moment, let alone something I talk about often but it has affected my life drastically in a way I will never be able to forget. I had thought so lowly of myself in freshman year that I ended up attempting suicide on multiple occasions. Because of my decision to take my own life, I saw the world in a different light.

At the beginning sophomore year I was still the same person with the same mindset as the previous year.
The only difference was that I had become friends with someone that genuinely care about me and vise versa. I began to see the world in a different light and I wanted to change who I was in order to become someone worthy of living. While nothing much happened academically, personally I experienced a lot of new things. It was the year Haley and I became close and I realized how important she was and is to me. One of my happiest moment took place while on a beach trip with her and her family. We had just gotten back from a candy shop and everyone was super tired and in a bad mood except for us two. We had bought these sour cream and onion flavored grasshoppers and we were almost vibrating with excitement about trying them. They ended up tasting awful much like you’d expect but the whole experience, despite being ridiculously simple and seemingly insignificant. It made me realize how much Haley has helped me grow as a person and that I would like to be friends with her for as long as I possibly
could.

The start the of junior year was, more or less, like a reality check for myself.
I realized that this year would be held over my head by the time college rolled around. It was the year colleges focused on and I knew I had to change who I was in order to become someone worthy of graduating high school and doing something meaningful with my life. Up until that point, I had heard all of these horror stories of how intense junior year would be. I remember being so nervous the first day in Mr. Love’s class that I refused to make eye contact with him well into the school year. I had thought that year was going to be absolute torture because Mr. Love going to be this strict and generally terrifying teacher. However, I quickly realized he was the exact opposite. It was during his class that I realized what I wanted to do for the rest of life, whether it be a hobby or an actually
job. I had always sort of drawn things I liked but I never took it seriously, let alone believed I was good at it. In spite of that, during the first semester we were given a project where we had to create a mural that summarized moving west during the late 1800’s. Upon creating this mural I got to experience creating something meaningful that conveyed emotions outside of my own. It was a surreal experience because it was the first real time other people genuinely appreciated something I made. It was in that moment I knew I wanted to create art and make it a part of my life in a way nothing had ever done before. The process of creating art was something I finally took seriously. I began to draw and paint on anything I could get my hands on. I would stay up all night studying the way human anatomy worked and how I could translate that onto paper.

So far senior year has been nothing short of stressful. It like a quiet reminder that I’m going to be graduating soon and everything I’m content with is going to be ripped from me.