But Why?
“People aren't aware of how the smallest things can affect a person's head in the biggest way.”
Am I the only one that has loud thoughts and doesn't know how to calm them down or shut them out? Mental health is more important than people may think it is.
Why is it only a serious topic for Mental Health Awareness Month? Why is it that nobody checks on students, mainly high school students' mental state, asking them how they are mentally? Where are the safe spaces? Where is the person someone is comfortable talking to about things they are going through?
People have to realize that 90% of the time the ones that seem okay 24/7 — all smiles, laughter, and energy — are the ones that are going through the most mental pain. They use all that energy as a distraction because their thoughts are loud and overpowering everything else.
People aren't aware of how the smallest things can affect a person's head in the biggest way.
I’m one of those people. In school you may see Ana as funny, energetic, all smiles and laughter, someone who can’t stand still. Once I leave that building and I'm actually alone at home, I'm the complete opposite. I’m quiet, in my own world, and don't leave my room. Just thinking or writing. It’s like I don't exist because around people nobody can tell I'm in a bad mood or having the worst day of my life or just want to cry because I hate to bring people’s energy down. I hate when people feel sorry for me. If you know me you will know I apologize for everything even when I'm not in the wrong or didn’t do anything . I hate being on bad terms with people.
I act that way in school because I love making people laugh and having good energy and I would hate to be the reason their energy is down. I love being alone but hate feeling alone. Once I feel alone, my mind is on 100,000. I overthink and I tend to make up scenarios and believe them. Which is why I started to have more self care days and taking care of myself. Doing that helped me start to realize I’m not the only person that goes through these things but I will be the one to speak.
It took me a while to realize that I wasn’t okay mentally. Every little thing would bother me, I would take the smallest thing and drag it on and make it so much worse than what it really is and fuck up my own head. I started writing more because I hate talking about my feelings with people, and don't even talk to my family about it. There was one incident where I was sitting on my bed with my mind on 1,000.
I didn’t know what to do, who to talk to, or where to go. I just cried and cried and cried to the point where my face started to hurt. The only thing that was running through my mind was to leave this house, just leave and get away from everyone. Writing really really helped the most especially since I don’t like expressing myself to others.
In order to get a better understanding of the role mental health plays in the lives of teenagers, I reached out to peers to ask if they would share their own stories. Their responses will stay anonymous. Here’s one of them:
“In middle school, I would get picked on because of my size, I was bigger than the other students in my classes so they would say little things here and there about the way I look and it would stick with me and mess up my mood because sometimes it would be my so-called “friends” that would male small comments or they would hear people say things and instead of standing up for me , they would laugh along with them not thinking about my feeling or how it makes me feel. They didn’t realize that those “jokes” would make me actually believe everything they say. At times it didn’t feel like they were joking . There was one day they were making jokes and one of the “jokes” really bothered me and i said something about it because i was mad and everyone was taking me as a joke to the point where my anger issues started to get worse and i started yelling at them and throwing things and it got bad to where i started chasing them with scissors. Cops were called and I was scared because I'm only 13. I didn't know what they were capable of doing to me. They put me in a white room with just a chair, nothing else, not even a window, asking me questions and I was told “ the voices in my head were telling me to do it, to just kill him. I had no control of myself. I was scared I just wanna die, nobody cares about me , they just make fun of me because I'm bigger than others”. it’s scary because I never knew how bad words can affect me and I didn't know it could get to this point.”
Later, I asked some of my peers to share a time they were at their lowest and they felt unheard.
One student shared the following:
“My senior year of high school I began the school year with low self-esteem and self confidence and I didn’t love myself to the point where I thought of committing suicide. Due to just the past years of never fitting in and always being ridiculed for being myself. To the point where I got too much to handle and one day I sat in my room on a Saturday night, and I was at my breaking point where I was sitting in my room crying to the point where my face was just so unrecognizable with the amount of emotions I was showing on it. My father walked into the room and he saw me crying. He felt so hurt that his little girl was so broken and torn that he sat with me for about a good hour and asked me a bunch of questions on how I was feeling and he gave me some good advice that I could use in the future.Till that day, I’ve never forgotten how much he showed that he cared about me because if it wasn’t for him I probably wouldn’t be here.”
Another student shared:
“When I used to fight like a lot more I said that because of course, I always like fighting, but it got way more intense in high school because I was really stressed with a lot of stuff like school, my personal life and everything. Of course I had friends but I just didn’t feel comfortable talking to them about every aspect of my life that stressed me out. When I'm overwhelmed sometimes, I just want some alone time but I feel like I took too much alone time and built in a lot of anger. The way I coped with that was by just fighting. I just didn’t feel comfortable talking to anybody , I just fought and fought, I used fighting as a way to escape. I even smoked a bit, which was the worst mistake of my life.”
And, finally, one more student shared:
“I remember being in 4th or 5th grade, it was an all spanish school. I didn’t know Spanish a lot at the time, all the teachers knew Spanish so I was in an English class where it was basically a speech class for people that couldn’t speak spanish. I was also living with my aunt’s and 7 cousins and we all stayed in these 2 apartments in the same building. I was always moving back and forth from apartment to apartment, it wasn’t the worst but I didn't realize how bad it was until I actually noticed when I grew up and saw people doing better than me. Like damn he got better jordans and clothes than me and i was wearing regular black shoes. Of course there’s always good times, not only bad but I just felt in school everyone was better or I was just left out because everyone knew Spanish and I didn't know as much as everyone else.”
I just want to thank the people that shared a story because this is not okay. As friends, it should be fair that others aren’t comfortable with you to be able to talk to you about these things. As friends, we should be there for one another and make sure we know that we have each other. We should feel safe and comfortable with one another.