Imagine a dark, uninhabited room with Vantablack walls and a minuscule hole of light peeking through in the corner of the polluted tile floor. Trapped inside, yearning to escape through the button-sized hole in the corner. Every day spent in that room makes a person go deeper and farther into insanity and it makes a person hate being alive. When in the room a person will feel like they are worthless, invisible, and meaningless. Well, imagine that room, but I’m captured inside. I was the person trapped inside of the room, scared to be myself and just accept who I was. That room held me hostage for months, trapped in its horrid dark walls with no intention of letting me out. These feeling overcame me back in June 2017.

I had loved everything, my friends, family and my school. I had never had a major problem occur to me. Well, at least not until the end of the school year. I started to plunge into a state of mind that I wasn’t good enough or pretty enough for my friends. It was a gradual process that had started in May and progressed as far as I would let it and I let it go as far as it wished. Near the end of June, I lost my two best friends over something as silly as a misunderstanding. After the misunderstanding, I felt as though I didn’t need them and I had been so confident in myself and what decisions I had made. I thought it would all blow over, but it didn’t and it didn’t hit me that this was the end of an 8-year friendship until July.

July was a catastrophe. The transition from my June mindset to my July mindset is barely visible. Everything about me changed so quickly and nothing was able to stop it. I tried to grasp onto the one part of my previous self, but it just slithered through my young hands. I had gotten myself into eating disorders, mental illnesses, and toxic friendships. My new “best friend” had made me the most atrocious person ever. This new group of friends encouraged bad behaviors, such as drinking and partying with people I didn’t know or trust. The people I started to hang around made me think so down on myself. My body fed off of their love and acceptance and it craved for someone to care for me. When I wasn’t with them I didn’t know what to do with myself. I had the lowest self-esteem, the lowest thought of worth in myself, and I had just felt useless to everyone. I thought this was just a one summer thing until it continued into the new school year and wrecked my image even more.
In August I made some of the crummiest decisions. I would start to hurt myself physically because I just wanted to feel something other than loneliness and numbness. I started to abandon my other “safe” friends and gained trust issues. I could tell my friends noticed me falling off of a cliff because they asked me multiple times if I was okay. I nodded every time, scared to let them know I felt like I was being isolated and dying on the inside. My real self-was trapped behind bars in my head and the demons refused to let her go. I doubted every decision I made from that day on and I wished for reassurance. Although, reassurance from the wrong people didn’t help me. I started to get used to the feeling of emptiness and this carried out through October.

In October I was so desperate for friends that I switched friends groups faster than a girl can text “hey” to her friend. It was just me and my thoughts and I didn’t know what to do other than hate myself. October was the first time I ever wore my hair natural and the comments I got were not pleasant to hear. These abusive comments brought me down deeper and deeper into my misery. I had to start attending a weekly meeting with the social worker because I had lost myself mentally. I longed for the connection and friendship I had with my previous friends. I felt like I had drifted so far away from my true friends that I was scared to even start a conversation with them. I proceeded to try to impress everyone with extra makeup and well thought out outfits, but they never made me feel better. I just wanted to be part of the “popular” group so severely, that my previous self-had vanished. The over the top makeup and outfits made me feel even worse about the way I thought about myself. Groups of many people tried to save me from this and slowly they helped me dig myself out of my rut in the dark ground.

In December, I realized that I wasn’t as worthless as some people said and I tried so hard to be happier. I tuned out negative thoughts for most of the part. I also realized that Brianna was someone I could trust at heart. She would never try to hurt me or make a decision she knows could possibly hurt me. As I started to hang around a new crowd, pieces of my confidence came back.

January is the beginning of a new year and I hear a lot of people say, “New year, new me” but they never follow through. My goal wasn’t to workout every day or eat healthier, mine was to be a happier person. This goal wasn’t something I wanted to only be for the year but I wanted this to be a lifetime goal. I wanted a fresh start, away from all my past mistakes and that’s what I did. I started to accept my natural hair and face. I wore makeup, but for myself and not for anyone else. It dawned on me that my beauty could not be defined by one person's view of myself. These months leading to now were months I was more jubilant than ever.

In May, I am the most content I could be with myself. I regret some of the decisions I have made but I learned from them and I grew. I now have some of the most amazing people I could call my friends. Haley and Brianna have been my number one supporters and they wish the best for me and I wish the best for them. I now have goals for my future such as my career path. There are still people who try to bring me down. For example I have had teachers and “friends” tell me I could never be a medical professional. These words of discouragement just make my willpower grow stronger. I have never felt like I could be worth something and this year has made me realize that through pain comes a reward. I learned that self-love and acceptance is the grand prize in life. Over the last year, I have been through a lot that has led me on a journey to self-love and I am grateful I have reached it. I still get texts from this toxic person saying, “hey, we should hang out again sometime… I miss having you as a best friend…I miss you... I love you.” I don’t want to have her as a best friend anymore. If she actually loved me she would not have gotten me to the place I was back in the summer and fall. I need to reply back, “I don’t miss you.” I have learned so much through my pain. I did it by myself, I had to decide to dig me out, I had to decide it was time to change. Other people need to realize that nobody but themselves is going to be able to help them out of the darkness. I don’t miss my old self or anything about my past life. I escaped through that Vantablack room with supposedly no way out. I smashed through the wall to reach my peace and happiness. Kick down that wall, escape from the pain and suffering. Don’t let walls and barriers get in the way of true self-love.