It was July 7th, early in the morning when my mother was calling me from the bottom of the

steps. I wasn’t sure why she called me over, but she asked if I knew this kid in my school’s
marching band named Ben. I knew him for years. He was one of my closest friends when we
were in junior-high and a person everyone loved to be around. He lit up every room when he
walked in and was a friend to anyone and everyone. My mom then told me he had died. I now
understand that cliche where they ask if someone is sitting when giving out life changing news.
Greif that I have never felt before washed over me in an instant. It hit me so fast that I didn’t
even have a chance to sit down. I couldn’t believe he was gone, I wanted to believe it was just a
cruel joke, that nothing had really changed. All I could do was sit there. This was the first time in
my life I truly felt my heart break and I thought I was on my own.

My world stopped spinning for months and I couldn’t get it to start again no matter how hard I
tried. I wouldn’t sleep or eat as much as I should’ve and that took a toll on my mental health
and my ability to reason. I was the product of insanity and refused to admit it for a long time. At
one of my lowest points, I was only getting around two hours of sleep every night and I barely
could function on a level that was called on me by everything in my life. I still thought by being
this way things would start feeling better at some point. I was a living corpse that sat on auto
pilot watching everything slip away like it wasn’t really part of my life.

During the fall of 2019 I broke, my world came crumbling down. Nothing special happened that
day except for the fact that everything finally caught up to me and I couldn’t ignore it anymore.
I didn’t want to ask for help for a long time, but I realized it was too much for me to handle on
my own and finally started calling out for anyone to help me. Soon after that, I got a therapist
and with her help I started improving. I was no longer stuck in a cage that I had made for myself
in my own mind. It was like a massive weight got lifted off my chest, one piece at a time, until I
finally could breathe again.

It took me a long time to get better. On my path of healing, I realized I wanted to help those
around me to also get out of whatever bad place they were in. This led me to taking a pre-
nursing course in my school that introduced me to the medical field. Even though I found
nursing is not the best fit for me, I did learn that I really enjoyed helping others and wanted to
continue to do that through medicine. As I continue my education in college, I want to find my
place in the medical field and learn how to help others feel like they can breathe again.