When I walked into my first day of 5th grade, I had no idea what to expect. After being homeschooled from my 3rd-grade year to most of my 5th-grade year due to COVID-19, being around other people felt strange. I was nervous when I first started, but I soon warmed up and found a group of friends I enjoyed hanging out with. A lot of people remembered me from our elementary school years, and this helped me make friends. Middle school felt magical, and I felt confident, grown-up, and ready for the world’s challenges.

A year later, in 6th grade, my confidence levels changed, and I started negatively noticing my body quite a bit more. This eventually led to a lot of self-doubt and low self-esteem, and all of a sudden, I wasn’t confident anymore. I soon realized that I was comparing myself to almost everybody I came across. It didn’t help that kids were making racist comments and jokes about me, and it also didn’t help that instead of sticking up for myself, I laughed along and played everything off. Looking in the mirror without picking at my skin or pinpointing parts of my body that I didn’t like started to become extremely hard. I started to fall into unhealthy eating habits, and my mental health was deteriorating rapidly. I wasn’t just feeling self-conscious about my appearance, but I was also insecure about my personality and how people saw me. These recurring thoughts and challenges I faced during that year of my life started a cycle of depression I would struggle with for the next two years.

I hit rock bottom in 7th grade. My thoughts were extremely dark, and life was getting harder and harder every day for me. Waking up became the worst part of my day. I hated looking at myself, and I also hated who I was on the inside. My eating habits became even worse than before, and I started to deny my body food by skipping meals and saying I wasn’t hungry. Not only that, but I had a very toxic group of friends who, looking back on it, weren’t really friends at all. They would constantly bring me down, and they made fun of every little thing I did. School became hard, my grades dropped, and I was no longer known as the “smart kid.” Nothing I did felt good enough, and I felt as though my life was falling apart. My home life was at its worst as well, and I didn’t have a place or someone to talk to about my mental state. Living felt like a chore that I no longer wanted to do.

Life continued like this throughout my 7th grade year until one day when I broke down during school. My social studies teacher at the time truly cared about my well-being and decided to help me by talking to the school guidance counselor about me. When I got called into his office, things started to change. He talked me into telling my parents about how I was feeling, which eventually led to me getting into therapy. My therapist helped me realize that almost everything I was doing was unhealthy for my brain and body and that I needed to treat myself with care.

After opening up to the people around me about my mental state, I started to gain people I could genuinely trust. I believe it was them who saved my life. Now that I am in 8th grade, I am doing way better than I was before and on a path to recovery. Although I still struggle often, I now know that I have a group of people who love and support me and whom I can trust to help, and I also know how to take better care of myself and practice self-love.

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