Senior year of high school I was awarded Worcester County Superintendents Association Scholars Award.
That is a mouthful.
In order to be considered for this award, I had to be recognized as: in the top 5 percent of students based on a three-year cumulative average, in the top 5 percent of my graduating class, personally recommended by school administrators, and finally, selected by my school district’s superintendent.
It’s an honor to receive this award, but my greatest honor was not knowing I was in the running for it in the first place. I didn’t apply or even know the award existed until I was called into my principal’s office senior year and told I had won it along with one other student in my class.
To celebrate the prestige of the award, a luncheon was held at the College of the Holy Cross. I was joined by all of the other students across the state of Massachusetts who received the award, as well, along with the student in my class who’d won the award, my principal, and the superintendent of my school district.
I remember the luncheon being fancy. Everyone was in a suit and tie, dresses and heels. There was a moderator, a photographer, a caterer, and probably loads of people helping out behind the scene. We sat at circular tables with other students and administrators from across the state with napkins on our laps, two forks to the left of our plates, and rather ornate water glasses to our right.
I felt important, sophisticated, acknowledged… and completely out of place.
What no one would have ever suspected was how low I felt at that point in my life. How in the midst of being recognized as a top student in my school district, it was a struggle for me to even wake up, let alone walk across a stage, smile, and be proud of my accomplishments.
Senior year of high school was a time when everything I had never dealt with came to a head. I was rejected from my college dream school, and that rejection pulled the rug out from underneath me. All the shit I had ever swept under it was out in the open and infiltrating my lungs with more dust than my body knew what to do with.
I could count each one of my dust bunnies: my parent’s divorce, my failure as a student, the neglect of my mental health, the neglect of my physical health, my insanely high standards, the pressure to be perfect, etc. etc. etc.
With no rug to sweep all my problems under, I had to stare at them dead in the face, and that amount of dust brought me to my knees with no carpet to cushion the blow. Just my bare bones on the rocky cement floor.
For weeks, I was battling my inner demons in silence. I could barely eat. I couldn’t socialize. I didn’t recognize my own thoughts. It was a terrifying time, and for a while, not one soul knew I was hurting the worst I’d ever hurt in my life.
Until, I couldn’t keep it a secret anymore… and that’s when I hit the basement of rock bottom.
At that point, I was eating maybe one small collective meal a day. I had a suppressed appetite, and just the mere thought of food revolted me. I was having panic attacks every single night, and the only way I could get myself out of them was if I vomited. My body would be so worked up to the point where I would physically make myself sick, and only after being sick would my nervous system quite literally give up because it had no energy left. It was the utter definition of exhaustion.
I would fear the night time. 7 o’clock would roll around, and without fail, I would enter a state of fight or flight mode. Nights were the hardest for me mentally, and as soon as the sun started going down, I would start to panic.
I stopped communicating with my boyfriend. I contemplated not going to the very senior formal I had spent months and months planning alongside my student council. I opted out of any social activity my friends engaged in.
I was… incredibly unwell, if you haven’t pieced that together already.
One day, things were so unbearable for me that I went to the doctors and begged for medication. I showed up crying and never stopped until I was back in the car on my way home. While there, my doctor suggested I go to therapy and learn coping mechanisms to manage my anxiety, and I agreed to whatever would help in the long-run as long as she’d prescribe something in that very moment to help me immediately.
I was hanging on by a thread. To be honest, it was half a thread, and everyday I was losing more of my grip.
And while all of this was happening. While I was in a debilitating state, I was being celebrated for my academic success. For being a top performer. For being a role model and stand out student.
~
The day of the luncheon at the College of the Holy Cross, I showed up at school in a dress and heels. A girl I used to know saw me in the hallway between classes and said, “You look so skinny!” in a complimentary tone. At that point in life, being called "skinny" was probably one of the best compliments a girl could get, and normally, that’d send me on a high.
But that day, I don’t even think I managed a smile. Hearing I was skinny was the first sign that my mental wellbeing was recognized from the outside. That my inner demons were starting to show and although at one point I would have been elated by that comment, in that moment, I was horrified by it.
Little did she know I was losing weight, not because I wanted to, but because my mental health was rapidly declining.
~
One of my best friends knew how much pain I was in. She came into school on the day of the luncheon and handed me a bag full of little sensory items.
A bottle of hand sanitizer so I could deviate my mind and focus on a scent.
A note I could read as a reminder of how much she loved me.
A jolly rancher to distract my thoughts with a flavor.
And a marble I could hold to keep myself concentrated on something physical.
I told her that day I didn’t think I could even get in the car to drive to the luncheon. The forty-five minute commute there with people I didn’t really know felt overwhelming. Tack on the fact that I’d have to eat, converse with new people, walk across a stage, smile, and look happy.
I didn’t know how I was going to do it.
To this day, I still don’t know how I managed to get through the day. I held that marble the entire car ride there, under the circular fancy table with the two forks and ornate water glass, and on the car ride home from Worcester.
It took everything within me to keep my composure and hold myself together. Every last drop of energy I had was devoted to not falling apart at the seams.
No one would have ever known the skinny girl who wore a dress and heels to high school and was dismissed by the principal to accept one of the most prestigious awards in the state was riddled with undiagnosed panic disorder and was smack dab in the middle of a full-blown mental health crisis.
~
People can have it all. Everything can look perfect from the outside, but on the inside, they’re combusting. It happens all the time. More often than we know.
The version of who I am today is catastrophic over the younger version of me who was in so much pain. I wish I could go back and tell her to put it all down. That nothing matters as much as getting help does. That no one will ever ask you about the Worcester County Superintendents Association Scholars Award, and honestly, no one cares. Not even you.
It does not matter how “good” it looks. How well you stack up against the rest. If you are falling apart, you need you. The classes can wait. The grades can wait. The awards can wait. You cannot.
I am an insanely loud advocate for doing whatever the hell you need and want to do for you, not because that’s what I arbitrarily feel like saying but because I single-handedly know how difficult it is to live for everyone else but you.
What should have been one an honor to receive is but a burning memory of how mentally unwell I once was.
I don’t look back at that day and think, “Wow, that was such a great experience, and I’m so proud of myself.”
I look back and think about how white-knuckled my hands were from gripping the marble my best friend gave me to use so I could just hold on.
~
Please let this anecdote serve as a reminder to you that people who look like they have it all, don’t. There is so much we don’t divulge and so much we never speak about. That person who you think is completely perfect and living a life you can only dream of is a human being. Not a single human being is immune to the reality of life.
With that said, there is always help. There are resources, professionals, medication, tools, etc. Nothing in this world is worth your mental health. Nothing.
Everything—people included—can wait. You are far too important to neglect.
Had I known that, I probably would have never received the award because I would have let something wait— let something drop along the way. And I can promise you, not an ounce of who I am today would have cared.
I want you to know: you can put it down. It can, and it should, wait.
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