Anonymous
Featuring a student who prefers to stay anonymous
If you’re reading this, keep reading.
My first memory in life was at the age of three. My dad kicked the door down to his bedroom to snatch his belt away from my mom before he left for work. Fights like this were normal for me. Seeing holes punched in the wall, hearing cussing matches, and watching the cops come was just another day of normalcy. After school, instead of playing with Lego sets like my friends, I would draw circles and stars in the divorce attorney’s office, wondering when it would all end.
But when it did end, I lived with my dad. No siblings, no first cousins, no mom, just me and him. Emotions weren’t a thing then, and the only thing that was tolerated was silence, hard work, and intensity. Not growing up with any family besides my dad, I leaned into these values he preached, because he was the only thing that mattered, and I wanted to make him happy. As I grew up, the only thing I cared about was sports because that’s what he cared about. I had decided I’d devote my life to sports to make my dad proud.
Day by day, I’d play sports, working to make the only family I had proud. However, once I got to high school, I realized I wasn’t good as I thought. I’d never be able to achieve my dreams of being a professional athlete, and I wouldn’t be able to make my dad happy. This simple realization drove me crazy, but instead of voicing this, I hid it, as that’s all I knew: silence, hard work, and intensity. It got to the point where I internally felt myself imploding and told my German teacher that I was worthless, which caused her to make me go and see my counselor. The peak of my depression and anxiety reached when I was just 16. It got to the point where I would look up on reddit the least painful ways to kill yourself, which looking back, makes me think I did care about myself since I didn’t want to go through the pain of ending it.
Luckily, my breaking point wasn’t death, it was many tears and shouting in my pillow, but at least it wasn’t death. What made me choose life over the point of no return was when I began to pick up interesting books and read. Literacy gave me perspective, and perspective gave me two things. Number one showed me I can’t live a life fulfilling my dad, I have to make something of my own. Number two, it showed me multifaceted perspectives can decrease stress and open up your mind to worlds you never knew existed. Worlds that go beyond life’s surface and which can only be seen in the depths.
Southern Methodist University, Anonymous Student.
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