Though spring, it did come slowly, I guess it did its part: my heart has thawed and continues to beat.

Here I am again, at the end of another school year. And I can't believe I made it through. Junior year was the hardest year of my life. Pretty much the entire thing was a struggle. At the beginning of the year, it was me struggling to keep up my "perfect girlfriend" act while inside I was crumbling from constant rejection, always telling myself that tomorrow would be better and being horrified when it always turned out to be worse. After that, I struggled to accept the fact that the only guy I had ever been in love with--the only guy I thought I ever would be in love with--would never, ever be with me. After it finally sunk in that he would never want me in the way I wanted him, I struggled with the fact that I still wanted him. For a long time, I tried so hard to cling on to something that just wasn't there anymore. And when I finally let him go, I looked around and realized I had lost everyone else. And then, I struggled with feelings of isolation and loneliness. There was no one there for me anymore; no one who understood or who even tried to make the effort to understand. I had pushed everyone away from me, and had no idea how to get them back. When they finally started very slowly returning, there was still more to struggle through: my own self-hatred. Throughout the year, I became someone I absolutely hated. Someone I never thought I would be; someone I never wanted to be; someone who was not even a ghost of the person I once had been--someone who was so much worse. Throughout all of this, I struggled to keep up in school. I struggled with the pressure to get ready for college. I spent a lot of the year struggling with my own will to live: at many points, the only thing keeping me alive was my fear of death. I reached the lowest point I've ever reached in my life, and felt more miserable than I even knew it was possible to feel. It was like I was struggling through a long, dark tunnel, reaching desperately for the light at the end. And for a long time, surrounded in darkness, I forgot that there would be an end. I lost all hope that things would ever get better; I had been depressed for so long that I couldn't imagine ever being happy again. I couldn't remember what it felt like to be happy. All I could remember or think or feel was sadness, and that was all I saw in the future, past, or present.


But I survived. Somehow, I went through a year that was pure hell--a year that tested me over and over in the harshest ways, a year that wore me down past the bone--and emerged from it a stronger person.






--Note: I wrote this post at the end of junior year. I was planning on continuing it later but I never did. So for now I'm publishing it until I decide if I ever want to finish it. -