That Smile Is Fake

by Katie
(USA)

I am currently 17. I just graduated high school. Those were supposed to be the best 4 years of my life, but they were far from it.

I was a freshman when my depression really took hold of me. My aunt S. had died the previous year, and now my aunt A. was dying of cancer. Both were my moms sisters. That February, my aunt A. passed away. Both of my aunts were 49 years old when they died. This fueled my paranoia and anxiousness about my mom possibly dying when she reached the age of 49. This was the beginning of my problems.

Sports was my life. When I was 5 I started playing baseball and soccer. I progressed through the years and I started to meet resistance when it came to playing "boys" sports. In middle school I wrestled, played football, baseball, and soccer. But the feeling of being on the field, or stepping out on the mat was all I needed to be happy. This all came crashing to an end my freshman year. I was playing 3 different sports at a time. Water polo, baseball, and soccer. I received a concussion in my first baseball game of the year. I was out cold for over 5 minutes after getting punched in the head by the base runner. I ignored my doctors and continued playing sports even though I was having horrible migraines. I ended up throwing out my shoulder, missing many of my final games in my baseball career. Then a little over 1 month later I received my second concussion during a soccer game. I was keeper, and was kicked in the head while I went for a ball. This moment ended my sports career for good. I suffer debilitating migraines almost everyday and have had the main part of my life ripped away in an instant.

My junior year was an awful one. I was an insomniac and would go upwards of 5 days on just hours of sleep. I was on many medications and became ill during my first semester. I was throwing up every day, and my doctors did not know what was wrong with me. I had weekly blood draws and appointments and it was discovered that my liver was failing. I was too sick to even eat at my 16th birthday party with my entire family. I would get sick in the middle of class and felt ashamed and embarrassed for not being able to control my sickness in front of my classmates. I missed 47 days of school in my first semester of my junior year. This made it almost impossible to catch up on school work, or keep my grades up. I felt like a failure and that no college would accept me because of how low my GPA was in my junior year. It was finally discovered that one of my medications was the cause of the severe liver damage. Once my liver issue was resolved I still had to deal with the daily migraines. I would make trips to U of M to see neurologists twice a month missing 2 to 3 days of school at a time. I struggled so much just to make it through my junior year without needing a transplant, that my grades went to hell. I had to receive a pass or fail instead of an actual grade in order to keep my GPA from dropping to an unrepairable level. Colleges don't look kindly on those when looking at a transcript. I had become so distant from everyone and everything that I felt like I was just alone in the world, making my own path and doing my own thing.

Over my senior year things got a little better. I was in an EMT class and realized that the EMS field was my calling. I appeared to be happy to all of my friends and classmates, but they had no idea that I was so depressed that I actually had to look forward to go to school just to give me some type of social interaction that would allow me to smile once in a while in class. After school I would go home and go to sleep by 3pm every day. I would sleep until at least 7pm, get some food, and go back to my room and go back to bed. I would sleep all the time, and started to have a dependence on my Xanax. I would be taking upwards of 4mg a night just so I could go to sleep so I wouldn't have to deal with anything. The only time I was truly happy was when I was doing my clinicals at the hospitals and on the ambulance. I would request an extra clinical almost every week just so I could have something to look forward to and so I wouldn't have to go home and just sleep on my bed. I didn't have a social life at all. I never hung out with friends or did anything fun for myself. Graduation was the best moment of my life, but then I realized that I had nothing to do now in the summer.

The only thing keeping me sane right now is the fact that I am out at my college 4 days a week helping with new EMT classes and taking my prerequisites for the Paramedic program. The days that I am not out there, I feel useless. I just sit in my house and avoid people. I don't know what to do with myself. I am waiting to turn 18 so I can take my National Registry Exam to become certified as an EMT-Basic, but I have found out that my chances of getting into the Paramedic program this fall is slim to none. Now I feel like I have no purpose for going to school, and I don't even want to think about having to wait another year to get into the program that I have a passion for and have worked so hard to try to get into. I hate myself, and feel like I could have done more to get into the program. I am just overall a quiet person who is so self conscious that I am afraid to talk to people because I don't want to say the wrong thing or look incompetent. I feel like my life has no direction, and I am just wandering in a huge city with people and information being thrown at me so fast that I can't filter any of it so I just shut it all out. No matter how many compliments I get, or good things I do for others, none of it gives me enough happiness to fulfill me. I am burning through emotional energy like a hummer burns through gasoline. I am only 17 and shouldn't have to deal with this crap. I just don't know what to do with myself anymore.

I know these feeling may pass, but I also know that they are overwhelming enough to make me feel like they won't go away. I don't want to socially self destruct to the point where I become an isolated person for the rest of my life.