The Point - March 9, 2014

When I was a child, I'd always dream to be someone famous. I'd always think I'd be a singer, or an actress. Perhaps a teacher who would change the lives of thousands of students, making an inspirational speech at their last graduation.

No matter how I would think about it, I'd be someone huge, and boy was I deadset on that view of myself.

Growing up, the dream was still there of course. I wanted to be recognized, but I better identified this dream as a need to feel important. I had what many people called "leadership qualities", and constantly started clubs and groups and the sort. There was only one issue with this self-important thinking, which I realized soon after starting my senior year in high school.

I was actually average.

I was so used to having high expectations, that I couldn't handle failure very well. In fact, I was terrible at handling failure. But my inability to keep up with expectations sent me into an apathetic world where nothing mattered. I didn't care! What was the point of succumbing to what everyone else defined as success, when I was happy just being not-that-impressive?

A few years of that accompanied by the high expectations people had around me, and I landed myself deeper into the apathy hole I was in, and ended up breaking it. Now, what nobody tells you about depression is that it's leveled.

When you hit that last level, all you do is look around for ways to not feel like that anymore. Some people find it, others (like myself), find comfort in the fact that there's something out there we're good at. Which is, unfortunately, being depressed. I spent my first year in a college studying something I didn't want, in a college I didn't care for, with expectations much too high for me to get. Instead of exploring all around for more reasons, I felt them thrown at me, so I managed to find a comfortable little corner of self-loathing and sat there for the better part of my first years in college. 

People kept reaching in to try to help, and I ended up finally getting to a place I wanted to be in, studying something I liked, in a college I cared for. Now, for someone who was so used to being in their little corner of go-away-I-can-do-this-on-my-own-ness, it was a very strange experience when I started getting recognized for, well. Me being... me. People would come up and compliment me, and I just wouldn't understand what they meant.

I don't usually know how to respond to this. I learned quickly that disagreeing was not the proper way to go about it, so I just quietly thank people instead. As I spent more time around people, getting out of my little corner of negative-words-describing-me-here-ness, I realized that there was something about me, just like there's something about everyone, that makes them... them. I wasn't just some average off-the-bat person. But I also have no clue what it is about me that makes me particularly stand out. So while I find that out, I suppose it'll serve its purpose later on if I go and write about it as well.

-E