Tell us about a personal quality, talent, accomplishment, contribution or experience that is important to you. What about this quality or accomplishment makes you proud, and how does it relate to the person you are?
I suffered from clinical depression. The most terrifying part of depression is facing people, which unfortunately for me was a requirement to pass my English class.
My English teacher said that people who worried about the upcoming and stress-inducing Individual Oral Presentations were really inherently self-centered. "What do you have to be afraid of?" He smiled in a way that conveyed you-over-achieving-kids-need-to-chill-out. I remember standing in front the smartest students in my grade. I felt like I was about to fall through the vomit-colored floor. I closed my eyes and mouthed all my memorized lines before beginning like a silent prayer.
Someone held in a laugh, "You can start now." It's a familiar tone I noticed from people when the see me walking in to every threshold with my left foot or touching every corner of a bathroom mirror before I leave the room.
So then I started, reluctantly. I could feel every word drowning in my throat, clawing to breath out. I stopped. It was suddenly too much. There's this part in "A Sorrowful Woman", where the protagonist is stuck in a white room. It was suppose to symbolize the cold isolation she felt like the sterility of white hospital rooms. That's what happened in my head. A white blank, like a hospital room.
My teacher nods like he understands and very calmly he says, "You're breathing too fast. Are you having a panic attack?"
And I don't say anything. I run to the bathroom and cry. I touch every corner of every mirrors and repeat the lines of my presentation that I couldn't finish in class. I wait till class is over and I walk back into English.
I remember my English teacher telling me that if anything was bothering me I could ask for help if I needed it. So I did. My favorite part of a novel is when the protagonist reaches an epiphany like Melinda in Laurie Halse Anderson's novel "Speak" when she finally has the courage to speak the truth and ask for help after living inside her head. Like Melinda, I was one of the lucky ones that could find a way back to normalcy. Some people believe depression is a flaw in character. It isn't. It's actually a flaw in chemistry that could be fixed with medication. I want to say that I'm proud of overcoming depression. That's what my friends, my teachers, my parents, and everyone important in my life says that I should be. The thing about achievements is that they don't mean anything unless you know what failure is. My failures are just a big a part of me as my achievements. The person that I am is continually growing, I want to write stories and touch people's hearts and relate to them. In my opinion, the best part of a story is the real agony the protagonist or the narrator experiences. Because no matter how depressing and negative someone's pain is, it is real.
Great story man! I wrote about overcoming depression as well, but for mine I definitely said I was proud to overcome it, but that if I never made those failures and was never diagnosed with depression, then I would've never been able to make those achievements and become who I am today. Good essay, I just don't think you should say you aren't proud of overcoming depression, because it makes it seem like part of you still misses it because it is who you were, cause that is common if you are just starting to leave it behind. Also in mine I didn't include the fact that I take medication, because it wants to know about how the experience made you who you are, not how the medicine made you who you are. I feel like if I added the medicine in there then they would think that once I get off meds I might relapse. Anyways great job and congrats on getting over depression, it's a journey but I'm so thankful that I went through it and learned from it.
Thank you! Should I remove the part about medication and not being proud of overcoming depression? I feel like that would not be truthful.
I just felt that my whole point was about honesty and what helped was and acknowledging that I had an illness. What do you think? Please reply soon.
Are you really not proud of overcoming your depression though? I think another way to make that point would be to say that you are thankful that you experienced depression, that way sounds a bit more positive but means the same thing. And the medication is seriously your call, if I were to add it then I would've told my truth which is that the decision to take medication was big for me because at first I was reluctant, and then talk about how when I did take it I noticed things turning around and shit because that way it sounds like taking medication was a big and important choice that I made which was the right choice because it helped. Idk we had slightly different experiences and I'm a psychology major and don't want to go into psychiatry anymore, so it would make me look contradictory to take medication to heal my problem haha
So then I started, reluctantly. I could feel every word drowning in my throat, clawing to breath<<<breach>>> out.
I remember my English teacher telling me that if anything was bothering me I could ask for help if I needed it; So that is exactly what I did.
Some people believe depression is a flaw in character; it is not. <<< My brace adviser at school said college essay should not include contractions, you have a couple more in there, so try not to use "isn't, it's, there's>>>
The 4th paragraph confused me a little bit but i reread it and got your point. In the concluding paragraph try to answer that last question "how does it relate to the person you are now" Let them know who you are exactly. But i like the ending though "Because no matter how depressing and negative someone's pain<<<story>> is, it is real.
Overall good work!!!
