A Teenager’s Struggle
As a teenager, there have been a number of times where I left that I was going through an identity crisis. Whether it be through wearing new clothes or making new friends, every teenager shuffles through experiences in his or her life in order to try and find what makes them unique. I had never struggled with stress or anxiety in great measures in the past until I enrolled in one of the most competitive high schools in the country. It was a challenge for sure, but it was one I always wanted to take because I believed I was always a hardworking student.
Immediately when I entered the school, I began noticing and interacting with like-minded individuals. As the years progressed, the competitive nature within the school became stricter, and I was forced to spend later nights up studying so I could feel validated by my peers. Although I always loved working in a competitive environment, something felt different about this experience. The culture motivated others to find comic relief in putting others down for achieving lower scores on exams, and I ultimately found myself falling deeper and deeper into this trap with each passing day. With each passing day, I grew more anxious and stressed, and there were a number of instances where I genuinely couldn’t handle the physical and emotional strain that I was being put under. To my friends and family, I behaved normally and acted as nothing was wrong, but underneath I was fighting a losing battle. I laughed at the lunch table when I felt like screaming; I would force myself to smile when all I wanted to do was break down. I became more anti-social and started to only focus on fulfilling other people’s expectations of who I should be.
Mentally, I was unstable and was too afraid to share my situation with anyone. I presented a facade of happiness to my friends and family to make it appear as if nothing was wrong, but as soon as my door shut, I began fighting another battle. I was upset and frustrated with every moment, fighting a variety of emotions just to get through the day. I became delusional, and I feared that the worst was yet to come in my life. My lowest moments became lower each day. Even though all of my friends could relate to my feeling in some way, they never felt the same, so I felt that it was useless to talk about this with them.
There was a point that I truly reached a low during class one day. It was the end of the year, and I was so close to the finish line, but I still ended up breaking down and revealing my situation to one of my teachers. He was the only one who seemed to immediately recognize how I was feeling and pull me out of the hole I kept continuously digging for myself. Talking to him was the first time where I felt I could converse about my problems and seek out help.
In the south Asian community, there is a strong stigma against mental health; many believe to choose that it doesn’t exist or that it is negligible in the lives of both teenagers and adults. Since there is limited opportunity to succeed in these countries, the culture becomes shifted amongst first generation children to fall in line with the expectations of their superiors. It is true that being at the top of the intellectual totem pole will serve one well later in life, but at what cost? I had achieved so much, earning near perfect or perfect grades, but I still felt empty. I had great friends who cared about me, but I felt alone at almost every moment of my life. I felt that in order to try and succeed, I had to sell my soul. Mental stress is often ignored in many groups and is brushed aside as an unimportant aspect of one’s well being. Growing up, I was told that a state of mind could easily be controlled, but how could I feel so sad when all I wanted to do was be happy?
From my experience, I learned that the best thing that I could do to help my mental state was to start talking and writing about it. I started focusing on and advocating for other teenagers who were struggling with mental health issues, and I started to journal more about my experiences. In my opinion, the most detrimental thing I did for myself was trying to brush aside the situation and pretended as if it didn’t exist. Since it’s so often neglected, it is important that we as a community start bringing these issues to light in order to devise a collective solution.
