Imagine A Girl

This was my college application essay. The prompt was to write about my background and why it's meaningful to me.

Imagine a girl in her first year of high school. What she does for the next four years will shape the rest of her life. She is really feeling the pressure. “How can what I do as a child determine whether or not I have a future?” she thinks. Little does she know the struggle she will face.

She starts freshman year as optimistic as can be. She likes her teachers, she likes her classes.  She thinks everything is going to be great. As the year goes on she gets more and more tired. She can’t concentrate like she used to. She thinks she should just sleep more. She doesn’t see a real problem. Her grades slip. She stops even trying. She stops hoping. She no longer sees a future. She wants to cry just waking up. She gets angry at the slightest thing. She hates that she can’t accomplish anything. Her grades stress her, but that only serves to worsen everything. She gets grounded. Thirty weeks of isolation and it’s all her fault. All of the stress and hatred and worry turns inward. There is a desperate search for an outlet. All she finds are the worst things you can do to yourself,  so she does them. She creates physical marks of her hatred and sadness. It becomes something she can control. Something all of her own, for nobody else's approval. But control is lost quickly, she begins her spiral. Once her first year of highschool is over, she thinks it can’t get any worse.

Sophomore year comes upon her with a vengeance. Summer had been slept away, and getting up in the morning seems harder than ever. Now she hates her teachers and her classes. She hates her life. She muddles through, control getting further and further from her grasp. Her grades are a thing of the past, she doesn't even worry about them anymore. Her emotions are sinking deep. She reaches her lowest point. She conceptualizes the end. She sees nothing for her, sees no reason to stay. That’s when control is taken from her. Her family really did care. One day her grandpa, the man who raised her, wrote her a letter. He put into words the hope she had lost. He explained to her what would be lost if she left. She read it and cried. She vowed to change. Her family cared enough to look into her terrifying secrets and pull her out. She sees a doctor. She’s surprised to find out it isn’t all her fault. She has depression. She wonders what caused it. Was it her messed up family? Was it her messed up head? Who knows. She starts to improve. She pulls herself out of her self-dug pit. She fought her way out of her second year.

The summer before junior year is spent recovering. When it’s time for her to join the real world again, she’s in a much better place. She is looking into her future. Her biggest struggle is putting the past behind her. The past two years worry her. What if she can’t get into a college? How hard is she going to have to work? She doesn’t know, so she settles for average. Any work is an improvement compared to what she was doing before. She becomes happy, motivated, and hopeful. When it’s time to choose her senior year, she makes optimistic choices. Two AP classes. She works hard. She applies to colleges. She can only hope her essay will help explain her grades.

I am this girl. I have fought my way through the darkest parts of my mind. It has changed the way I view my future. It has changed the way I view motivation and happiness. It has shaped who I am today. My background is who I was, am, and will be.