My College Essay:
Dear Diary

There’s a time when one should share the scribbles on pages that were kept hidden. I’m glad to say, I know what specific outside influences in my life put together the person I am today. I wouldn’t be writing this college essay if those events didn’t take place. Since the me I am right now is very different from the me I was four years ago, I can tell you my story, because it only is made up of about 1,460 days.

I live in a bubble, always have, and plan to never again be so constricted. I went to the same school as all the other girls in my community did, the one that sometimes drizzled in the stairwell. There weren’t even a hundred girls in the entire high school, and that’s what kept us so similar and bubbled in I guess - the lack of diversity. 

I wouldn't call myself spontaneous, but instead, I’d categorize myself as one who is bottled up with ideas and emotions. If the right steps fall into play, you will see me dancing out of my comfort zone to an inviting future. I’ve never chosen to do so unless it was to better myself, but exposure can change someone, and from it, I found myself running to any future willing to accept me. 

It was the summer after freshman year when I was told some news. It was the unsettling news that made me realize staying bubbled in would harm my growth. I noticed how unusual I was being, so fixated on a small sentence my friends shared with me. Obsessions became my shadow, and I didn’t understand this new part of me.

I was running, from what once seemed like the perfect road that was built for me. That same summer, somewhere in Alaskan waters I feared the steps moving forward, so I didn’t. I sidestepped. I sidestepped to a new school in a different city, a new personality more shadowed than I wished for, and a new group of people that would not be receiving the first impression I wish I’d given them.

I wish someone told me the days were good before they were gone. I spent the entirety of my first year at my new school on the edge of everything. I never became quite myself, not for a while at least. I found myself searching not for an answer to my issues, but to something I can float on while everything around me was sinking. Instead I was told I had OCD. I used to be like everyone else who thought OCD meant being organized, obsessed with staying clean. It’s not like that in case you didn’t know. For me, it’s never being able to shut off my mind or find an answer to what I am questioning. I finally think I made it to the finish line, an answer to the worries in my mind, only to see I am somehow back at the starting line. It was an answer, which should’ve been good, but to me it just meant that this was a never ending situation I’d have to make myself deal with. 

I got help, and year two at the new school was much brighter than year one. I stopped having so much anxiety at school, learned to reserve myself, and to reach out a bit more. I started to feel myself slipping into my old skin, and I was almost there, almost really truly happy again. Fourteen year old me was waving from the finish line, so happy and surprised to see me making it to the other side. Then I didn’t.

My world collapsed on me like everyone else's. I made it as a leader of a program that would have my face up on the screens at time square, dancing with my friends and others from around the globe. The night before the plane was meant to depart I was told I wasn’t going. I was told that everyone was falling ill and that it was too dangerous to travel to New York. I felt as if it couldn’t be worse, one of my achievements I was working up to all year, gone in a simple phone call. 

I was being told to take one day at a time, to be hopeful and that I’d see everyone like I used to real soon. I’m writing this essay on August 30th 2020, wishing that someone told me this past year that I should really breathe in every moment. My school play where I was able to shine, the concerts, and my birthday. The hugs that I would do anything for to receive. I’ve thought so many times, this is it. The part where I collapse.

I went back to therapy hopeful, because at least I was trying. I stopped seeing my friends from my old school on the weekends, stopped going out, stopped trying to be motivated. Then I saw it, something so clear that I was experiencing before I even realized. I was and still am in the rubble of everything that collapsed, but I still have full control of where I’d like to go next. When all this is over, will I be ready or just starting to open my eyes to a new beginning? I took more control. I started to rekindle my passion for photography, building a business, gaining clients. I started to realize how important being by myself was, because it meant I had so much time to focus on mending my past in the form of creating a better future. As I opened my eyes and noticed that these days might just be the good days, I was able to shut out so many of my OCD thoughts and notice the little sparks up ahead. Life was blooming in front of me. My sister got engaged, I built stronger relationships, I made my own business, and I decided to stop letting what was expected to happen, happen. I befriended life instead of noticing all of its flaws and shoving it away. I took control because I realized I can.

A lot of people in life have a story to tell. Some past time that created the person in front of you from their laughter and collapses. I never thought I’d be someone with a story that is so close to their heart, it’s what makes them whole. This was mine.