“A fake smile can only hold back the tears for so long,” these are the words that always run through my head. I am not the person that you would see crying in the hallway, talking to a friend about what’s going on in my life, or the girl you would consistently see smiling. My second year in high school was one of the hardest years I have faced; my breaking point. For years I was building up emotions of all sorts, I never shared my feelings. I just simply locked them away in a box and ignored them. Over and over again I would go to school and put on a fake smile acting like everything in my life was good, that I was alright but that was simply the most ironic part. I was the farthest thing from being alright I was on the verge of exploding.

Freshman year is when all this started. I was over stressed at school, but that wasn’t the worst part. I could handle school work it wasn’t hard for me, the hard part was actually going to school. It was hard for me to face the people in my school; I was the girl that got bullied in school. I feared going to school and being made fun of or called harsh names. It’s not that I cared what people thought but that I started to believe the things they were saying to me. The more people called me names and more rumors spread the worse it started to affect me. Half way through tenth year I finally couldn’t take it. I had horrible attendance, gave up on school, and just frankly gave up in general. My breaking point happened two days after my birthday. The date was February second when a friend came up to me and showed me what people were saying about me that day. It wasn’t anything different from the normal day it was just finally what pushed me over the edge. People saying it would be better if I wasn’t there, not just at the school but in life. All I could do was just sit down where I was, start balling and admit defeat. I had never felt so low or so completely done with my life. I will never forget the feeling of defeat. It was more painful than anything in the world. My friend called my dad to come get me, she could see how torn apart I was and she was scared I would do something horrible if I went home. I ended up getting picked up from school and taken to my therapist who then sent me to a suicidal rehab.

I never believed that I could end up in such a place. In my family depression was not something my parents believed in it, so it was hard for me to admit I was in a rehab for it. Surprisingly being in the suicidal rehab was one of the best things that happened for me. I learned that it was reasonable to be sad, how to talk out what I’m feeling, how to be happy again.

Now I am the girl you would never have guessed to have been to a suicidal rehab. I ended up moving school and now I am one of the girls that never stops smiling. I finally figured out that to be happy I have to be happy with myself and that what others think is just one opinion. Looking back on my second year in high school, I only focused on all the bad things that were going on, instead of all the good things. I now am happy at my new school where people don’t treat me poorly but the most important part is I learned from that year. I learned that I need to focus on the good not the bad and that happiness is not what people say about you but what you think of yourself.