Over the years of my life there are certain principles that I have tried to live up to. Certain morals that I had gradually developed over the years of my childhood, and that had come from the various people I grew up with. Had I known that I could be the way I want to be from the very beginning I could have been so much happier the last few years. I would not I have blamed myself causing multiple moments of some pretty bad depression. Freshman year in high school I had thought that I had met the “love of my life” I was the happiest guy that you would ever meet for about two months. But. Like all good things. It came to an end.

Throughout the six following months I slipped into becoming the most miserable, most depressed person imaginable. I hated every second my heart would beat, every breath I took, I had longed to be my last, and I blamed everything on myself and my mind. I was looking for a way to escape, a way for the pain to stop. I was looking for a solution. I blamed myself, but the truth is that the reason I was miserable was me. As the days went on, they had seemed to be endless. My mind had told me that happiness would never return to me until I was no longer alone. So, I kept going back to her, the one who caused so much pain in so little time. At this point in life she was the answer, she was my salvation. But I was wrong.

Regardless of the amount of emotional pain I would go through, I would always return to her, and occasionally she would return to me. It soon became difficult to tell who would end it and who would start it back up. It was as though we were playing relationship tag hyped-up on meth (with tag-backs). When we were together I fooled myself into thinking I was happy, when we were apart I became apathetic. I did not care, I would not speak, I wanted nothing other than her. She was like a drug. Injected into my veins, infesting my blood flow and I was an addict. I thought I was in love with this drug. Her.

There are many things that we cannot trust, but the one thing we all believe we can trust, was the one thing that would betray me. Because of my heart, I fell completely apart. From the inside out, a slow decay of what I thought myself to be. A gradual slip into darkness, consuming my entire being.

One extremely close friend of mine had tried to help me out of this state I was stuck in. I wish I had listened to her back then. She told me that I just need to get away, that I could change the way things are if I wanted to. It was my firm belief that she was wrong.

By the end of sophomore year, I had enough. It was time to kick myself in the head, and re-create myself. The whole summer I had focused on a few things, one being: forgive, forget, and move on. I learned to forgive myself for the mistakes that I have made, forgave her for the hurt she caused me. Forgot the events of my past, then got back up on my feet and kept moving.

That was the easy part though. The next was working with my self-esteem, and learning to love myself. Little did I know that the key to this was having friends who care, and surprisingly, my own mindset. Shamefully enough, I have become slightly cocky, and a little of my conceited side comes out every now and then, but I am in fact happy now. All that needed to be done was to think that I am a good person, and that I CAN be happy. I now know that nothing controls me except myself. I am who I want to be. I am the way I want to be, and there is not a thing anyone can tell me otherwise.