I was a sophomore in high school. I had gotten out of my first relationship, with a baritone sax player I met and got to know at band camp. It had been the first time I felt like someone else was interested in me, and even though I wasn\u2019t particularly attracted to this person, I jumped into a relationship with her. For years I had suffered from debilitating crushes, where the terror of unrequited love and the potential reality of rejection weighed down on me, preventing me from talking to my crushes or really displaying any amount of acknowledgement. Previously I\u2019d spent a school year pining over a girl with whom I shared a couple of classes. I dreamed that she felt the same way I did, that she shared the same secret feelings too powerful to display openly, but in reality I must\u2019ve barely been on her radar. I found out later she\u2019d been dating a friend of mine most of that year. Things with the bari saxophonist fell apart–we could talk online, but in person things were awkward and forced–I developed a crush on another girl, who I used to loiter around with after school in the band room, but I was rejected, and she began dating my best friend. I couldn\u2019t help but feel so betrayed.
\nSpring break came, and the concert band, jazz band and orchestra went on a trip to Orlando, Florida, to visit Disneyworld. These trips happen every 3 years, and I had worked over the summer to make enough money to go. I sang songs from Tarzan and Aladdin on the bus to SeaTac, where we took a plane across the country. Florida is flat and wet, and the green fields stretching out to the horizon lent to a sense of place far removed from home, further than the geographical distance. In Yakima, Washington, deep in the valley, every view is finite, penned in by rolling hills, covered with sagebrush, so to be able to see out to a vanishing point felt alien and unsettling. The trip was a whirlwind–taking buses all over the place, playing music, riding roller coasters, exploring the parks by day, staying up late watching Whose Line is it Anyway reruns and talking with the people in my hotel room–including my best friend. I told him about my feelings of betrayal, I don\u2019t remember much of a response–I don\u2019t think I expected one, I just wanted him to know.
\nOn the plane ride back whatever energy had carried me through the eight days in Orlando began to fade. I could feel fatigue settling in, and something else, too, a frustration, an awful feeling I couldn\u2019t express. I drew Disney characters, but through a tortured lens: a twisted, wizened Donald Duck, a withered-out Mickey. When the plane landed back at Seatac airport, something snapped, and all I could do was sit and sob for a few minutes while the band waited. Someone sat down with me, but my best friend didn\u2019t do anything. I don\u2019t think he knew what to do.
\nThat breakdown was my first real experience with depression. After the Disney World trip, I really started to feel horrible about myself. I felt like no one would ever want me, that nobody had ever liked me, that no one would ever like me, that none of my friends wanted anything to do with me anymore. I couldn\u2019t communicate these feelings to anyone, and I didn\u2019t have the energy to do anything besides stay down in my room. I wanted to die. My mom noticed, and set me up with a counselor–I didn\u2019t want to take medication, and even counseling took some convincing, as I\u2019d had some unfulfilling experiences with it in middle school. Now I realize the value of having someone to talk to. By learning about what I was experiencing, that depression is something many people go through, I could remove myself from my feelings and deal with them. There have been ups and downs since then–even with pharmaceutical treatment, depression isn\u2019t something that just goes away. It\u2019s something I\u2019ve lived through, and something I live with.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I was a sophomore in high school. I had gotten out of my first relationship, with a baritone sax player I met and got to know at band camp. It had been the first time I felt like someone else was interested in me, and even though I wasn’t particularly attracted to this person, I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1028,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1028"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=382"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/382\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=382"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=382"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.evergreen.edu\/losttime\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=382"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}