*****In progress narrative*****

Thoughts are not something that should be taken lightly, thoughts should be understood and empathized with. My thoughts, however, never received the simple empathy that I desired. The thoughts that remained afloat in my mind, were continuing to be pushed further and further until the point of no return.

The summer of 2014 seemed like my best summer yet. I made an enormous group of new friends, band camp resumed in July, and I had convinced myself that I was doing better than I had ever felt before. The sad truth was that I had become a prisoner of my own mind. I spent countless nights awake, I found myself involuntarily rocking myself back and forth with tears forming in my eyes, those were the months I spent being an owl, living and breathing so silently while the rest of the world was asleep, unaware of the despair that I held.


I started noticing myself sinking in late July. I started the majority of my days at six in the evening, I could spend twelve hours straight staring at a screen, and even better, I didn’t get lucky enough for the half of my friends to stay up till seven in the morning with me. I was stuck in a deep, dark, gaping hole of self-pity, and the worst part about it was, I didn’t know why. It felt like the days would come and go, and it seemed as if I was always being left behind.
I wasn’t with it, I knew I wasn’t. The new year in band was a complete joke, the morning workouts we did, basic marching four hours a day, five days a week in the blistering hot sun, for what? To have an unorganized show? Getting yelled at for little things and praising our leaders as if we weren’t good enough? We weren’t allowed to be good enough for the eyes of our instructors. We were being left to rot. That is where the second root of this started.

When school came, I was failing all of my four core classes with twenties and thirties within the second week. We had band practice for eight or more hours a week, including the six periods of band that were taught throughout the day, one of those were individual practice time. I had signed myself up for the individual practice time class which was called “instrumental ensemble.”

Weeks of school continued to go on, there was more homework each day, and band practice was getting harder for me to withhold. We had started our pass offs, which meant that we had to play our marching music by memory, and mark time and do step outs while we were playing. While the whole class was watching. Once it was my turn to come up, I had gotten myself so worked up that I could barely walk without trembling side to side. Mr. clicked the metronome on, and slowly adjusted it to one-hundred and twenty beats per minute. Tick-tick-tick-tick-tick. I thought to myself, one, two, three, four, breaaaaaathe, snap, up. And there I was, lightly picking my feet up and down to the beat, my foot came up and brushed my leg to each beat. In this moment, I had already started to mentally tear myself apart. My mark time wasn’t good enough, I didn’t take a big enough breath, and my tone was deteriorating with each step out. I cracked the high A, and my automatic reaction was to bring my trumpet off my face quickly, and sulk, and that is exactly what I did. Me and Mr. exchanged eye contact, and he pleaded me to try again, that he knows that I was nervous, and that if I tried again he wouldn’t knock any points down. Quickly rushing to the seat I was sitting in, I threw myself down, and I just cried. Most of my days started that way, feeling degraded in band, or even belittled by our instructors. It was like an abusive relationship, Toth praised my trumpet playing to everyone in the band, he praised my behavior and my posture, but behind closed doors, he constantly belittled me, he got in my face, and he ruined me.

Report cards came out on October 3rd, 2014. Struggle was something that I had been overcome with since the beginning of my freshman year. I always passed my classes, but I had always passed right on the edge of a C and an F. This time was different, it was pre-ap geometry, a class that I knew I shouldn’t have been in since the first day of school, but Mrs. Clarkson wouldn’t let me out of the class. I failed with a sixty-five. No more band, no more phone. Back to the way it was in July. The sink kept dripping and I was going insane.

Week one of failure set in, I had no phone, I had no communication with the online community that I had devoted myself to. Removing myself from two additional pre-ap classes and one AP class took a lot more strength than I thought it would. Being banished from the band hall was also difficult. Basically, I wasn’t allowed to look at the other band members, and at the games, I had to sit on the visitor’s side, which let me tell you, that was extremely awkward. Knowing that I wasn’t okay with all of this made falling into the gaping hole of hopelessness even worse.

On Tuesdays I had therapy with Theresa at six o’clock, she wasn’t very helpful to me. She minimized my symptoms, and she continuously told me to join a youth group, I’m not religious. We always had to talk about school, and how I could be doing better, but I couldn’t do better, I couldn’t concentrate, my motivation shot out of the window, and no one understood that. Happiness wasn’t an option anymore, I was lost in this dark world, I didn’t know what to do, and no one was helping me. Several times a week I made trips down to the crisis counselor because I just wanted somebody to listen, but even her, her schedule was too busy for her to see me, or, I don’t need to worry about what I’m worrying about. I was convinced that I had no one.

My weeks started to look forward to ending so I could Skype my friends. That is all I looked forward to. I got even more careless in school, and not caring vs. caring but not doing anything about it made everything less stressful for me. Sitting in class was a game, how long would it take me to get bored from not doing anything? How fast could I get my phone to die? One class in particular that I paid attention to was Avid. The teacher somehow knew there were underlying problems going on. She didn’t bother me about work, and I was good in her class because all of my friends were in her class. Lunch made me feel alone, I sat with the most “popular” group of band students, they made me laugh, but sometimes I wasn’t in the mood and I would blare Bring Me The Horizon in my ears. Most days were spent that way. Silenced by my own mind, thoughts coming and going, even being implanted into my mind, I was terrified, music kept me going, sometimes.

Home was supposed to be a safe place. A place where one shouldn’t be afraid of every decision that they make, a home should be home. My home, however, was not any of those things. Home for me consisted of screaming, helpless slams against the walls, and neighbors calling and asking if everything was ok. Five days out of my month were spent at my dad’s house, playing Call of Duty, relaxing, and talking to my friends on Skype. Suppressed crying happened a lot. No one knew what was happening, I was scared that he was going to kill us.