no plans left?

By Rodrigo Angeles

My life before the quarantine was quite nice and calm. everything was going to how I had planned it: Passing junior and senior year with decent grades, getting into community collage with a part-time job, and then going to university. But then It all went wrong in a flash. You should have seen my face when the small two-week break from school turned into months.

It was disappointing that I couldn’t see my family in Mexico but it wasn’t all horrendous because I believed that I would get so much time to play video games and catch up with my friends. But oh how wrong I was. After the first week things started to get stale and from there it all went downhill.

In the early days of COVID, I remember fruitlessly trying to plan out my days to stay calm because that was the only way I dealt with my problems and it wasn’t working well but I thought: I’ll find a better way later on to deal with my repressed emotions. Newsflash: I never did, and worst of all school started. So with all my wisdom I decided to repress all the newer emotions, anger, fear, sadness, and dread, that had just arrived and hold them in because I thought no one likes someone who talks about their problems.

After a while of this you start to feel the effects of acting like everything is fine when it isn’t. examples included existential dread, feeling useless, feeling like trash and/or a failure, and lastly the one that hurt the most was feeling like a burden.

But for someone who was usually seen as the happy-go-lucky guy, Mr. Optimist if you will, I played my part to the best of my ability, trying to keep everyone’s morale high even though mine wasn’t. Not to toot my own horn but I was so convincing when I met everyone that even my teacher Ms. Lo thought I was all happy go lucky, no gloom.

Ms. Lo: I think my first impression of you was that you kind of reminded me of a sesame street character because you used big words but you were happy and smiling and friendly all the time so it was kinda like sesame street where they like to want you to learn things so they are educated and have good vocabulary but their like fun and nice.

After the first semester of school was over, I had enough with all my negativity, and the fact that I just wasn’t motivated to do anything pushed me to want to do better in school. So by turning off my brain and listening to what my heart wanted I decided to talk to Ms. Lo about the free school therapist to see if I could get some help or if all else failed at least someone to talk too. But I didn’t know that talk would prove fundamental in getting me to talk more about my problems.

Rodrigo: I think that one of the big things you did for me was—Do you remember our first conversation about you know my mental health was that one thing you mentioned about what would I say to my kid me. That one really, I still think about that today. Everytime I think about the start of the snowballing into just trying to be better, I always remember that was the starting point when you mentioned what I would tell my younger self, if I saw that boy what would I say and think you know ever since that conversion you know I’vre really done everything I could to change. Even now, I go to the park now I swing on the swingset cause it’s so fun to do.

Ms. Lo: Nice

before that talk, it was a monotone day for me: I ate my chicken melts, walked to my room and sat down at my desk and proceeded to listen to my classes knowing I was failing or barley scraping by.

You see there is one thing I like doing and that’s thinking about the future and it calms me down. But it’s like a double-edged sword because I started thinking about where I would end up if I continued like this and my mind of all things brought me to the conclusion that I’d be a disappointment to my parents or I committed suicide. Then and there I knew I had to talk to someone to get me help or one of those thoughts would come true.

Though at this point I think I was now doing a bad job of hiding it because as it turns out Ms. Lo had already had her suspicions:

Ms. Lo:I know that I started to notice that you were being standoffish and stuff with terra. I started noticing like when we were getting there you were acting more stressed you kind of weren’t joking around as much not quite so sesame street-y.

She was right; at that point in time everything was just too much and the fact that I had to leave my house to go to the school garden just further added on that weight because of the fact their was traffic at the times I went, my mom was already tired and here I am keeping her from resting, and lastly I didn’t want to let anyone down at the garden. Yeah those days I believe I was overstimulated throughout them and everything I did always brought me back to the main source of my struggles: my grades.

for all the hard work I put in when I was attending in-person school, I had told myself that if I keep doing well everything will go according to plan and I’ll be a beam of pride to my parents and everything will work itself out. That way of thinking got me motivated and upbeat but there is a major flaw. I hate it when things I plan go awry because it makes me nervous and anxious and all I want to do is fix the issue. But I noticed I couldn’t fix it I made myself think that all my problems ie failing multiple classes, losing all my motivation to improve, and causing any and all work ethic to just head out were caused by the pandemic and not my terrible work habits. This thinking caused a snowball into helplessness because I thought that since I couldn’t get rid of the pandemic that there was absolutely nothing I could do to get me out of this predicament.

That way of thinking brought me down so much and I hit my lowest: contemplating suicide. This has always been a thought in my head no matter how much I ignored it and hid it away. The thought of suicide always came back looking better but I always steeled myself and held fast telling myself that isn’t a choice, but it was still bad because what if the next time I couldn’t hold fast what if?

Overall it’s bad if suicide is even on the mind and it was in mine so I knew I had to change if I wanted anything to work out. So I went with that mindset and went to Ms. Lo for help. After she helped me, by giving me breathing techniques and even advising me to check out an app that helps her, I asked her why she helped me at all, she could have let me be someone else’s problem.

Ms. Lo: I think part of it is me and part is you like, so the me part is if I see someone and I think I can help I will and I mean like teach a man to fish kind of help I’m not the kind of person to just give someone a fish you know like I’m not that kind of teacher I’m not that kind of person like I don’t do that in general. I only, well I wouldn’t say only but I love to hepl people that I think can learn right some people are to hardheaded or their not interested or whatever and so they don’t want to learn and you weren’t like that. Like when I first started talking to you, were willing to try different techniques for relaxation and were willing to do things to take steps for yourself and be proactive and advocate for yourself instead of just sitting there and being like “Oh I’m so sad everythings bad and just wanting to talk talk talk and talk about how sad you are and how it’s not gonna get better but you were willing to take that step for yourself to learn ways you could make your life better for yourself and that the you part of it. For why I wanted to help you it’s like part of is who I am and part of it is you are receptivce to that learning and you were willing to be helped and I think that a huge part because it’s like as you know if you’ve ever known anyone who has a mental health problem or an addiction or something like that it has to be reciprocated no matter how many people are willing to help if your not willing to help yourself your never gonna be able to take steps forward. So thats why I wanted to help you because the very fact that you were telling what was going on told me you wanted to be helped you just didn’t know how.

In the end I did seek help I got myself a school therapist partly because they were free as well so that was an incentive. And I have made alot of progress in finally facing alot of the issues I hid as a teenager. It was difficult but I had support from people that mattered and that got me through. By the way a word of advice: take advantage of your situation. if your school has a free therapy program join it and if they don’t, then talk about it with someone you trust and feel comfortable with .Lastly I want to thank Ms. Lo and to all who were there to help me get through the difficult time I was in.

If you are a student at Yerba Buena who is going through a difficult time and would like some support, please contact Student Support Services.

If you or someone you know is contemplating suicide, please contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 800-273-8255 or visit suicidepreventionlifeline.org.