They say that High School is the best four years of your life. So why do I wish more than anything that I could turn around and go back to last year? Why do I want to return to my old teachers, my old classes, and my old school? Why do I still feel like an eighth grader, and not a freshman?

I thought it just meant I needed to get more involved. I took up yearbook, and I started practicing a monologue for play auditions. But still, it didn’t feel like enough. I still feel like I’m an outcast; that I don’t belong. Not that I didn’t always feel that way, but I thought that school was the one place I could be happy. But now, even school makes me feel alienated.

Why do I feel so different? Why do I feel like my life is over? Why are the feelings of depression that I dedicated the past year to beat returning? Why do I feel like I’m going backwards instead of forwards?

I’m different. I’ve accepted that fact. I’m even proud of that. I’m no longer on suicide watch, and I promised myself that I would never go down that path again. But I don’t know if I can keep that promise. I don’t think I will actually carry out my plans, but still, I don’t want them to exist in the first place. Not when I know my life can be so much better.

But maybe that’s just it. I know that my life could be better, but it’s not. I know that I could be so happy, and have everything I’ve ever wanted; it’s just out of my reach. Perhaps that is why I can’t think of anything when I try to find reasons to smile, or just reasons to live at all. Maybe it’s because there is none.

But that’s not true either. I know I have things to live for, even if I don’t know what they are. I assume someone would miss me. And I really don’t want to fail and end up in a hospital somewhere. My therapy just decreased in quantity; instead of going each week I go every two weeks. If I failed, I would probably have to start going daily. And they probably wouldn’t let me attend my regular classes anymore. I’ve worked so hard for honors classes; I’m not letting any of them get out of my reach.

It seems like I’ve been going backwards. When I was younger, all I wanted was to grow up. But then something changed. I wanted to stay right where I was, not move forward, not move backward. Of course, I had to move forward. I left middle school. I left the place that I didn’t plan on graduating. I thought I would be dead long before that, a victim of myself.

It’s not that I wanted to die. It’s that I didn’t want to live. I didn’t want to wake up in the morning, and subject myself to ridicule that I had become so accustomed to. I didn’t want to feel like I was an outcast, belonging nowhere, a part of nothing. I didn’t want to feel betrayed anymore by the people that I had learned to love.

I look ahead, and I don’t know where I’m going. I turn around, and I don’t know where I’ve been. I look at my current surroundings, and I don’t know where I am. I look for help, but there is none. Same as always, but now it feels magnified. It feels like there is truly no one that cares. And I’ve never been more alone.