The P-Word

The south face of her classroom is covered by yawning window panes. These broad windows guarantee that, any day where the sun is exposed, the room is bathed in bright, almost abrasive, sunlight. Her classroom has a domestic comfort to it: the warm glow of the southern sun, picture frames around her desk, early 2000s style math memes on the wall, the calmness and quiet typical of math classrooms…

 It was a December afternoon during sophomore year. Like most afternoons, sunlight, bright and direct, harshly slanted in broad geometric shapes across the carpeted floor and desks. If my memory is right, it was at the end of the day. Instead of the usual silence, the room was filled with sobbing. The gross, hiccupy, snotty kind. It’s hard to say what exactly prompted the episode--it could’ve been a whole slough of things, teenage angst, whatever it was has disappeared into the vague ambiguity of aging memories--but it hit me hard. And she was in the corner, and it made me cry harder because that’s always the case when you cry. If you’re alone, at least you can miserably sniffle without the wave of shame and embarrassment. But, there I was, hiding my face behind my arms and slouched over myself, sobbing into my sweaty palms, and her nearby and talking softly to me, me trying to respond but garbling and drowning in reverse.

You know it’s a significant point in your life when you dedicate a playlist to it. Freshman year and the first semester of sophomore year were, by my reckoning, two of the most important years of social development in my life. Like most gangly teenagers, I felt like a social disaster, but unlike everyone, my GABA neurotransmitters weren’t cooperating, to the extent I’d see classmates hanging out and start bawling. My social anxiety was debilitating to the point I’d spend most of my study halls crying. It wasn’t pretty. It was a challenge for me to get out of the mental slumps I so often found myself in.

 Now, you’re probably wondering how I ended up in her classroom that day. Simply put, that teacher was (and is) one of my favorite teachers. She's the type of teacher you can comfortably talk to, who’ll let you nap the corner during your study halls. And, I’d spoken to her before about my emotional state, specifically about what to do about it.

“Prescription.”

It’s such a scary word. It’s more than just medicine. It has that implication of something being wrong with you as a person. My mom had told me horror stories about medication and its side effects, and I didn’t want to become reliant on medicine. I felt pathetic, abnormal, even, for how I felt most of the time. But it took a mental breakdown in front of my algebra teacher for me to consider getting the confidence to ask my mom to start me on medication. I had to open up to someone who cared about me and speak candidly, which felt absolutely abysmal at the time, but that event was the push I needed to seek out the help I needed. And, a month later, I had medically diagnosed social anxiety and a Zoloft prescription, both of which I have today, and I’m better for it.

Sometimes we have to accept outside help. Acknowledging mental health issues doesn’t make us any weaker of a person. Seeking help for our mental health doesn’t make us any weaker of a person. It makes us infinitely stronger. And sometimes it takes that other person to nudge you towards the help that you need, and that’s alright.