She asked to meet in her car at a park she used to go to all the time while she was in high school. It was nearing dark when I went to sit down next to her in the passenger seat of her car. She asked me to remain anonymous and use a fake name while writing this essay; so we decided on the name “Elisa”. Elisa is my age, 18, and has dark eyes and dark hair. I had asked her in advance about the subject I wanted to talk about: what defines you as the person you are today. After casually chatting for a bit, I started the conversation on the subject and she began to explain.
Elisa explained, that as much as she hated high school, she knew it was a necessary experience to shape the person she is today. “Freshman year was the worst year for me,” she told me. “It went very downhill before it went up.” She went on to explain more why freshman year was so bad for her. During that time, she was sexually assaulted multiple times by a junior she went to high school, and she didn’t even realize she was sexually assaulted until years later. “It took me a while to realize it wasn’t fully my fault,” she mentioned. “I would always have flashbacks of those times and it honestly took me a long time for those to fully go away.” In the midst of all of this happening, she picked up self-harming. “I thought making my pain physical to try to replace my mental pain would make me feel less shitty,” Elisa said. During freshman and sophomore years, she coped with her sadness by cutting herself. She told me she remembered when her parents finally found out. It scared her to death, knowing that her parents finally knew what she was doing to herself. After that, she stopped for the most part.
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“Now here is the part my parents don’t know and will never know about,” Elisa said to me slightly laughing, but with a painful tone. The junior and senior years were a little bit different. She started to get more anxiety and had been diagnosed with ADD. Instead of self-harming, she was trying to cope in other ways: alcohol and drugs. She knew they weren’t good, but she wanted to do them anyway. Elisa picked up drinking every weekend and spent the money she had to buy weed. Although she didn’t do hard drugs, she got really into psychedelics. “I remember the first time I took LSD,” she said. “It felt like a dream in the moment but the comedown was truly horrible.” She told me that even after that mixed experience, she did it again. “I just wanted to see if anything I did would mess with my brain,” she slowly said. “I was playing a mental roulette with my brain; I was just waiting to get mentally fucked up.”
Senior year was coming to a close and Elisa finally got some help. She started going to therapy and was prescribed the right medication for her ADD. The drinking and drugs started to simmer down. She finally got a job in fast food and started making decent money. “As much as I hated working at a fast food place, it honestly kept me in check,” she laughed. Currently, Elisa is saving up for a car and making plans with a friend to get an apartment soon. She is going to college full-time and mostly focusing on her future now. Based on her life right now, she is happier and more stable. “I know I’ve made mistakes in the past, but I’ve learned from them and grown,” she said with a smile
It’s already dark now when she finally wraps up everything we talk about. As we sit in her car, Elisa says, “I wouldn’t be the person I am today without high school. As much as I despised it, I learned so much. My bad experiences helped me prevent more bad decisions in the future. I’m grateful for all the things that happened to me.” She said this in a reminiscing tone, and I knew she was thinking back on everything she told me. After that, I hugged her and left.
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