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Many of us become comfortable with something when we’ve experienced it multiple times. It gets easier once know what to expect. But when we’re given the opportunity to do something different or something new, do we take it? My journey at Cupertino High School would, unfortunately, be dull and rather boring if not for the growth I went through the first semester of my senior year. In truth, up until then I had not gone out my comfort zone in any notable way. I envied those who were very gung-ho and joined every club or even started their own. I occasionally entertained the thought of joining service clubs, yet strings of fear wrapped around my body and bound me to the easy routine I had already established. It felt as if there was always a whisper drifting in my subconscious saying, “You can’t do it. It’ too much change and you’ll be alone”. I hoped that there would be less stress and unhappiness living this way. As the years progressed, the opposite revealed itself to be true. Those who were more involved in high school activities, those who tested the limits of what they could do bore more confidence in themselves and acquired greater amounts of friends through what they were involved in. Fatefully, while I was going through dark times, my teacher assigned a slam poetry project in my English class. The best poems in each class would be able to perform in a school wide event. For many days I struggled with the choice of writing about the taboo subject of mental illness, which is what I was struggling with at the time, or taking the easy way out and writing about something far less personal. Here was my opportunity to be heard. It was my opportunity to move people and to engage in a brief period of vulnerability to my classmates. I decided that, if I failed in reaching other people that at least I could be proud that I held my head high and faced my illness head-on and out in the open. To come out to my peers terrified me, yet at the same time filled me with excitement. I knew that people would never look at me the same, yet a newfound strength was born in acknowledging my weakness face on. When the time came, I could hardly focus on the people that went before me. My vision was blurring and my body started shaking uncontrollably. I tried really hard to hide it but my head was swimming with a cocktail of emotions. A thunderstorm of claps erupted and signaled my new beginning. Step by step I willed myself to go up to the front. I fought hard to control the cracks in my voice but some still escaped. However, after the first verse an amazing shift happened. I felt a new energy surge through me. The words snowballed out, with every new line my voice grew stronger and demanded attention. I let myself go, announcing to the world “I am here. I am hurting. I know many of you are hurting too, but we don’t have to suffer in silence”. I was finally free and out of the shadows. In speaking the truth of my world, I found that it opened the door for me to connect with others. Never could I have imagined the outpouring of support I received from my classmates that day and the respect they gave me for sharing that poem. I was instantly hooked, and I wanted to reach more students who were struggling as I was. I went on the recite that poem many more times at public events in school. For every ounce of myself that I poured into it, I received back from other students who understood me. I felt so strongly a human connection that binds all of us when going through something as serious as depression. Later, a freshman ran up to me in the halls and share with me the agony she felt after having been subjected to severe bullying in middle school. Peers told me of their family problems and grapples with mental illness. None of this would have happened if I let my fears intimidate and keep me chained. Now, while it still isn’t much easier, I believe in doing things no matter how uncomfortable they make me.