Hopelessness: The Effect of Unchecked Emotions on a Developing Boy’s Psyche

From a young age, I have struggled with controlling my emotions, specifically anger and sadness. When I was in the third grade, I was sitting in class, talking to one of my friends while the teacher was talking. Like most nine-year-old boys, I was more concerned about the flavor of Capri Sun packed in my lunch that day than the homework assignment, so when I missed what the teacher assigned, I asked my friend to copy down what he had written. Noticing me talking, my teacher, Mrs. Adamson, made me give her one of my tickets, which was the class reward system. My blood began to boil. Not only was I humiliated in front of the entire class, but it was for the wrong reason as I was trying to be responsible and copy down that night’s assignment. I started writing little notes about my teacher like “Mrs. Adamson is mean,” “Mrs. Adamson is a bad teacher,” and “Mrs. Adamson is dumb.” All were stupid insults, but nine-year-old me thought I was getting her good, so I wrote one last really nasty one. “I wish I was dead. Or I wish I had a different teacher.” I got up, walked to the trash can, and threw out my paper. However, I had forgotten to erase my last note, and a kid in my class named Robbie had to sharpen his pencil. Robbie didn’t like me very much, so I started to get tense. My feeling of accomplishment immediately turned into a deep fear that I would be sent down to the principal’s office. Robbie looked down while he was sharpening his pencil, reached down into the trash can, picked up my note, and read it in front of the whole class. Twenty-three pairs of eyes turned and silently stared at me. Not knowing what to do, I got up, walked out of the classroom, and started to cry. That was it. I was going to the office, and there was nothing I could do about it. Though I was not sent to the principal’s office. Instead, my note was scanned and sent home to my parents, who sent me to a therapist’s office. Apparently, not many third graders said that they wished they were dead, and it was a red flag when one did.

The next couple of months were a social struggle for me. I became the kid that parents had to have a talk about with their kids at dinner, the kid that everybody needed to be extra nice to, the kid that saw a “special Doctor.” Although not worrying about kids making fun of me was liberating, it was short-lived. My friends stopped hanging out with me because it was too hard for them to think of something that wouldn’t push my buttons. My peers that I wasn’t close with started calling me crazy behind my back because I saw a psychologist. Even my closest friends didn’t help because they didn’t know how to react to it themselves, as we were all only nine years old. My parents would tell me I had emotional problems, and it was upsetting being told so blatantly that I was abnormal. I did normal things, after all. I played sports such as baseball, basketball, and soccer, I played video games with my friends over the weekend, I went and got pizza every Tuesday with my friends for lunch, but despite all that, I was the only one considered abnormal. Years of being called pessimistic, emotionally troubled, and abnormal turned my sadness into deep, hateful anger. So, throughout the rest of elementary and middle school, I let all the anger I felt fester within me, waiting to boil over the next time I became somebody’s target.

When I was thirteen, I had a crush on a girl named Rachel. It was my first time having feelings of affection toward someone outside of my family, so I became defensive when people childishly made fun of me for liking her. Two kids in my grade named Keith and Billy found it extremely funny to see how angry they could get me on a given day. I had two classes in a row with them, and in those two periods, they made it their duty to see how far they could push me before I flew off the handle. It didn’t take much to make me lose it. There were times I threw things, times where I yelled, and even one time where I physically tried to lunge over a desk at them. No matter how ashamed I felt at the end of the day, I always went back to school the next day and followed the same routine. This earned me the nickname “No Fuse” as my contact name for a couple of kids in my grade and made it even harder for people to want to talk to me. Now, not only did I get upset easily, but when I did, I got violent. My parents blamed me for being an easy target, and my friends told me to “stop getting so angry” as if it were that simple. After seventh grade, I had a few episodes where I flew off the handle and acted out of spite or said something hurtful out of anger, but they were much less frequent because I tried to make myself less of an “easy target” by controlling when I got mad.

When I hit high school, it was still hard for me to feel emotionally in tune with the rest of the world. I still reacted poorly when things didn’t go the way as I had envisioned them. At this point, I was over Rachel and I liked a girl named Ann. I was more mature, I had grown a couple of inches in the last year, and I felt more confident than ever before. About a week before I had planned to ask her out, she texted me a really long paragraph about why she couldn’t go out with me. At first, I thought it wasn’t a big deal, but a week later she was asked to homecoming by somebody else and said yes. I got angry again, but instead of taking it out on her, I took it out on myself. I had convinced myself that it wasn’t that other people ignored the good in me, it was that there was an absence of good in me. I told myself I was the root of all my problems, and no matter how hard I tried, I would always be unhappy and deserved to be unhappy. My family and friends continued to call me negative, selfish, and unlovable, and I believed it until the beginning of my sophomore year.

I was sitting in my tenth grade English class, listening to my teacher talk about the hero’s journey when I decided to crack my back. I would grab the back of my seat, and use leverage to twist my back until it cracked. As I reached back to grab the head of my chair, I saw the most stunning girl I had ever seen. I couldn’t stop thinking about her. Every day I looked forward to English so I could see her again, and after a week I asked around and I found out her name was Sophia. I got my friend to send me her Snapchat and I started to text her every day. She was a cheerleader, she has two dogs named Bailey and Duke, a younger brother in my brother’s grade, and unlike the other two girls I have written about, she started to like me too.

Sophia and I would hang out every Saturday. We would see movies, play Mario Kart, go on walks in South Park, get ice cream, and more. I loved spending time with her. She was sweet, she was pretty, she is the most amazing artist I know, and every morning I’d wake up to a text saying “Good morning!” and go to bed every night to one saying “Goodnight Author I love you.” I realized I didn’t just love spending time with her, I also loved her. The only problem was me. I had a hard time saying how I felt, I would trip on my words and get scared that what I would say would scare her off. I had been told for so long that I was abnormal, weird, and negative that I just couldn’t believe that somebody thought I was so perfect for them. Over time it got harder and harder for me to say what I wanted because I was so afraid that I would drive her away by being too pushy. We started to fight when she started to lie to make me feel better. She would say one thing and then do another, and when I called her out for it she texted me in the morning that we were done. I didn’t get out of bed until 2 pm because I didn’t want my family to see me so upset. That night I wrote her a note and drove to her house to put it on her car’s windshield, and we talked and sorted things out the next day. After that day, however, nothing ever felt the same. I still felt on edge all the time, despite her saying she would be open to hearing what I needed out of our relationship. Her lying to me made it so much harder to trust that she meant what she said when she wanted me to be more open with her about how I felt. I started to gradually lose interest in her, which was just as sad as losing her in the first place. Every day I would be less excited to see her texts in the morning. I would ignore her until she asked if I was okay, and I would respond with “Yeah I’m fine.” Surprisingly enough, the COVID-19 pandemic made our connection stronger. When we couldn’t see each other it made it easier to want to text her and see how she was doing. After not being able to see each other for so long, I felt more confident in being able to share my thoughts and feelings with her again, and I told her about how much I struggle to talk to her because I was so scared I’d lose her. I told her how depressed I have been in the past and how little I thought of myself, and how much better she made me feel about myself. However, once we were able to see each other again, she stopped checking up on how I felt and it went back to how it always was, me trying to keep Sophia happy at the expense of my own happiness. In mid-July, I missed her cheer tryouts and forgot to call her and see how it went, and she told me I needed to be more supportive. I lost it when she said that, and we broke up an hour later. At first, it felt good for my life to be my own again. I could spend my money how I wanted, my Saturdays were free, and I could see my friends whenever I wanted to. As the weeks passed by I thought about her less and less, and then one day I didn’t think of her at all. When I realized this, I broke down. How could I be so stupid? How could I let someone so special who cared so much about me stop caring? How did I make the person who believed in me the most and loved me unconditionally give up on me? It has now been almost three months since I’ve talked to her, three months since I’ve held her, three months since she’s told me she loves me. There are days where I could carry the world on my shoulders, but they aren’t frequent. I almost never have a day that is one-hundred percent good. The people in my life seem to think that I’m the problem, and it only makes it harder for me to think it’s even possible for me to change. For so many years I’ve felt like I always have been the first to lend a helping hand to my friends, my brothers, my parents, and my girlfriend, and I always seem to be the last to receive help in return.

So, who am I? Am I destined to be unhappy for the rest of my life, or is feeling this way part of everybody’s life? I honestly have no idea, but I do know that I want to be happy, and I strive for it. While I hate with every cell in my body, I also love with every cell in my body. I strive to achieve greatness in my schoolwork and at football because I know that when I find happiness, my hard work will make it so much sweeter. When a friend is in need, I drop whatever I’m doing and help them get through their obstacle. It doesn’t matter if they’re struggling with math, frustrated with their parents, or just need a shoulder to cry on, I will always be there for them, even if they aren’t always there for me. I want to help people because I know what it feels like to have nobody that will listen without judgment, I know what years of being labeled as the problem and believing it can do to a person’s self-esteem, and I understand when somebody can’t look at the bright side.

As I continue to grow and mature, my personality will continue to change and develop as well. My interests will shift, my relationships with my friends and family will become more complex, and my understanding of myself will deepen. Although I won’t be the same person in ten years that I am right now, I will always know what it’s like to feel stranded. I will remember the days where I thought finding any shred of happiness was hopeless. I will understand what it is like to be convinced that the best thing to do is give up and have nobody to tell me otherwise. My experience has made me realize how hard it has been to try and convince myself every day that I am worth other people’s time and that I matter. Because of my experience, I never want to leave people to fight their own battles. I want to make it easier for others to cope with their own insecurities and be the person that shows them that they matter to others. I can’t leave my peers to go through what I have because it matters too much to me to be ignored. If I leave those I love to live the way I have, all those who told me I was negative, abnormal, and overly-sensitive will be proven right. I need to be the one to communicate that it’s okay to ask for help because everybody deserves to be happy, even if they don’t believe it yet.