I guess my first “real” post here should be a glimpse into my story and how I’ve made it to this point in my journey.

Let’s see where to start…

For the longest time I’ve suffered from depression and some level of anxiety. And just for some good measure lets throw in some really bad stress management on the top. These mental hurdles all culminate in a suicide attempt back in 2009 when I was in college due poorly managed stress management and distorted need to always succeed at everything I do.

Let me qualify that last statement real quick. Growing up I was always held to the highest standard academically, and was routinely told to “work with my mind and not with my hands” and “under certain circumstance you shouldn’t have to study for tests.” Yes, I do feel as if I am generally gifted when it comes to intelligence as it refers to book smarts and “street smarts.” I have always had a natural attraction to problem solving, fixing, or discovering how something works mechanically. When I was in high school one of my favorite classes that I took was Auto Mechanics. I was happier than a pig in mud in that class. From working with my hands to fixing cars and learning how it all works tickled my fancy. Most of my friends during that time thought I was going to become a grease monkey (and to be fair that’s what I was really wanting to do). But due to my overwhelming success in chemistry, I was slightly nudged into pursuing Chemical Engineering in college. This is the point in which my story really starts to take shape.

Now I don’t blame my parents for pushing me to pursue a higher education, they ultimately wanted the best for me and wanted me to succeed in areas that they may not have when they were growing up. All throughout high school I had nearly perfect attendance pretty much a A/B student, so it would make sense that I would be fine in college. During my sophomore year in college I had the roughest academic year. My biggest hurdle was trying to pass Calculus I with at least a C. This year was the first time that I had ever failed a class. This caused a little friction in which my parents were a little confused as someone was so gifted in high school was struggling this bad in college. I went on to fail out of the School of Engineering at USF (after taking Calc I a total of 5 times… yea I’m persistent), and transferred into the criminology department to fast track my graduation. Now my sophomore/junior years wasn’t all gloom and doom. I did have a few good things happen as well. During this time I discovered a passion in cycling, enjoyed playing in USF Herd of Thunder (this one made me kinda famous, my photo is featured in NCAA Football 2008), and I would meet my first girlfriend who I would later marry then divorce – more on that later.

During this crucial 2ish year period is when I saw my greatest amount of ups and downs. This all culminated in luckily a failed attempt at suicide, with my then girlfriend pulling me back from the edge, literally. During this time the amount of self-inflicted stress I was carrying was tremendous. My GPA slipped to just under 1.50 (I had always previously managed a 3.8-4.0 GPA throughout my academic career up until this time) and I didn’t know who to tell this to my parents, whom likely may not have been able to understand why I was doing this bad. Add on this a relationship the was already starting to show it may not be for the best.

As always did with my stressors and mental health issues, I shoved them in to the depths of the back of my mind in hopes they would just “go away.” As we all know this doesn’t work.

Once again I felt my relationship was starting to fail and I couldn’t let my family know that I once again “failed” at something, so out of this grew one of my worst personality traits, manipulation. I had been so afraid of failure that I manipulated an individual to stay in a relationship with me for just under 10 years, so I wouldn’t disappoint my family.

As you can see there is an ongoing theme, being afraid of failure and disappointment.

I feel that this is a good end to the opening chapter, that is my story. I’ll pick up where I left on my next post. Thank you for following along with me. I hope with putting myself out there that I might be able to help someone who may be going through the same thing that I went through.