"I have always been very good at making friends, as I am very kind and extroverted toward them. When I entered high school, I made a ton of friends and I was so happy, until I entered a mentally and sexually abusive relationship.

 

After I entered this relationship, I stopped hanging out with friends for the two-and-a-half years that I dated this boy. I then got to college and was very excited to redo the process of making all new friends. I have never been one to self-diagnose, so I never told anyone that I was anxious or depressed.

 

After I got to college, I had a very fun first semester, in which my excitement of being in college and making friends outweighed my anxieties. Once second semester came, I became quite depressed and stopped going out with my friends. I spent pretty much every night moping around in my room. I told one friend from home that I had been thinking about killing myself, and he told me he thought it was just for attention, so I stopped talking about it.

 

One day in April I did try to kill myself, and I did not tell anyone. My voice coach had been recommending that I take advantage of my school's counseling service for a while, just because of my anxious tendencies. Once I tried to kill myself, I started going to counseling.

 

Now that it is summer, I have been spending a lot of time trying to become confident by my own doing and not by that of a significant other. Every single day I am so happy when I think about how much love I have for my friends and for music, which is my major, and I think about how blessed I am that my passions outweigh my struggles.

 

I definitely still get anxious very frequently, to the point that it is affecting my physical health, but when I think about music and people, I am able to calm myself down. I don't even exactly remember what caused me to try to kill myself that night. Every day I am so happy to be alive and be able to spread all the love that I have in my heart to my friends and my passion for music."