168 Hours in a Week

“You’re lazy.”
“You don’t work hard.”
“You think the world revolves around you.”
“You get all of what you have handed to you.”
“You get good grades because of the school that you go to.”
“You ride horses? You must be rich.”
“You’re a selfish little bitch.”
This pretty much sums up what people think of me. This sums up what I hear every week, or even every day. It makes me sick to my stomach. It makes me cry. It makes me feel unappreciated. It has caused me to have depression, at the youngest of ages.

I first experienced depression in sixth grade when people told me “You’re so skinny, you’re going to die.” Or they would ask me “Are you anorexic?” or “Do your parents feed you?” Nearly every day I would go home crying my eyes out because people would bully me about how much I weighed. I began to develop clinical migraines from the amount of stress that I was experiencing.

In seventh grade it only went downhill. First my grandpa died, he was the closest family member I had after my parents and his death rattled me. I never let myself grieve his death. I forced myself to forget that he even ever existed. This wasn’t by choice, it was because at the time I was already emotionally unstable, and I wasn’t about to let myself fall into the deep pit of grief that I knew was awaiting me. But this did not fix my depression, and next my very best friend left me the summer after seventh grade. She went from FaceTiming me for hours at a time each day to not ever texting me back. I didn’t know what I had done wrong, all I knew was that another huge people figure in my life was gone.

In eighth grade I developed what I called separation anxiety. When I felt alone, too alone, I would have an anxiety attack that would begin with me feeling nauseous, then shaking, then full out balling, rocking back and forth on my tailbone as my whole body shook like an earth quake. I got migraines every one to two weeks, and school didn’t help.

I forced myself to forget about all of this, just like I forced myself to forget my papa (grandpa). But it all came back the other day when I was with my friend. We were talking about the sadder aspects in our lives when it all came rolling back into my brain. How hurt I really am, how messed up I really am, how bad my depression actually was and still may be. But I got so goddamned good at hiding it from others that I could hide it from myself too. I had ignored it, shoved it into the very back of my thoughts, but it was still there. School gives me no time to handle my own personal needs. I have no time to have a mental health day. I have no time to waste crying over what my life actually is because I spend approximately 40 hours at school, 21 hours on homework, 12 hours at the barn, 10 hours eating, 56 hours sleeping, 2 hours showering, 5 hours getting ready for school, and 4 hours on the bus every single week. Do you know how many hours are in a week? 168 hours. Do you know how many hours those numbers add up to? 168. This is how I spend my weeks. Do I have enough time to be stressed? To take a minute to just focus on breathing? No. So am I lazy? Is using every single hour of your week that you can for productive purposes what you call lazy?

My cat being adorably lazy, as always.