ELLA PEDROSO ELLA PEDROSO

If there is one thing I wish I could go back in time to do, it would be to hug the 13-year-old girl who walked into her first day of high school thinking she knew what the next four years of her life would look like. The harsh reality is, that girl would spend those four years shapeshifting into different identities in an attempt to try to heal herself from her adolescence.

Last year, I read the previous senior editorials and before I knew it, tears began streaming down my face — I was at the end of my junior year and still could not relate to a single sentence. I wish this was another editorial about how much I loved high school, the friends I made and all the teachers I loved, but it is the opposite. I spent most of my years behind in my classes, drifting from different friends and overall feeling completely isolated. From this point on, the worst mistake I made was hating myself for not mirroring the “ideal high school experience.” I looked back at eighth grade, when I was probably the most content with my life I had ever been. I still did cheerleading, which I miss so much, was involved in school, was still close with my long-term friends and still had a youthful, optimistic outlook on life. I wondered what happened to that young, energetic, creative girl I had based my whole identity around.

My security in my identity began to shatter when I somehow lost that girl and became a depressed pessimist who hated my old way of living. Through my attempts to find myself fueled by a naive, teenage angst-fueled outlook, the only consistent part of me was my inconsistency. I changed myself countless times thinking I was growing, when in reality I was just further distancing myself from the self I kept hidden. I lived 10 different lives separate from the life I should have been living.

Senior Design Editor

Senior Design Editor

When the pandemic hit, my depression worsened and I developed anorexia, two illnesses that infected every corner of my life. I quickly learned the easiest part about my mental illness was staying sick: the security felt like a bandage over my anxiety towards the world around me. Even though I was too depressed to feel the motivation to keep any of the good things in my life, and my devotion to my anorexia pushed all my social life away and my grades fell, at least I was familiar with the feeling. I understood it. I have always been very self-aware and take pride in my understanding of the analytical part of my brain which processes my emotions logically before I embrace them. The world around me moved so fast while I spent four years stuck in what I perceived as safety.

I am proud to say that at this point of my life I am at a healthy point in my recovery, but every day is still a challenge. Initially, I felt so much anger that I was irrational. I could not believe I messed up so badly that four years flew by while I repressed myself. The closest I have gotten to being able to hug the 13-year-old girl inside of me was forgiving myself. What you do not realize in high school is that you are young. I realized that none of this was my fault, and just like everyone around me, I was given a unique set of experiences in order to grow, and I had to forgive myself for the mess I made along the way. Running away and shutting myself out from the world around me was never the answer, it was embracing myself. I remembered how much I loved that optimistic outlook I had on life, and how much fun it was being energetic and running through life without a care. I was not embarrassed anymore. I embraced these versions of myself. I still cringe when looking back, but in the end all these versions of me were still me, Ella.

Now I look back at high school with a sort of oxymoronic happiness. I hated high school, and can definitely say most of the years were spent believing that I am truly alone in the world and that was something I had to deal with. And yet I would not change one part of it. I have always been very sentimental, hence my desire to be able to hug myself, but now I feel the inescapable warm feeling I cannot decipher as actual happiness or pity. I look back on my old friendships, even the ones that ended in bad terms, and feel nothing but pure love. These are people who I used to have the best times with and maybe some of the worst times but that made me, me. Through embracing myself, I have come to understand and feel others better and I hold no animosity towards others I used to project my hate towards.

It would be even more naive to say that I have come so far that I actually understand myself, and that I am so grown that I am not hurting anymore. But now it is time for me to leave Miami, leave everything that I have ever known and start my new life. When I was 13-years-old, all I wanted to do was leave Miami. I would complain about it every second, but now I am actually doing it. I am going to New York, and if I was 13 I probably would have made terrible choices and hurt myself even more. Hopefully it is safe to say that I have grown enough to go through this four year journey again and have enough love for myself to guard myself from becoming lost. Although I hated high school and went through a lot, it has given me the protection and growth to enter a new stage in my life.