The story of Mariah - Anchorage Alaska
When I started 6th grade, I started to fake being sick because I was too tired to go to school. In eighth grade, I was diagnosed with severe Anxiety and Depression disorder. I have had multiple moments when I had almost succumbed to suicide. My grades and attendance throughout high school were not very great, and it took a toll on my GPA. The winter of my sophomore year, I got into a car crash that caused whip lash and me to visit the Chiropractor for the very first time. There, I was told I have had a severe curve in my spine and that I have Scoliosis. My family told me, “Oh it’s because you sleep so much,” and continued for a long year to blame me for it. Spring of my junior year, I was taken to a program at the hospital for Suicide attempters and other mental illnesses. Two weeks later I got out and immediately had to return to the hospital for a sleep study. There, we found out I also have severe Narcolepsy. I now take medication for it, but it doesn’t always work. However, my grades have improved tremendously. family and friends still get annoyed when I need to take a nap or don’t think I can drive to school, or simply stay awake in class. Along with the Narcolepsy comes Cataplexy, (the loss of feeling in my muscles, mostly legs), visual and auditorial hallucinations of something that really isn’t there, and another one I experience is sleep paralysis. It’s terrifying. It has worn me down and even more so when I realize I’m stuck with all of these for the rest of my life. I try as hard as I can to work to make my family proud and prove their doubts of me wrong, but lately it seems like it takes a toll on them. I am the type of person who wants to see everything there is to see across the world, but lately I don’t even know if it’s even worth it.