Attention family/friends: This is beginning of a memoir, maybe not, who knows – I just know I’m finally writing again and that feels good. Experiences are real but names are not. Happy reading – JMRA

Chapter 1: Panic

I remember when I had my first panic attack. My civics teacher pulled me aside, saying he needed to talk to me with the school principal. I had done nothing wrong, or at least I didn’t think I did. We walked through the halls of Rookie High School, the place where everything was white.

The tile floors were white, the walls were white, the people were white. Let’s be honest, I was referring to the people mostly.

To this day, I don’t remember what I had done or what we talked about with the principal, but I remember I was crying hard as I breathed in and out of a brown bag. They both attempted to calm me down but failed and we had agreed to wait for my mom to get there.

I wonder what I had done. Maybe I had passed too many notes to the person sitting behind me.  I was also a talker, maybe that’s what it was? I am sticking to the fact that this moment was so traumatizing that 8 years later, up to today/the present, I don’t remember what happened.

But let it be known that this was the year I had first experienced depression. This was also the year I was graduating from high school and felt the pressures of college applications, doing well in all my classes, maintaining friendships, while also being social and remaining cool enough.

I was never cool, nor did I want to be. I read a lot of books, wrote a lot, I was even in the English academic team at one point.

I was so uncool that my Saturdays were spent at the closest Barnes and Nobles with my dad, reading books while I scouted cute boys. Believe it or not, there were plenty of cuties at B&N.

I’m not ready to tell you about my B&N adventures just yet – let me tell you about my high school best friend. Her name was Kate, she was beautiful and very popular. I don’t remember how we became friends, but I know it was definitely through someone I knew – not because I had met her and we had decided to be friends.

I know this because the second we all went our separate ways and graduated she had decided that she was too cool for our friendship and didn’t want me in her life anymore. I was hurt. I didn’t know how to take it, but I made new friends and I was fine.

But here’s where it gets funny: I shared this information with one of my first friends in college, Adrian, a very hilarious boy who made me laugh every day my freshman year of college. He was so enraged by this that he decided to message her on Facebook to tell her how awesome I was. No boy or anyone had ever done that for me before.

Well, people, he did just that.

I forgave her because I later found out she was going through some trials in her life. I saw her again many years later and she looked very happy and seemed like a nicer version of herself. I wish her well.

What happened to Adrian? Well, Adrian deserves a chapter or two.

Until then.

———– Draft ——– Untitled / Memoir Blurbs ————- Written by Janice M. Rojas————–

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