When I started my senior year at my extremely conservative, radically Christian high school, I expected to keep my head down and power through until college. I had no friends, no sense of self, no semblance of a social life at all. What I did have was depression and anxiety. I was miserable and there seemed to be no good way to change things.
Well, change came but it wasn’t what I wanted at all.
In September of 2016, I got really sick. Originally, my doctors thought it was a sinus infection, but after a week of a high fever (and I never get fevers) they began to run more tests. After weeks of an unbreakable fever, nausea, and general exhaustion, they gave me the diagnosis of mononucleosis. At this point I had already missed weeks of school, when I was supposed to be preparing for college.
It only got worse from there. My fever didn’t break for almost six weeks straight. I grew so weak that my mom needed to help me to the bathroom, which was just across the hallway from my bedroom. We had to move my mattress from my loft bed to the ground because my legs shook any time I even tried to stand, much less climb the ladder to my bed. I had never felt so sick and helpless in my life.
I missed so much school and was too weak to even think about it. Turns out, that was a good thing. The school I went to was radically religious and weaponized their beliefs against anyone who didn’t align to their strict and oppressive model of what a “godly” person is. In my religion classes I was taught that women should always submit to her husband when it came to decisions, that sex was a gift from God only intended for a married man and woman, and I learned that being gay was a sin that would be punishable by eternity in hell. More specifically, I was told that being gay was a test that God gave and to prove your love and faith you had to fight the homosexual tendencies. Once you proved yourself, God would take those “tendencies” away and you would be rewarded with heterosexuality. With normalcy. I was in a community that was so prejudiced and narrow minded, I couldn’t even begin to widen my perspective enough to figure my own self out.
In that school, I was stuck. I was so ingrained with these hateful ideals that I was blind to the larger world and the values that society as a whole felt. I didn’t realize that the views of the rest of the world were not the same as I was being taught. I was in a tunnel, blind to other viewpoints and being pushed only towards their false idea of salvation.
Being away from that, I began to realize that what I was being taught was not the opinions of the wider world. I finally had the chance to delve into those feelings I had been aware of since I was fourteen but had been repressing for fear that they were wrong. I was attracted to girls.
In between fever induced states of semi-consciousness, I turned to the internet. I joined Tumblr and found a LGBTQ+ community and began talking to other queer people. I started watching queer Youtubers. I even started reading books with sapphic story lines. I threw myself into the community to try and figure out if it felt right. And being away from an environment that was constantly telling me that being gay was unnatural and a sin, I was able to identify why I felt the way I did, unlearn the hateful things I was taught, and work on accepting myself.
In mid-October, I got over the fears that I would never be accepted for being gay and I came out to my family and was greeted with nothing but support. I was surprised at how well it went. I knew my family loved me, of course, but I had been indoctrinated to believe that everyone else would think of me differently. I never thought I would be greeted with the amount of love and support I received. I never expected that coming out would make me feel closer to my family.
Early to mid-November I started to slowly go back to school. It took a long time to adjust. I’d go to school one day and exhaust myself so much that I would be unable to go for the next two days. I had to make adjustments and drop out of my honors and AP classes to make up the work. Once again, I was surrounded by a community that I knew would never accept me if they knew I was queer, but I had a stronger sense of self and the support of my family, so while it wasn’t ideal, it was better.
I had been back to school almost three weeks and nearly made up all my schoolwork when the school called my mom and told her that I had missed too much school and they weren’t going to let me graduate. Now, they had been well aware of my situation and were kept up to date by mom and my doctor the entire time. It wasn’t until after I was nearly caught up that they made this decision. They told me I could come back next year.
I had already been accepted into Arcadia University and their FYSAE program, and I was not going to be held back. My mom essentially said “F**k it,” sent them a passive aggressive email, and told them we would never be coming back.
Being kicked out of school halfway through my senior year of high school after being extremely sick for three months was not at all ideal. But I was determined to graduate on time and continue my plan of starting college the next fall.
My mom enrolled me in online school which I started that March. I had to restart my senior year, but I got to stay at home. I got to go to kickboxing classes with my mom. I got to go to Barnes and Noble and do my schoolwork. It was hard work to get done on time, but it was like I got time to reset. I got to work more on accepting my sexuality. I realized that a lot of my mental health triggers were because of that school. I started practicing self love and working on myself. I got to spend more time with my family before I would move away. I developed a work ethic and learned the extent of my determination.
None of this would have happened if I hadn’t gotten sick. Those times lying in bed were some of the most formative months of my teenage life. I don’t know who I would have become if mono hadn’t caused me to leave that school. But I can say with near certainty that I would not have adapted to college as well as I did if I hadn’t had that time with myself. I would not be the person I am today.
When I got sick and was told I would miss a lot of school, I thought it was a travesty. It turned out to be one of the best things that could have happened to me.
Sometimes it’s the things that seem tragic that are what need to happen for the best change to happen. That might be a breakup, losing a job, or getting really sick. Things are going to suck sometimes, but it’s how you use those moments to change and broaden your view that matters.
Whatever dark time you’re going through, you’ll get through it and you’ll emerge on the other side stronger.
