Me, My Stress, and I

Stress. That’s the hot word in today’s schools. Stress, mental health, depression. They are all grouped under the same category when talked about. I remember hearing about it for the first time when I was in kindergarten, my father walked into the house one day and remarked, “Life is so stressful. I wonder how much longer I can go on this way.” It had seemed to me, at that time, that the phenomenon of “stress” was limited to the lives of adults. Little did I know that the impact of this monster is far larger than that.

My first experience with stress was in grade 9. I was an innocent student back then, naïve to the ways of the school and the complexities of my own thought processes. I can’t pinpoint the exact day it truly began, but I remember how it started.

It wasn’t because of a test. I was always very well prepared for those. It was because of a few simple words uttered by my science teacher when she was handing back tests, “I am not very happy with how the class did on this test.” That was the first time I had ever heard such words. In kindergarten, I was the star student of my class, and this had gone on all the way through elementary school. In middle school, my teachers never cared enough to give such feedback and I continued to score well. When the reality of my performance hit me that day, I was not prepared to face it. It felt as though this one measly test was going to determine the rest of my life. I began to question myself. Am I truly worth it? Am I going to be the biggest failure ever seen?

Stress is like a black hole. It sucks you in so fast, you forget what you were doing in the first place. Because of that one science test, my entire value system felt shaken. I had always believed that science was my true calling. How can that be true, since I didn’t score well on the test?

Soon enough, I found my heart palpitating every time I had a test. The same set of question would go through my mind: Will I make it? Will I pass this test? Will I get into the good universities? It began reaching new extremes when my grades became affected. Of course this was expected as I spent more time stressing than studying. But I was helpless. Everything was new. My school was new, I was surrounded by strangers, and I was trying to survive. There was nobody I was comfortable enough to confide in. And so life went on. I stressed every time there was a test and my marks continued dropping.

One day, the stress took its toll on my body. All that pent up agitation and anxiety finally burst. It was a rare instance when I had three major tests in one day. I had studied into the late hours of the night, preparing. When I was writing my third and final test that fateful day, waves of distress came crashing down on me. It started with the slow rise of my body temperature. I was answering the questions on the test. I had finished most of the questions and there had been only three more to go. I took a glance at them; they seemed hard. Then I realized that I was feeling strangely hot. I wiped my forehead and my hand came away soaked with cold sweat.

I didn’t understand what was happening. I panicked. My throat felt parched, and my limbs felt as heavy as lead. Everyone around me was completely oblivious, concentrating on the test in front of them. My shirt was soaked through. I weakly called out for help. And then my vision blacked out.

I do not recall seeing my teacher call the vice principals, but when I woke up with excruciating pain in my abdomen, the school’s vice principals were at my side. They must’ve been watching me for quite a while as they had already called the ambulance and the paramedics were waiting in the school’s main office. They helped me up and we made our way to the ambulance. I felt absolutely terrible. I had a spontaneous fever and pain in my abdomen. When they hooked me to the heart rate monitor, it was dangerously low. They could barely find my heartbeat. At the hospital a few hours later, a diagnosis had been made. It was a panic attack caused by long term stress. My parents were very disappointed, they felt that it was their fault for not sensing it sooner.

This ordeal has been a very profound lesson for me. Stress had made me physically weak. It drained me of the ability to see the good things in life. When I went back to school three days later, I had made a new resolution to never stress; nothing matters more than my health and my happiness.

High school is a very stressful experience. Many will tell you that it is impossible to come out unscathed. But believe me when I say this: everything will be fine. Study to learn, don’t study to score. The minute you start believing that your grades define you, stress will capture and devour you. And most of all, do not fear failure. Make failure your friend because failure will teach you how to be a better person. That way, you can live your life as me, myself, and I.