At age nine or so I wasn’t like most other kids. In my early life I had been talkative and friendly and outgoing as any other kid, probably even more than most. But at age nine something happened to me, it was like something clicked and it wasn’t a good thing. I became sluggish and quiet and tired all the time, my once perfect school grades slipped and I grew to hate school. I had little friends at the time but the one I did have I hung out with nearly every day of my life and around him I felt normal, but in school it was like I was a different person. If my memory serves me right my mom started to notice around sixth or seventh grade so she took me to a psychiatrist. She explained to him the slip in grades and lack of motivation in school and the various activities I used to love. So after three or so more sessions with the doctor and a couple tests I was diagnosed with chemical depression.
I was given medication that I took for a while and it seemed to do nothing for me at all. So for some unknown reason I told my mom that I feel better that I didn’t need it and so she took me off it. Well around that time the best friend that I mentioned earlier who I had barely ever went a day without seeing started to stop hanging as much. He made more friends in school who he started to hang out with and I just made friends who I talked to in school. He started to get involved in a world of drugs and alcohol and I could only follow him so far. We started to hang out less and less until we went weeks sometimes without seeing each other. I have always been a year ahead of him in school and the jump to high school seemed to split us apart. And there I sat a depressed with no close friends. The only thing I had to look up to everyday was going home to play videogames. Then one day a friend from school asked me if I wanted to hang out that weekend and I eagerly accepted. We quickly became best friends and he introduced me to his group and soon I had more friends than I could ever have hoped for. For the next three years of high school I formed new friendships and those years became the happiest ones of my life. By the time I graduated I was friends with my entire graduating class, all 800 of us. These friends pulled me out of depression and made me happy once again. At age nine I was struck with depression, by age thirteen I was an alcoholic, by fourteen I lost a friend I had known since I was one year old, and by the time I was fifteen my life was better than I could have ever imagined. This is why I believe that friends are the most important thing in the world.