This last spring semester was especially rough for me. Anyone who was around me this semester knows that first hand (this is also my chance to apologize to those people who were around me...yeah, sorry you had to see that.) That's why this summer I am taking time to work on myself and making sure that I do not have a repeat of this past semester. A few months ago, I wrote an article that was all about my depression and what it meant to me. It was kind of difficult for me to write that mainly because I have never been one hundred percent okay with talking about it. People do not normally take too kindly to someone who talks about their mental health, especially when their mental health isn't exactly at it's best in the moment. I even remember someone telling me "people would like you more if you just kept all of your depression to your self"

I let my depression get the best of me this past semester. I didn't want it to, but it happened and that is because I didn't ever talk about what was going on in my head, which means I wasn't coming to terms with it. I had so much on my plate from classes to being the Editor in Chief of Odyssey at Emerson College to my internships to almost being evicted from my apartment in Boston because my roommate and I were screwed over by the girl we were living with in the fall semester. Everything was a mess, myself included. I have been putting my mental health on a back burner because I had so much going on that I needed to take care of, and that required me to put myself on hold. This almost destroyed me.

This summer, I am living in my dream city of Boston, now living with two fantastic people who love and support me more than I think anyone ever has in my life besides my parents. I am working at David's Tea, which is a store that I absolutely adore (because I love tea of course), I live only 20 minutes away from a beach and being from New Jersey originally, the beach is my happy place no matter what is going on in my life. I am going to have time to work on myself and make myself better. I am taking this summer to get myself back to where I was a year ago. Back when I was excited about every single day and what it had to offer. Back when I wasn't anxious or depressed at the thought of being a person in society.

This is the summer of Kate. I am going to spend my days making myself useful and working either at David's Tea or working on my internship, or writing, and when I am not doing any of that, I am going to be at the beach relaxing and enjoying the fact that I am a person living on this planet. I am finished with hiding in my room for days at a time because I am afraid. I am done with being scared that everyone will leave me, or that something bad will happen despite all of my efforts to make a day better. I am going to be okay again.