Trail of Tears

     It's that time of year again. The colorful reminders of fall gradually fade into the dark, depressing labyrinths of winter as the long, bright days of summer turn to the dreary and seemingly endless winter nights.  The days blur together, each one feeling more like the next.  As I searched for a cause of my looming depression, I recently came to the conclusion that it may be a direct result of the fact that I barely see the sun anymore. I spend all morning and afternoon in school, and then I work immediately after, often until seven or eight.  Upon my departure, of course, the sun has long since set, leaving me with just the meager light of the moon, stars, and my headlights to guide me home.  As the night drags on, the vague depression fades to fatigue as I often find myself staying up well past midnight to finish my homework and do other dull, routine tasks. Then, the next day, it starts all over again.  In the middle of today's monotonous routine, though, I found myself pausing to reflect and reminisce to the days of Gurney and sunshine and flowers and happiness and when nothing mattered except avoiding the lunch ladies and the only drama involved who got "benched" at recess.  At first thought, those days seemed so much brighter; we seemed so much more lighthearted and carefree.  As I focused to more closely recall my Gurney experience, though, I realized that there existed a certain darkness, much like the one I feel today, that marred my first- and second-grade years.  It existed as an impending doom that crept into my life, twisting and turning itself about in my head before nestling permanently in my young, innocent mind.  In my mind, it manifested into a looming dread that stalked me around Gurney's comparatively bright and happy hallways. Now what, you ask, could cause such distress in a first grader? For me, it appeared as that one single demanding and infinitely stressful task.  The line leader.  The one to whom the teachers delegated the massive responsibility of trekking around the school with twenty of your classmates trailing along behind you.  The one who teachers entrusted to lead the class from homeroom to art to gym and back again.  The one who teachers yelled at if he or she made any sort of mistake.  While many waited with bated breath for their teacher to read off their name as line leader for the day, I cowered down in my seat, close to tears, careful to avoid eye contact with the teacher. I could not handle the pressure.  What if I accidentally led the class to the music room when we needed to go to the computer lab? What if one of my classmates strayed from the line under my watch? The pressure scared me into a certain state of insanity that even now I do not feel entirely convinced that I have escaped.  Luckily, as the years went on and I grew older, my fear of the treacherous task has waned.  Still, though, I never fail to cower under pressure.  When my friends and peers constantly talk about how they work so productively under pressure, I realize some things never change: I still cringe at the mere memory of the pressure, and, until last year, I never again had to experience it to that same extent.  Upon entering in AP English, the pressure inevitably returned—not quite to the caliber of that of the line leader, but still enough to make me break into a cold sweat whenever I sit, paralyzed, in the middle of a class discussion or in-class writing.  I would like to say that this anxiety has decreased since the beginning of last year, and, to a certain extent, I think it has.  I also realize, however, that I have a lot of work to do before I will be able to successfully work through the stress and the pressure and perform to the best of my ability.