As a kid, I wanted to be just like my mom. She worked long hours in her office, picked my sister and me up from school, made nutritious and delicious meals for us, cleaned up after me because I was such a mess and sat down to work again into the early hours of the morning every single day. I don’t remember when she would find the time to sleep. She excelled in everything she put her mind to and was an unstoppable force.

Me? I was genuinely considering the merits of dropping out of high school and marrying rich in the second week of junior year. The real goal was to adopt a hundred dogs, but I would need someone to fund all the treats and love I would shower upon them.

Truth be told, that readiness to give up came from a place of disappointment. This is a new, monumental year of school. After a rough, tear–soaked sophomore year, I wanted to reinvent myself, quit my old, destructive habits and emerge from the flames as a magnificent academic weapon. To prepare for that, I carefully curated a prepared version of myself during the summer, but, in reality, I wasn’t that. I think that’s what hurt the most.

Over the summer, I took a long, hard look at myself and assessed who I was in comparison to who I wanted to be. With that figured out, I started making changes within myself, and I was finally there. I was happy. Most importantly, I was happy with myself.

I was the person people could turn to for help, the shoulder they could use to cry on, the person they wanted to share their happiest moments with. I was a safe space for vulnerability. Sure, I wasn’t the most funny, creative or smart individual in the room, but they could trust me, and that’s what mattered most.

But now? Now, I’m not that person anymore. That’s what made me want to scream, yell and cry all at the same time. I was slipping back into the currents from which I had painstakingly pulled myself out of. Walking back into school reopened the door to my old world which held every anxious thought, every bubbling insecurity. Worries of whether I was good enough and questions of if my grades were high enoughor my actions appropriate enough or my demeanor approachable enough, weighed me down and followed me everywhere. It felt like I was working overtime but doing the same assignment again and again or running on a treadmill: tiring myself out but never getting anywhere.

So when I said the stay–at–home life didn’t look too bad, I wasn’t kidding.

With all that in mind, I resorted to the only logical course of action: bursting classic 2000s and ‘90s pop hits from the speakers I dragged to my room. One song blended into the next, and I danced and sang my heart out to the lyrics that must have been etched into my soul at that point. While that was an insanely therapeutic experience overall, the most notable moment was when Shawn Mendes’s new song, “Why, Why, Why,” started playing.

Initially, I had categorized the song as beautiful but not quite my taste. It’s about Mendes returning to songwriting and performing after taking a long break due to personal and mental health reasons. It focused on the surreal feeling of entering a familiar world after taking such a polarizing vacation from it and the cyclic nature of the emotions associated with his return. Some days were good, others not so much.

Finding similarities between my situation and Mendes’s, I used him as inspiration. I decided that I would not, in fact, drop out of school, and instead, I would take things slow. That fateful fall night, I did what I had done at the beginning of summer: I looked at myself and figured out the person that I wanted to be.

Then I made it happen.

Initially, it was just a little bit of a push. I would sit down and start working no matter how lazy I felt. I would text some of my friends to check up on them because I hadn’t talked to them in a while. I made dinner for my family with my parents’ help and spent time with them that way. Slowly but surely, I worked myself out of my shell and back into a person I would be proud to look at in the mirror.

That being said, it’s not a straightforward journey. Some days are worse than others, and occasionally, I feel myself slipping back into someone I don’t want to be; however, I have to tell myself that tomorrow is another day that lets me start afresh and work a little harder.

And the goal is still the same: I still want to adopt a hundred dogs, but I think it would be much more rewarding if I finance the expenses as the best version of myself. And while I shower those hundred dogs with as much love as I can, I’ll be sure to save some for myself.