I was never sure how this began. I looked back at my life to see if I could figure this out. I looked back as if it were an old movie I saw, in which, I know what happened. I know who the characters were, but to me, this was the same thing as sitting in a movie with subtitles I couldn’t understand.
I looked back at the things I had done and the situations I created. I looked back at my self-inflicted wounds and the internal battle scars, which refused to fade.

I was moving deeper into my journals and detailing the days of my youth and my young adulthood. It was not long before this when I lived in a life that was clearly not meant for me.
I was stuck in a pattern of living and thinking and more to the point; I simply could not see me in any other way than I was.
There were times when I looked around and wondered how I ended up where I was.  How does this happen to people? How do people fall into their life this way?

Perhaps I should set the stage to give a better picture of where I came from. I grew up in a normal, somewhat small, and close-knit town in Long Island. The name of my town is East Meadow. No one among us was overly rich or excessively poor. We were the middle class. We had our little town features, the movie theaters, the town pool, which was over on Prospect, and Eisenhower Park, which was on the other side of town on Hempstead Turnpike.  There was a bowling alley on Front Street. There used to be an arcade called The Wizard of Oz, which we in the town called “The Wiz.”

 The deeper I went into my journals, the more I learned about me. The more I wrote and the more I reveled, the more I notice a sense of freedom, which came over me. I felt a sense of personal understanding, which is what I needed.  
I began this journey to feel better, which was successful but not easy. There were times when I broke into tears. There were times when I looked at the people within my circle of influence and saw them with contempt and regret.

There had to be more. There had to be something I was missing. There had to be a reason why I was uncomfortable. Could this have come from the awkwardness of my youth? Could this have been as simple as age appropriate hazing and bullying that happens amongst kids?

I began my journals to better understand myself. Therefore, to save myself, I figured it would be best to go back to see where this began.
I figured the only way to understand my depression was to go back to the beginning. I had to begin with the basics to create a timeline to see the birth of my anxiety.
I was young, small, very thin, and basically weak. I was never much of an athlete. I looked younger than the other kids. I felt different, which was painful to me because all I wanted to do was fit in.

I was sitting in a small, two-bedroom apartment that was situated in the upstairs of a private home.
I had just moved back to my old neighborhood. I went back to where I began and where I grew up. Perhaps I went here for comfort. Maybe I went here because there was a part of me that felt I had nowhere else to go.