Student helps others by sharing her secret
It’s scary to have thoughts you can’t always control.
Brianna Guzman took a chance on sharing her dark secret, and it paid off in ways that even she didn’t imagine.
After a few years of self-harming, starving and trying to push people away, I decided to destroy the barrier that controlled my youth.
The James Fenimore Cooper School eighth-grader won second place in a national writing contest for middle-schoolers titled “Breaking Barriers” sponsored by the publishing company Scholastic and Major League Baseball.
Kids were asked to write about the values that baseball great Jackie Robinson displayed to overcome adversity and consider how they can do the same.
Jackie had his teammates and his coach to overcome that color barrier. If he didn’t have his team to lift him up when he was down, maybe he would have failed. If I didn’t have my team, maybe I would have just become another statistic.
Brianna started cutting herself when she was 11. It gave her a sense of relief, a way to focus when her depression and anxiety began to flare. At first, she hid the scratches and scars on her wrists, but before long that was impossible.
“Kids in my class noticed,” she said.
Some of the boys teased her, calling her “Emo,” shorthand for emotional.
A few girls told Brianna they could come to her whenever she needed help.
But Brianna knew this was not something she could handle on her own or even with the help of friends. She confided to her mom and they made an appointment to see a doctor.
Brianna had been “clean” from cutting for five months when she got the assignment in Tracy Gavronski’s class. It was a risk to reveal something so personal, but Brianna said she felt compelled in a way.
Jackie Robinson was brave; she could be, too. That’s how barriers are broken.
“It actually was a huge relief to write about this,” she said.
She never gave it another thought until one day last month when she checked her phone and saw that her mom had tagged her in a Facebook post.
Brianna’s essay won second prize.
Brianna’s mom, Nicole Arndt, said she laminated the essay. Brianna got a laptop computer. Her school got 30 signed copies of “Promises to Keep,” Sharon Robinson’s book about her dad. But the biggest reward? “My best friend was having some trouble, too,” Brianna said. “She’s talking about it more and she’s doing really well. I guess maybe this is rubbing off on her, too.”
Brianna says she’ll always have depression and anxiety and the urge to hurt herself. But, with the right coping skills, she’ll manage.
This is her advice for anyone who has the urge to harm himself or herself: 1. Always ask for help. 2. Believe in yourself.
3. Do things that make you feel better. (Brianna likes to draw and she listens to heavy metal music “really loud.”).
4. Take your medication.