SHS student essay takes first place in local ‘This I Believe’ contest

Pictured above: Andrew Carriero. “I’ve heard the same expression throughout my short existence: everything passes. But that’s not the case with anxiety, let alone any mental disorder. It’s not something you can just get over and move on from. It’s something you have to live with every day. Something you have to gain from and work against every breath you make, from the moment you wake up, to the moment you fall asleep. It’s something that follows you like a shadow even on your brightest days. It’s something that makes you feel like the world is ending and sucks any life you felt on your darkest hour.” Photo credit: Madison Gee Montgomery

By Patrice Johnson

Writing about emotional issues jabs at the heart. Perhaps that explains why authors so often write in third person: It’s more comfortable to examine the struggles of other poor souls. Not so with 15-year-old Andrew Carriero. On January 29 the SHS sophomore received notice that his “I Believe in Conquering Fear” essay was awarded first prize in the Friends of the Library’s “This I Believe” competition.

Head on, up close and personal, Carriero’s four-page essay explores the dark cloud of anxiety. Its first-person point of view adds punch to a hard-hitting essay and stands tall in bare-chested courage. “I Believe in Conquering Fear” calls youth who suffer from mental affliction to take action. It serves as a healthy reminder that young people contend with challenges as real and deep and lasting as those of adults.

Carriero said he felt compelled to write about anxiety because, “living in a rural area, I hoped my message could help if not a lot, at least a small class with similar teenagers.”

For the past several years, Stockbridge High School and the Stockbridge Friends of the Library have collaborated to offer the essay-writing contest in order to engage SHS students in an exploration of the core beliefs that guide their daily lives. Held twice a year, it is based on NPR’s four-year-running and now defunct “This I Believe” program.

According to Alaina Feliks, Carriero’s English 10 teacher, students wrote essays and delivered them as speeches to class. “There is no theme,” she explained. “They just follow the model of the national “This I Believe” contest.”

Essays are identified solely with numbers, so their authors remain anonymous to a Friends of the Library panel that reads the essays and recommends winners. The Friends contribute $25 to first place, $15 to second place and $10 to third place. Of this semester’s 14 entries, Senaida Gonzalez took home second place, and Patrick Cox third place. Winners are typically photographed and their images displayed in the library.

Feliks, who has worked on the project with the Friends since 2014, said, “It has become quite a tradition.” She credited Elizabeth Cyr, SHS’s nationally acclaimed journalism and yearbook teacher, for initiating the program with the Friends of the Library, and also the Red Sky Café, a predecessor to Cravingz Café, for originating the local activity.

Below, the Stockbridge Community News is pleased to publish, unabridged, Andrew Carriero’s “I Believe in Conquering Fear.”

I Believe in Conquering Fear

By Andrew Carriero

I’ve heard the same expression throughout my short existence: everything passes. But that’s not the case with anxiety, let alone any mental disorder. It’s not something you can just get over and move on from. It’s something you have to live with every day. Something you have to gain from and work against every breath you make, from the moment you wake up, to the moment you fall asleep. It’s something that follows you like a shadow even on your brightest days. It’s something that makes you feel like the world is ending and sucks any life you felt on your darkest.

In my case I suffer from generalized anxiety. I can’t tell you when I first experienced it. In fact, I’ve probably had it my entire life. I can tell you, however, that it hit the most when I was in the seventh grade. I started to feel an almost supernatural squeeze in my chest, and feeling like everything I enjoyed had no meaning. It felt awful; I was terrified. I thought I was alone with this. I didn’t tell my parents because I thought that it’d pass. After awhile it started to grow throughout me exponentially. I was scared to go in public, I bit all of my nails down to when they’d bleed, I’d have what I’d later find out to be anxious dreams (which are basically dreams that are more or less disturbing than nightmares), whenever I heard a laugh I’d instantly assume it was about me, I had existential thoughts (thinking the world and everything apart of it is fake), I even looked at myself crying in the mirror and told myself I was crazy.

It got to the point where it felt like I lost control over everything. It got to the point where I felt like I was completely, and utterly separated from my body. I tried to reach out. I really did. I opened up to some friends, they tried to convince me to get help, but I didn’t listen. I still thought I could handle this on my own. I’d spend nights crying, helpless. I’d spend hours, days even, thinking about every little detail that happened last week, or even last year. I spent hours attacking myself over grades, thinking about how I’d probably end up on the streets for missing one point on a test, and to be honest I still do. I’m still working on that one.

Over time I eventually tried to find my triggers and looked up countless things that would stop this gut wrenching feeling. I got pretty good at it, as a matter of fact. From finding songs that had a particular mood, to hearing a story about someone’s failures, I learned to avoid it. I learned to be scared of it. I let it control me. I found breathing methods for when I felt it. When those didn’t work I was so desperate I even tried hypnosis. But in the end it would always sneak up on me and attack. It was dangerously ruthless. It wasn’t scared to take my strings and cut them till I was hanging by a thread. At times I really would have rather died. I was isolated. I put myself in this place, all because I was scared to reach out.

After two years (yes, two years) of this control over my life I finally reached out and told my mom I wasn’t alright and that I needed to get some help. I was terrified at first. In fact, I’m still terrified of change. In two weeks, my mom checked me into a therapist a short distance away. I didn’t like talking about myself, and I was scared I was going to be judged. But it turned out to be the best decision I’ve ever made for my life. I’m now on anti-anxiety medication, which I was absolutely horrified that I was going to be controlled even more by something else so small, but it’s turned out to be quite the opposite.

Now I can go through the school halls with confidence, I haven’t bitten my nails for almost a year now, I have anxious dreams occasionally, but they just keep me on my toes. I hear laughs and no longer care so much. I look at myself as an art form, painting life like a canvas every day now. I’ve gained more control than I had ever imagined. I know myself and I know what I want to do in life. I now only think of the present and how amazing the future will be. If I had continued to be so scared, I don’t want to know what would have happened.

Andrew Carriero (above) writes, “This parasite does not define you. It may feel like it’s controlling you at times, but it never really does. It’s how you approach it. So, no, problems don’t just go away. They’ll pass, but only if you continue to work and fight against it. You have to continue to work and fight against it. You have to conquer it. You have to conquer your fear.”

If you suffer or feel like you may suffer from something such as anxiety, depression, thoughts, etc. My advice is this: get help, reach out if you can, tell someone, talk. Never, ever hold it in. I learned that the hard way. It’s scary, thinking about getting help, but trust me. It’s worth it. If I regret anything most, if I could turn time back, I would tell myself what I’m telling you now. I wouldn’t have waited two years feeling that constant invisible pain. If you can’t get help locally, there are so many alternatives to finding help. Especially with the online world we live in today. Don’t give up.

This parasite does not define you. It may feel like it’s controlling you at times, but it never really does. It’s how you approach it. So, no, problems don’t just go away. They’ll pass, but only if you continue to work and fight against it. You have to continue to work and fight against it. You have to conquer it. You have to conquer your fear.