Lake
My lowest point, I would say, felt like there was a giant tidal wave that came and crashed on me, and I was just getting sucked away by the current and just washed around by the different currents in the water.
My name is Lake. I’m 24 years old, and I’m from Georgia. I’m currently working towards my sociology degree. I really just love learning about people, different cultures, and the way they interact. The world is really boring if you look out the same window your entire life.
Well, I didn’t think I was going to have a life 5 years ago. It was the second week of school. I just saw the workload and I just couldn’t do it. I was not communicating with anybody about anything and then just one day I just kind of broke down and was like, I can’t do this anymore and had to go home.
I had gone through therapy once in high school, and it lasted maybe a week through that. I was very hesitant to get into some sort of program. One day I woke up and was like, it’s got to start somewhere. It’s got to change, you know? I can’t keep just hating everything.
Before Skyland Trail, I’d say I was deteriorating. And then after Skyland Trail, the foundation was laid, and now I feel like I’m flourishing into an actual person. I mean, it really laid the foundation for the skills and the mindset I really needed to have. It really taught me to, you know, just take a step back, calm down, and just look at things objectively. You’re having to change up your routine. You’re having to meet new people and interact with new people, different responsibilities, and you know just taking care of yourself really.
The benefit for me was there was a very big community in our residence, and we would go to the belt line or, you know, the movies or something, and it was a really good bonding experience with everybody, like the housing staff was always super nice. I love the housing staff. There are a lot of things I like to do at Skyland. I mean, it’s just the mundane things I really enjoyed sitting by the Koi pond, finding a secluded area to take a nap during the lunch break.
Everybody in my family always talks about how pleasant it is to be around me now. It’s much more of a pleasant experience for everybody because there’s not this negative life force sucking the energy out of everything. It’s just like I feel more human now that I’m better.
My hope for the future is to maintain stability and to hopefully, you know, build something from that and to, you know, create a life worth living that I enjoy and that makes other people around me that I want to make proud.
If you want to change, and you want to get better, and you want to, you know, grow as a person and grow your inventory of like skills you can use and whatnot, it’s definitely something to look into.