My Sos for Speech

Do you remember your awkward phase? That period of time you went through that you

NEVER want to look back on ever again? I went through mine in middle school. I wore silly

bandz, safety pinned skinny jeans, and crocs. To my defense, crocs are DEFINITELY coming

back, so you could say I was ahead of the game. But, I know someone who went through worse.

Her name was Veronica. She wore wristbands on both arms that went all the way up to her

elbow, death metal band shirts, and all black every. single. day. I always did want to ask “don’t

you get hot in that?” but, being a muslim hijabi and dealing with that question since the age of 8,

I knew how insensitive it would sound. For the record, YES, I DO get hot in this. But these

aspects of Veronica’s phase led her social worker to believe that, it wasn’t a phase. It was a

disease. Veronica used to wear her wristbands to hide the cuts on her arms. She had depression,

and couldn’t find a way to help herself so she resorted to self-mutilation. And this story isn’t

unique to Veronica. This sort of thing happens to young people all over the world. Veronica had

depression. But I knew that she had a normal life. Her parents were together, she lived in a nice

neighborhood, and she had friends and good grades in school. I later found out that Veronica’s

social anxiety caused her depression. And like many of you now, I had no idea what that was.

According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, Social anxiety

disorder, also known as SAD, affects about 15 million people all over the U.S.[1] This means

that, SADly, at any given time, about 7 percent of the US population SADly suffers from SAD.

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