Lily R. Johnson
College Essay I would write about how my love and consistency of dancing saved me, but that wouldn't be entirely true. Dancing only helped me while I saved myself. My name is Lily Johnson, born and raised on Cape Cod, MA where I didn't feel the struggle until I was 14. I was thrown into high school already at a disadvantage. I was losing my group of friends that I have had since 4th grade. Instead of meeting new friends, I met something else that changed my life and I had no one to blame, not even myself. I was diagnosed with depression mid freshman year and on top of that, bipolar disorder. The hardest part was accepting I was in fact bipolar. Up until my depression, academics and friends were never a problem. I began to lose friends one by one and my grades began to slip. Everything around me was falling apart and I blamed myself but didn't know how to fix it. I was losing complete and utter hope of whom I was and if I could survive this. As a teenager, it is hard to envision the future, we live in the present. Through all of this, I continued to dance every day. Dance was all I looked forward to. Nothing made me feel as good about myself as dancing does. For the 1-2 hours a day, I was okay and felt like things could be looking up. Dancing definitely kept me grounded through all of this and helped me get through another day. At the same time, once class was over, I couldn't cope with the fact I had no friends to talk to later on, I was alone. Being the bubbly and outgoing person I was my whole life, it was hard for me to adjust to loneliness. I tried hard in school and participated in various athletic teams while striving to fit in amongst my peers. I also worked 2 steady jobs to keep busy as well as daily dance lessons that consisted of Pointe ballet, modern, jazz and last year I added hip hop to the list. I managed to fill in every idle moment with an activity so I didn't have to think about the loneliness. Only now do I realize it was I who was isolating myself and shutting everyone out. Without the daily reminder from my mother who is my