The most helpless I’ve ever felt was when I dealt with clinical depression. My sophomore year of high school my family was faced with my mother’s arrest and booking at a detention center on illegal immigration charges for about three weeks. My mother has been a single parent for my sister and I our entire lives, so the fear of her deportation had always felt like a weight on our shoulders that could drop at any given moment and it had finally fallen on us. The stress, anxiety, and panic this situation created lead me to become severely depressed. I was overcome with helplessness and missed school frequently because I felt it was useless and I found myself unable to focus. At this point in my life all I could think about was giving up. I was
