GRANDVILLE, Mich. (WOOD) — The lights and stage of the theatre are a lure for Madelyn Musser. The freshman at Grandville High School finds an escape in acting — a moment to leave reality and become someone else, telling their story from start to finish.
Her own personal story follows much like a drama on stage. It opens dimly lit in the halls of Grandville Middle School. Musser is the unassuming star, crippled by anxiety and depression, the seventh grader is struggling to find herself.
“I was always feeling sick. I got bad grades. I didn’t do my homework. I couldn’t pay attention,” Musser said of her seventh-grade experience.
Musser says for her, there was nothing worse than middle school. She began taking care of herself less and less, not caring what she wore or the makeup on her face. Her friendships slowly diminished. She lashed out at family and friends for no apparent reason.
“It’s like there is a wall and you can’t get past it. All your friends and family are on the other side and there is always that wall,” Musser said. “You want to go out to the mall, go out and do something, enjoy life. There is always that wall that is in your brain that will not let you enjoy anything.”
The darkest it became for Musser was thoughts of suicide. Joy in her life had been sucked out. At the peak of her issues, she missed 60 days of school. Letters were sent home from the school, her health was becoming a problem.
“There is so much pressure of being good enough,” Madelyn said. “I didn’t even think of myself as a person. I was extremely ill in the mind.”
Musser was suffering from crippling anxiety mixed with depression. It made her a shell of the big, bright personality those around her had come to expect.
“It’s like a fighting of back and forth. You care about everything with anxiety, but when you have depression you care about nothing,” Madelyn said. “It’s these emotions, all this craziness, it’s hard making decisions.”
Musser is not alone. She is among the nearly one in four teenagers who are diagnosed with an anxiety disorder.