My school has a rule that every student must have a Co-Curricular Activity, or CCA for short. It's basically just staying back in school on a few days of the week to participate in whatever activity you are involved in, be it band, choir or sports. When you have joined a CCA, you will have to stick in it for four years.

For me, I joined a CCA which was similar to Girl Scouts (but not very similar). We were given badges for every course completed. In my four years, I had been very devoted, not missing a training without valid reasons. I was selected for all the competitions that was offered to my batch and participated in a national event as well. You could say that my achievements were very nice and highly sought after. I contributed a lot to my unit in terms of participation in events and teaching the juniors. I would say myself as one of the best in my batch.

But everything happened at the start of my fourth year. My batch was told that we had a chance to be nominated for three different badges, three VERY PRESTIGIOUS badges. Only one guy one girl would be selected for each badge. One of them consisted of a Best Unit Cadet, which was given to the person who contributed significantly to the unit. I filled out the nomination forms for every one of them. I was confident I could at least get the Best Unit Cadet badge, as I had excellent performance in terms of contribution.

But reality is always harsh, the more you hope to get something, the more life wont give that to you. One day after my birthday, I was notified by my teachers that I was not selected for any of the three. I was devastated and cried for a few days. I had been so confident before. The people who were awarded the badge, did not even contributed half as much as I did. What was worse was that after they were awarded, they started acting more involved (although all they did was on-stage work, they hardly did any backstage work). I was still standing with the belief that I was a much better candidate then them. But there was nothing I could do. The decisions were final.

It was the darkest few months of my school life. I had no motivation to do anything. I would make up excuses to skip gym class. On many occasions, I was filled with suicidal thoughts. Once, I even held a pen knife up close to my wrist (I didn't do it). But that really affected me a lot.

Half a year has passed. My condition has improved, I wasn't as unstable as before. But thinking back to the rejection would still cause me to want to cry.

While revision for a mathematics test, I was struggling very hard. I could not do a single question. I was suddenly reminded of the rejection. There was this voice in my head that went "Why are you even trying so hard? You know that no matter how hard you try, you will still fail." I was fighting back the negative thoughts. But it was true. I had failed all my mathematics test every since I got to year three. And being reminded of the rejection didn't make my revision any easier. I was fighting against the tears that were going to fall, but to no avail. I decided to stop revising. I was eventually defeated by my thoughts yet again.

After experiencing the rejection, I seemed to become more timid, more afraid. I was afraid that I put in a lot of effort, just to watch it go down the drain. I was afraid to put in effort. I was afraid that history would repeat itself. I used to be very positive, now I've become like this. Perhaps this has become a way to protect myself from even more harm.

If you were in my shoes, what would you do?