2026 – Levi Dearden – Syracuse highschool HS

One stone at a time.

As a person, I’ve always known that I’m different from others. This was clear from the start as my parents explained that I had something called autism. They explained it as a different way of thinking and how I would struggle with social cues. I wouldn’t be the first child to have autism in the family as my oldest brother also had autism and had many issues when it came to growing up and fitting in. However, autism is a spectrum, even with their best efforts in trying to support me there were pitfalls which they didn’t account for. This came in the form of my extreme timidness when it came to large crowds and noisy places. I was so timid in fact that for much of my childhood I would cower away in places which were isolated. These places were helpful, but I couldn’t always escape which is usually when I would break down unable to do anything but painfully listen to the world around me. There was another two issues which haunted me: the fact that making friends was basically impossible as I simply couldn’t understand what even made friends in the first place, and that English for me was entirely blocked off in my understanding of the world. Year after year I would try to improve my social skills and English but each year I felt like I was going no where ultimately going into middle school with dissatisfaction in my heart for what I knew. This is when around covid happened so life took longer and each day expanded into painfully long waiting sessions hoping for the day to be over. This is when my mother started having issues, she was losing more and more functions each day. Apparently, she had a degenerative disease which was slowly causing legions to appear in the brain removing portions of functions like sight. This is when the unthinkable happened, December was a normal school day unlike any other, however something strange happened my aunt picked me up from school. This has never happened before so I texted my mother hoping to get answers to why. When I arrived home, I realized why I never got an answer. My mother committed suicide because she couldn’t handle not being in control of her life. This left us with only my father a pilot which, well intentioned, had little experience dealing with household issues such as homework. I was in despair and so was the rest of my family. Slowly we reacclimated to life, this is when I started to take my future seriously. Day by day I tried harder and harder to learn when I previously given up on myself. It wasn’t easy to not have the shoulder I used to rely on for help, but I could make a path for myself instead. Each day you will encounter problems, but you can help yourself. This help is like a stone path, each stone provides the necessary footing step by step.