Claudio is an 18-year-old from Chinandega, Nicaragua. He grew up in a rural community and over the years I have always witnessed him to be a fun, charismatic, natural-born-leader youngster. He is a part of our Leaders in Action Scholarship Program and a member of our Amigos Baseball Academy. For years, we’ve known Claudio to be a top pitcher, having traveled to international tournaments and playing extremely well. Claudio has been an ambitious student and was accepted to a great Food Science program at a university in Chinandega. Despite growing up and overcoming challenges, Claudio had hit his mountaintop, and everything was going so well for him. Claudio is a leader. Where he goes, people follow and when he talks people listen.
Claudio shared that the night of May 9, when everything changed, he had met up with some buddies and after mixing drugs and alcohol, he had an intense and negative reaction that led him into having a full-blown panic attack. Claudio was sharing this with a small group of us who were eager to learn more about what it’s like to be a young person in Nicaragua.
As we were all leaned in and attentively listening to him, he went on to say that he remembers, his heart racing and his eyes blurry that he looked up at the sky and asked God, “if I die tonight, where is my soul going to go?. I was stunned.
He went on to share that the following month was full of heighted paranoia that he was going to die from his heart constantly racing, he started struggling to sleep and he got a spot where he wouldn’t leave his house. He, very sensitively, thought back and said, “can you imagine how scared I was? I was so scared that I started to crawl into my mom’s bed at 18 years old and I would lay as close to her as I could because that’s the only way that my mind would slow down and that I could actually get rest”. His depression and anxiety sunk deep. He stopped playing baseball. He stopped going to school. He stopped talking with his friends. He stopped dreaming. He said that after sitting in his home for a month and ruminating on all the things that hadn’t gone right in life, he remembered that someone, as if a lightbulb went off in his mind, at one time had offered her support to him and his peers: Claudia, a licensed psychologist who is on the Amigos team and serves the youth of Leaders in Action. He reached out to Claudia and said he needed her help and asked when she was available and told him to come meet with her as soon as he could.
Now, almost a year later, and after many therapy sessions with Claudia, learning how to manage his anxiety and work out of his depression, Claudio has returned to himself and maybe even more so than he ever had before. His fun-loving, extroverted self is still ever present but in a more intentional and purposeful way. As he talks about his life now, he shares that his baseball game is stronger than before, he’s an intern at the Amigos processing plant to get hands on experience with his college major that he is pursuing and he’s doing great in school.
But he goes on to say that above all those positive achievements and success, his mission, now, is to look other young people in the eyes, both those who are on the same mountain top he was at one point and also those who are in that hole that he found himself and to give them an important message: you’re not alone. As he talks about how he wants to help those around him, both people that he knows and doesn’t know, he gratefully remembers how Claudia was there when he needed someone the most. Despite the circumstances, he remembered he wasn’t alone and wants to offer that same feeling to those fellow dreamers who have an extremely bright future ahead.
Claudio, I am proud of you, and you inspire me and so many other. ¡Gracias!
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