^^^^ I agree with @SDGoldenBear
This is why it’s good to start really early. I’ve found that picking a few topics of focus for the essay and then writing multiple ones, taking time to refine them, edit them, show them around to other people, and then choose one to go with to send to UC’s.
Also, I wanted to initially talk about my depression in one of my essays but found that it sounded too sob-story like. I showed it to someone and they said that if I want to talk about mental health problems from the past to not go on and on about them so much, and to write about the person I became after overcoming them and to not make my past mental health problems the star of the essay. I know i’ve seen others who have asked around CC if writing about mental health is a bad thing and the answer is yes and no.