Depression...

 **Trigger Warning**

           Depression can be a very touchy subject. I’m not talking about sadness; I’m talking about actual heart-shattering, mind-numbing depression. Depression, contrary to what a lot of people think, is not an emotion. Depression is a feeling – a state of being. When a person is depressed they do not have a clear sense of their surroundings or their life. They generally have low self-esteem, a twisted view of theirself, a lack of self-confidence, and maybe even a distorted view of reality. They may also be numb, meaning that they’ve learned to just not feel anything at all. People can have any combination of these, or if they’re like me, they can have them all.

            I am depressed and I’ve been this way for over a year now. It honestly surprised me. I was perfectly fine before everything went downhill. I was just a normal teenage girl - a straight A student and an honor roll member. Just when it seemed like everything was going well, it all crashed. It started with my self-esteem. Honestly, I had never felt good about myself, and as I started getting older I began to compare myself to others more and more. I didn’t like what I saw… at all.  

            I didn’t feel as pretty as the other girls. They all seemed so skinny and gorgeous, and I was neither of those things. They were all swans and I felt like the ugly duckling. I became obsessed with comparing myself to others and my already low self-esteem began to drop even further. Soon after, I started to feel sad all the time. Even when I would try to be happy the sadness always pulled me back under. If happiness did come to me, it would always disappear shortly after. Still feeling horrible about myself, I started starving myself; I had an idea in my mind of what “perfect” was, and I was not perfect. I thought that maybe if I looked like them… just maybe I would be happy.

            I was wrong. By this point, I was very depressed, but I didn’t actually know that until much later. I felt nothing but pain and shame over myself. When I looked in the mirror all I saw was this horribly imperfect girl who was a failure at life. I soon became numb; I learned to block everything out. I learned to shut off my feelings and become completely blank. My zombie-like state became normal for me. I hardly spoke from that point on. I did nothing but sleep and go to school and slowly began to distance myself from everyone around me. I began fighting with everyone – family and friends became the enemy. I had never felt more alone or isolated in my life.

            The pain of being alone and being the outcast continued to get to me and I continued to shut the feelings out, but soon being numb was too much to bear. I wanted to feel something again, and that led me down and even worse road. I decided to cut myself – maybe it would help me feel. I went into the bathroom and locked myself in. Picking up the razor, I took a deep breath. Then I pressed the blade against my skin. A little more pressure and it sliced into my flesh. For a moment I felt release, but the depression drug me back down.

            They say that all it takes is one cut to become addicted to the release. After that first cut I became addicted. I would keep everything I didn’t want to feel bottled up inside of me and cut to release it. In a sick, twisted way, cutting became my favorite thing to do. If something bad would happen, I would cut. If I’d argue with someone, I would cut. If I just needed a release, I would cut. It looked as if I’d already hit rock bottom, but I hadn’t – I was just dangerously close to it.

            Have you ever wanted to die? Have you just sat somewhere, crying your eyes out, begging God to just let you die? If you haven’t, you’re lucky. I thought about dying all the time; I begged and pleaded for God to just strike me down. I had lost my will to live. Since I had already been cutting, I began to think of taking that razor and slitting my wrists and watching my blood pour out. I could picture myself lying there, lifeless on the cold, hard ground. Other thoughts soon followed. If I was feeling bad, I’d think of walking into oncoming traffic, or maybe taking a gun and blowing my brains out. I was suicidal. Everything turned into a way to kill myself; the kitchen knives, the water in the bathtub, and the razorblades were triggering me, forcing more and more suicidal thoughts into my mind.

            I managed to deal with everything for a few more months before finally reaching my breaking point. School, relationships, and life in general became too much to deal with. I decided that I was going to end it all, I was going to kill myself. I began planning how to do it; slitting my wrists and bleeding out would be much too slow and drowning myself would be too cliché. I wanted to be original and I wanted it to be over quickly – I opted for shooting myself. I could easily get my hands on a gun, after all. After making that decision, I began to write a suicide note. Picking up a pen and paper, I wrote out what I thought would be the last words anyone would ever see from me. With trembling hands and tears running down my cheeks, I apologized to everyone. I begged them to forgive me and spilled everything I was feeling into my note. Finally it was time. As I stood up from my bed, I fell back down and cried uncontrollably. I couldn’t bring myself to get the gun. I was too much of a coward to end my life.

            How do you help someone who is already that far gone? What do you do when you’re too lost to find your way back? The answer to the first question is simple – you can’t help them unless they want to get help. The answer to the second is get help. What kept me here was not cowardice; it was something in me calling out for help. So I did get help. I told my parents and friends everything that had happened to me, without fear. I started going to therapy and seeing a psychiatrist. After nearly ten months of therapy, I was diagnosed with depression. Suddenly everything made sense. Depression had had a stronghold on me – it was like thousands of hands pulling me further and further into darkness. But now I’m on the road to recovery. It’s a battle that I’m struggling with, but I’m putting up a good fight. I’m just praying for there to be a day when I can label myself as “recovered”.