Mental Illness is REAL

Throughout my early years of school, I was bullied and for a long time I didn't have any friends. Even when I had friends I felt like they secretly hated me and only hung out with me because they felt bad for me. Nobody ever came to my parties, with the exception of my parents my family always seemed too busy to come to awards ceremonies or band concerts, and the majority of my siblings hated me. The absence of friendly faces in the audience made me feel so worthless and alone and even to this day I feel like that. The main reason for me starting this blog was to share my story so I could help people who were going through things that I've been through and I haven't been doing that. This whole time I've been absolutely terrified of sharing anything more then fluffy updates on my college experience.

Growing up, because my mom was so sick, I felt a lot of pressure to be 'perfect' and I didn't really have much of a childhood. My parents expected a lot from me which really piled on the stress. If I was unable to meet expectations either from my parents or myself, I would tear myself down more than any bully ever could. On top of me beating myself up, my parents would usually lecture me about how I wasn't trying my best, just like any paren would. However, I always took this as I was a terrible child, I was a disappointment to them, etc. In reality I can't actually recall them telling me that they were disappointed, i just told myself that's how they felt.

When my mom's health continued to decline and my dad had to get a second job to keep up with the medical bills and the house and everything, there was a lot of extra pressure placed on me to take care of my mom and continue to be the perfect kid I thought that I had to be. it was a lot for any kid to handle, but when you top that with all the mental battles I was fighting, it's almost unbearable. While all this was going on we were struggling to make ends meet and my dad continued to accumulate more and more stress that he would bottle up and not share. There was a point, however, when I think the bottle just got too full and every so often, only when we were alone, did my dad let it spill out on me. As the years went by more and more spilled out more and more frequently. My dad scared me so bad on the days when there were big spills and it just continued to get worse. Unfortunately I kept the cycle going by keeping that all bottled up because if I ever tried to talk to anyone about it, including a therapist, all I ever heard was how awesome my dad was and how they all wished they had a dad like that. I love my dad very much and he really is an amazing dad, I just couldn't understand why he had to take everything out on me all the time and if I ever asked why he would say something like, 'because I can't take it out on anyone else' and everyone just acted like that was a valid reason for him to do that. He knows that that was hard on me and has always apologized for it. I'm not mad a him for any of it, it's just important to my story and it was extremely hard for me to handle of that at once. Even after my mom passed away I still associated my home with all of this and it caused me to spend as little time at home as possible. In result, my dad and I really drifted apart which did not help me in the feeling worthless and unloved department at all. All of this grouped with the immense pressure I put on myself with people constantly telling me how I wasn't good enough at the things I loved like cheer and music made me feel so alone and like I didn't matter.

Now, I NEVER talk about this and there are only two people in my life that I have ever told this but I can't hold it in anymore; it's time for me to open up about this. As I've said multiple times on here before, I have struggled with anxiety just about my entire life. This alone makes every trial I'm put through about a thousand times worse. However, what most people don't know is that I also struggle with fairly crippling depression. What only those previously mentioned two people know is that I actually struggle with MAJOR depression, like the suicidal kind of major depression. I've never even written about this in a journal and typing this out right now makes me absolutely sick to my stomach. I've always been too embarrassed and ashamed to talk about it but I can't keep it in anymore. The main cause of this is because the world seems to think that mental illness/suicide is a just a stupid 'trend' and that it's all 'fake'. I felt so alone that I didn't think anyone cared about me enough for me to keep living and I still sometimes feel like this on my bad days. I've gotten past the 'wanting too die' but the thoughts that I have no reason to be alive and that nobody cares about me still creep up a lot.

The first time I actually thought about straight up ending everything was in eighth grade I believe. There was a broken CD on the floor in my bathroom with very sharp edges. I picked it up, held it to my wrist and was ready to cut it and die. The only thing that stopped me was a very faint voice in my head that I still had things to do and that my mom needed me.

After that incident, it was a long time until I tried anything else. I would take baths and pull my head under the water to see what it would feel like to drown, I would stop breathing randomly so I could feel the burning in my lungs and wouldn't take a breath until I got the courage to keep breathing. It was SO bad and nobody ever knew and that made it so much worse. I kept telling myself that nobody could see anything wrong with me so that had to have meant that nobody cared about me. The only thing that really kept me alive was my mom. After she passed away however, I fell off the deep end. I was totally numb to everyone and everything around me. I could sit in completely crowded rooms and felt like I was in a cloud of darkness, completely alone. I didn't want to be home because of the memories of her, I didn't want to visit her grave because I knew it meant that she was really gone, I couldn't even say goodbye to her the last time I saw her alive because I just couldn't accept that the last person that truly cared about me was gone. To top it all off, I was having these awful dreams about demons and shadows and things that would strangle me in my sleep.

Thankfully, I can see now that my mom was never the only person that loved me and that I was never alone, but at the time I was so blind. It was like being colorblind only it was love that I couldn't see. I was so numb for so long that I've had to reteach myself how to recognize the emotions that I'm feeling. I still struggle understanding my emotions. Right now I'm crying so hard I can barely see the screen and I couldn't tell you what I'm feeling. I've been so numb for so long I don't know what happy or sad or angry feels like because I've essentially never experienced them before. I know I've been happy and sad and angry before but I don't know what it's like to feel those emotions. It's hard to explain, but I just don't understand the feelings in my head.

I still have days where I can't get up in the morning or when I just don't want to interact with people or when I feel completely worthless. I still on occasion feel like I shouldn't be around anymore, but I am so much better than I was three years ago. Joining choir in high school essentially saved my life. Singing and being around the music gave me something to fight for. I made some amazing friends that remind me that there are people who care about me. If my best friend hadn't made me sign up for mixed choir my freshman year, I might not be typing this message right now. I wouldn't be going to school to help people, I wouldn't be going to Australia, I wouldn't have gotten so close to my family. I can't even begin to express how grateful I am for my best friend and for music and for my dad for not giving up on me even after telling him how I've been feeling for so long. I am beyond grateful for the life that I have now even though it's a huge mess and I'm especially grateful for that little voice telling me that I wasn't done.

The main reason I'm speaking up now instead of keeping everything bottled inside is because my niece is now going through something extremely similar. She has autism and doesn't talk or dress like everyone else, she had to be pulled out of class for extra help in school, she's just all around different from everyone else and people don't like different. She is the sweetest, most kindhearted person I have ever met and she doesn't see it because of how badly she has been bullied in her life and she's only eleven years old. Every day at school she was told to go die in a hole or that she was smelly or stupid or ugly and has never really had a friend. Like me, she let herself be friends with someone who tormented her constantly because she wanted a friend so badly. At the school she most recently went to the kids even made a game out of kicking her! Some kid pushed her into a pole and told her that if anyone asked her about her black eye that she better say that she fell. People were telling her that she should kill herself every day and eventually she just started believing it. It was so bad my sister had to pull her out of school and enroll her in online school. She just got out of the hospital for a psychiatric stay because she even had a plan of how she was going to kill herself.

She keeps telling her mom and I how she feels like she took the easy way out or that she just ran away but I honestly can't believe how brave she is at eleven years old. When she first spoke up about how she felt I couldn't even get up the courage to tell her that I knew how she felt and that she could always talk to me about it. It absolutely kills me that she has to feel this way, I don't ever want anyone to ever have to feel like this and the fact that this sweet, special girl is going through that absolutely kills me. I just wish she knew how brave she is and how much I admire her for speaking up but she can't see it that way. All she sees is that she ran away instead of sticking up for herself.

I sincerely hope that one day somebody somewhere will put an end to bullying and that the stigma around mental illness will be nonexistent. I want every single person to know that it's okay to reach out for help and that there isn't anything wrong with them because of this. I hope everyone will be loved for who they are and their differences will be celebrated instead of being locked away. I wish everyone would learn to love one another. I wish more people would stand up against bullying and raise awareness of it. It still happens! I have a lot of hopes for the world and I'm afraid I'll just have to be disappointed for now. Unfortunately there isn't anything big that I can do to fix the word, but I can do this. I can share my story and tell my niece that there is nothing wrong with her. I can start a conversation.

"This disease comes with a package: shame. When any other part of your body gets sick, you get sympathy."

-Ruby Wax

"When the Japanese mend broken objects, they aggrandize the damage by filling the cracks with gold. They believe that when something's suffered damage and has a history it becomes more beautiful."

-Billie Maboyed

"Keep your view of your perfect world, I was never meant to be that girl. Broken and I am beautiful."

-Calee Reed