Scared, But Hopeful.

by Bree
(PA)

I don't believe I have any reason to be depressed. I don't even know if I am depressed. Who am I to say? I'm not a professional. I am only me, I have no one else's emotions to feel, to find a way to see the severity of my own personal emotions....

I am a fifteen year old girl and I've been feeling this way for years, so it seems. For as long as I can remember, a cloud of misery has been plaguing me, killing off every lasting bit of happiness I have had. I've done things to try and stop the pain, eventually getting heavily addicted to cutting my thighs to ribbons.

My parents and I never got along. We have gotten physically violent with each other.... Especially my father and I. The man is a drunk, spending most of his time in our home consuming alcohol like oxygen. When I was about eight, he got into a car accident returning from a night of drinking. The police were never contacted, my neighbors and family hid it from people, but I vividly remember him being carried into our house by his friends. Even as an eight year old child, I knew it was wrong to risk your life with alcohol. What if he had died and left us? It was selfish, and I have been angry about this ever since... As a child, I'd do something wrong and get beat by him for it.... A smack here, a kick there. Shoes thrown at me.... Cups, toys, etc broken, but never once was I harmed on the outside besides more than a tiny bruises or red marks lasting temporarily from a good smack. But I figured it happened. Who was I to know? I had no one else's stories to base my own off of. Maybe this was normal? I endured it. And things progressively got worse. I got fed up with my home life. All I wanted was love and comfort from the people who had conceived me. Especially my mother, who would constantly butt heads with me, and never really stood up for me when my father would beat down on me. She sometimes called me worthless, ungrateful. My father would call both my younger brother and I ungrateful children, stupid, worthless, not worth the time or effort. As I got older, I began to stand up for myself.... I'd stand up to my father, and I would get jacked up against walls by my neck... And when he would have his friends over, he would brag about it. They would laugh, and I would be angry and hurt.... But I never said a word. You see, I suffer in silence. One night, when it got too much, my dad had broken my rosary while he picked me up by the neck, I decided to run away. The plan had gone terribly wrong. My dad chased after me, crying, apologizing.... I was reluctant to forgive, but I ended up giving in anyway.... As we walked back to the house, I smelled the alcohol on him.... and I didn't speak to him much ever since. He acted like it never happened, and I was further hurt by that. My mother and I never got close either.... Although it's secretly something I want a lot.... I want her to be my best friend..... Someone to always rely on, like a lot of my friend's have with their mothers. I also wish to hear the words 'I love you' more than once a year.... Even through the rough times of last year, when my dad was diagnosed with colon cancer and went through surgery.... I only heard 'I love you' about once. And even then, I felt unaffected.... I felt hateful, not guilty. The worst was, I was sad, dying on the inside, because the possibility that he could die was great. I was not afraid for him to die because I wouldn't have him any longer, or that I couldn't take losing him, I was afraid because I did not think I'd be sad if he did.... I thought I'd be happy, and I couldn't let my family or friends know this. I was hurting, and my friends most likely assumed it was just because I was afraid to lose him. Many of my friends don't even know I have a father, to be honest, or at least they did not know for a long time. That's how distant we are from each other.

Outside of my home life, I have a few very good friends.... I'm not liked by most people. I'm a pessimistic person; a negative nancy, as they say. I complain a lot, and I do hate it, but it's habit for me.... It's just become who I am. Many people won't put up with it. I get made fun of. I'm not the prettiest, I don't have a very good personality.... I'm intelligent, but not very social. I'm awkward around people, and all in all, quite undesirable company for anyone.

At school, I have been a straight A student for my whole life. Teachers neither love, nor hate, me. I'm slightly obnoxious, sometimes quiet, sometimes rude, sometimes mean, and yet sometimes giving to the point where I have nothing left to give. My friends are the world to me, my second family. They give me the love and acceptance I don't get from my parents. I have gotten into huge fights with some of my best friends, while others I never fight with at all.... The biggest fights left some of us unfriendly towards each other for a year or more, like fighting a war with each other. I'm proud to say now, this is not the case, but those fights left me worn, tired, untrusting, and slightly scarred. They lowered my self esteem, and I felt worthless and unimportant even more so. I had lost some big parts of my second family.


I still feel worthless though. I still feel like I shouldn't be alive. I feel unneccesary. Like a burden on everyone. I still feel like I'm suffocating sometimes, and even though I've been cut-free for a good seven months, I still have the urge to grab a razorblade and tear apart my thighs. To let out the hurt, to breathe again through blood. I walk around my basement and see one of my dad's hunting guns lying there, and I just want to load it, press the barrel to the back of my throat, and pull the trigger. I want to burrow through my medicine cabinet, grab a bottle of pills, and swallow every last capsule. I don't want to die. I just want to stop these feelings, but sometimes in my head, death seems like the only way to cure it. It's not what I want, but I think another part of me wants it more than anything. I fear losing control, snapping out and letting myself go. I fear that some day I will end up killing myself during a lapse in control.

Yesterday it was bad. I saw a gun again and got chills. I ran back upstairs and locked the door to my basement. I went out onto my porch, got fresh air, walked around, did everything I could to calm down, but no such thing was happening. I talked to my best friend, and then it was decided that I should probably get help. It was getting worse with every bout. Something needed to be done.

I have now decided to approach a teacher about it.... But I'm afraid, more than anything. I don't know what's going to happen.... But I need help. Maybe I'm not depressed? Maybe there's nothing wrong with me at all. Maybe I need to shut up and deal with life, like everyone else out there. Who am I to be different from everyone else? Maybe everyone feels like this and I just want attention or someone to listen, but if I keep letting this go, letting this slide, I may never know, and I may just kill myself before I find out. I don't want that to happen. I want to live. I want to be happy. I don't want to be another statistic about suicide. I just want to live and be happy.

That's my story. It's long, even though it was shortened quite a lot, it's a lot of complaining, and it's not going to make any difference in your life if you read all of that.... But it is what it is. You may say what you want, or you may skip to another blog. Do whatever you must. It's your life. Do whatever you want to make yourself happy. Live the way you want to.