I wasn’t sure how to go about this, but after recently buying the book ‘Tiny Buddah’s Guide to Loving Yourself’ and hearing
about this website, I decided to share my story. It’s kind of hard for me to talk about it, and I’ve never gone into a lot of detail
about it anywhere online for others to see, but seeing others sharing their stories made me want to share my own I suppose.

I’m a teen, somewhere in the range of 15-20 (since I’m not comfortable sharing exactly.)

My depression started somewhere around five to six years ago, during a time I had just gone from fifth grade into middle school. Life as I knew it was pretty great and I was a very enthusiastic kid who loved to say hello to everyone, hang out with whomever, and was basically a carefree goofball that others always seemed to know. There were rarely any times I felt unhappy or stressed out and it was like… everything just worked, I was happy, everyone else seemed happy, and a whole new world was about to open up for me heading into middle school with a new type of schedule and opportunities beyond school in the form of clubs and new people.

Little did I know that this new world was going to be a tragic one, before the actual release years later.

Going into sixth grade was fine and dandy. I enjoyed my classes, as I love learning in general, and the teachers were great.
But over time I came to understand that there were quite a few changes. Those cliche groups they talk about began to form: popular kids, nerdy kids, etc. I was able to swap between several groups for a time because I didn’t truly belong in any one place, which at the time was a good thing in my mind. But I’d have to say it all started with one girl.

I’ll call her Alice for safety reasons. Now, Alice was an odd case. She was the first friend I’d ever had who was in a bit of a slum. But we’d been assigned in the same group for a project at the end of fifth grade, so she became a friend of mine and wanted to hang out often over the summer. For a time things were fine between us. But as time went on, she became more comfortable with telling me her feelings. She would talk about how badly she felt since people were starting to date and she had no boyfriend. She said she was frustrated that her parents were divorced and her siblings evidently disliked her. She was upset about a lot of things, and I was never sure what to say other than to tell her to keep her head up and know she still had a lot of things, like a roof over her head and a mother who kept trying to provide for all of her kids.

No matter what I told her, she wouldn’t listen to me. She practically told me my adivce was worthless (which I myself came to believe later) and stupid, so I stopped trying much. She tried to get me to do things I didn’t want to do, and got me in trouble for things I didn’t do (like ding dong ditching someone who scolded the two of us for it as we ran. I felt so guilty, and hadn’t even done anything.) Sounds childish, but at the time it was everything to me as a kid to be good and do the right thing. I wasn’t one for breaking rules or getting into trouble just because I could. One might call me a pansy, but I called it honest and respectable. I came to dislike her more as time went by but became too frightened to leave because of the state she was in. I could tell she was deeply troubled by a lot of things, and one of my earliest formed beliefs was that I should always be there for anyone who needed it. So I stuck around.

Over time, things just got worse. I was adopting her thoughts at times, held down by her deeply rooted belief that the world sucked. She scared me and bothered me but I called myself selfish for thinking such things and said if I was a good friend, I would stay and try to help her. My grades started to slip. And then the day came that she said those words.
“If you ever stop talking to me, I’ll kill myself.”
And so started the endless cycle of questioning if I should leave then beating myself up for thinking I should. I was terrified because I wanted her to be okay and to get her help, but if I left- as I thought I had to do- she might die. She made me the cause of her death should it ever happen. And for years, after working up the courage to tell the school counselor and bow out from the friendship as gracefully as I could, I told myself that if she ever ended up in a worse place, it was my fault. It would be my fault someone committed suicide. And that thought haunted me for years.

By seventh grade I’d already become a bit less of myself than I used to be. After leaving Alice and experiencing a few days of her brutal anger for my departure (as evidenced by several times I cried in the cafeteria after she would say something to me) I’d decided to try and be a bit more careful with whom I called my friends.
Then I met Miyako.
Another nickname, for safety reasons. But Miyako was a whole new breed of person I’d never met before. Someone very enthusiastic, creative, goofy, and all around different. I liked her instantly, because she was a knucklehead and didn’t mind showing it to the world. I admired that about some people. We became friends and started hanging out a lot, and for much of seventh grade it seemed to be her and me hanging out every weekend, talking about anime, drawing, and just having fun with things like Harry Potter and other stuff.

Same as what had happened with Alice, Miyako began to confide in me some of her fears and times she’d been bullied for being so ‘strange.’ Being who I was, again, I instantly wanted to tell her how awesome she was, and that she shouldn’t care about what they said. Again I put myself in the position of ‘savior’ for a friend, because all I wanted was to make others happy and be there for them no matter what may happen to me. It was naive to think I could ever ‘save’ people, and yet, I always tried.
Gradually it seemed her world became darker and darker. As it did, so did mine.

And then things shifted completely after another girl entered the equation. This girl, whom I’ll call Shay, became Miyako’s new friend in some way or another. They hung out more, and I didn’t mind. Until I started to become the third wheel. I figured it was just a thing that happened when a new best friend came along, so I didn’t say anything and ignored what was happening. At the lunch table it was them who spoke amongst their circle of friends. I was seemingly pushed aside and slowly forgotten, save for one girl, who I’ll never forget.

One day, Miyako just stopped talking to me altogether. Rarely texted me, seemed angry when I was around, and never told me why. For a time I thought maybe she was just having a bad time so I let it go and waited. But after a week of no improvment, I decided to confront her about it. The overall message was this: “You’ve done something wrong, and I’m mad at your for it.”
When I asked her what I’d done to make her so upset, she refused to tell me. She’d only shake her head and walk away. I let this happen a few times before begging her to finally just tell me why she was shutting me out of her life. She agreed to tell me. Then we got to lunch, and she refused to say.
Instantly I began to cry. Not because I was weak, not because I was pathetic. Because I was frustrated and clueless as to how and why I’d lost my best friend. What had I said? What had I done? I had no idea, and she refused to say. Even Shay and the rest of their little group began to shoot me odd looks and ignore me. As I cried, no one said a thing.
Not one word.
Save for perhaps the only girl who even cared, Liz. When she saw me crying she was the only one who pointed it out.
“Um… guys, she’s crying…?”

The conversations paused. Eyes turned to glance at me. And then what did I hear, coming in the form of my best friend’s voice from somewhere beyond the arms covering my tear-stained face?
“Oh geez, I made blondie cry.”
Their conversations resumed. I felt cold inside, but mostly sad. What had I done to deserve this?

Instead to telling myself they were a bunch of liars and they were only taking their aggressions out on me, an easy emotional target, I told myself this. “They aren’t telling you what’s wrong with you because it’s all of you.”
They claimed I had done something, but that something was never specified, never revealed. I hated myself for somehow screwing up. Time and time again I’d ask when Miyako wasn’t around to see if she’d told them, and they just said ‘you hurt her feelings.’ Even Liz at some point told me she tried to argue on ‘my side.’ But what sides were there to take? I wasn’t on either side because I didn’t even know what the heck there was to argue about! What had I supposedly done? What even was my side?
It was too confusing. Eventually, I left the table. They were all pessimistic and irritated with me when I tried to shine some light into their otherwise darkening perspectives. When I left, they got even more disgusted with my existence. Shot me glares from across the room and never talked to me after that. I got the feeling they all just hated me, so I avoided them. And so ended that terrible year of seventh grade, when for the second time in my life in the past year, I’d failed someone else I was close to.

That summer was when my depression began to show.
I stopped hanging out with people. Then again, there was barely anyone for me to hang out with at the time, save for my best friend since childhood. I started closing in on myself. My inner critic had gained sufficient strength from this past year and often told me I was stupid, worthless, always making mistakes. Called me ugly and pathetic whenever I felt sad. I was no longer nearly as outgoing or happy as I was before middle school began. I believed that friendship was a fragile thing, and trust was meant to be broken, so I had little of it for others at the time. Wore darker clothes, only wore pants because I couldn’t stand showing skin or feeling exposed.

Still, I attempted not to let that stop me from doing things I enjoyed, like writing, reading and researching random things like religion and mythology. Ever since I’d found anime I became a much more closed in but spontaneous type of person. Quit soccer over a year ago, didn’t go outside much. I had slowly developed into a lot less confident person.

Eighth grade started. This year, I wanted things to be different. Wanted to find friends who wouldn’t turn against me or abandon me. The problem is, my idea of being abandoned consisted of being let go because of my problems, so I started to keep them inside myself. I told myself I was selfish for experiencing any form of sadness or unhappiness. My parents weren’t divorced, I didn’t have any sort of eating disorders or lost limbs or really any reason to be unhappy. Could I not just appreciate the things I had?
No. I was stuck loathing myself for failing two past friends, ultimately failing myself, and being the worthless person I was.
Eighth grade was a lot better than the last two years. But there were still friendship problems, of course.

Everyone in my new group appeared to have some sort of problem with each other. One person would complain to me about someone else who complained to me about them, and it got complicated. I called it a hate triangle in my venting notebook, which I eventually showed one friend in some subconscious hope that I could get help. I had only one friend to talk about mythology with, and another friend with whom I pretended to see fictional characters. It was just a fun thing to do.
But they ended up going to a counselor. Told the counselor that I ‘saw things.’ Another time I’d decided to share some information I’d found on paganism with them, and they told the counselor I was trying to ‘convert them.’ Each time made me more and more angry with the group I’d come to somewhat trust at this time. Why was it so hard for them to understand I was different? I hadn’t in the slightest been legit in ‘seeing things,’ and I sure as heck didn’t try to ‘convert them.’ I was merely sharing information I found fascinating. It was so different from what I’d heard from other people and media. I studied demons for a time, just because it was cool to learn about the stuff. Not because I was some weird worshipper. Heck, to this day, I’m agnostic.

What I gained from these experiences was that I was too weird of a person to fit in with ‘normal’ people. I looked into things no one cared about, started to keep my research to myself, then eventually abandoned it altogether. What was the point in researching cool things if, when I tried to recall it and share my findings, people called me crazy? All they wanted to talk about was the mall or boys or something someone had done that day. They’d even talk about all the times on weekends they’d hung out together- without inviting me- in front of my face. Guess I was just that extra person no one really wanted around. At least, that’s how it always felt.
So when I spent a few times trying to convey my distaste for the treatment I felt I was getting, they got upset with me. I’d tell them I had trust issues, and they asked me to tell them who I trusted the most, so I made a little chart to show who had more of my trust than another. Then they called me rude for doing what they’d asked me to do. Several days I didn’t even sit with them anymore, and they got upset with me then, when I figured they would rejoice instead at my absense.

Overall, friendship hated me in those three years. And I could honestly say that back then, I started to hate friendship too.
I developed all sorts of thoughts over that summer leading into freshman year.
Emotional residue from both sixth and seventh grade continued adding up until the image I had of myself was such a horribly warped thing.

I was an ugly, unsociable and unwanted waste of space. I always messed everything up, could never make anyone happy, not even myself. I failed those who I was close to and was someone no one should get to know, so I shouldn’t have friends or relationships. Since I’m so ugly and awkward, I should wear darker clothes and cover myself completely. I’m not like others. I’m better off alone. I’m not smart, so I should always keep my mouth shut in class and just be quiet. Not even my family probably cared for me. I can’t succeed at anything I do, so why try? Why go any further? The world is a dark and ugly place. Don’t think about the positives, because there are more negatives anyway. Ignore the negatives and you’re pretending everything is all right. Don’t tell anyone your problems- no one wants to hear them, and you should be able to fix this yourself anyway. Everyone will leave you if you stop smiling.

I wasn’t even remotely happy. I’d lost all enthusiasm for things I used to always love doing. Stopped researching, stopped trying to make friends, didn’t try new things or go new places. Everything became scary and unnecessary. But I also wanted to become someone else. I wanted to become someone others would leave alone. So I bought a lot of new clothes.
But those clothes became false advertisement into a cooky person that I really wasn’t. I wore a persona the entire year, trying to be something I wasn’t, for the sake of appearing more confident and closed off than I was actually comfortable with. Though I still had some friends I kept a distance and never went places with them, didn’t want to let anyone in closer, figured I was better off not letting others see the real me.

That summer and the year following are really what did it for me.

That summer, I was so lost that I could hardly care whenever the sun came out. Some mornings I no longer wanted to wake up. My self-loathing had grown to a point where, if I walked into the middle of a street and a truck were coming, I probably wouldn’t bother trying to move out of the way. For the longest time I felt like I was losing family as well as friends, because everyone was older than me, going off to college and getting married. People I’d once felt so close to felt worlds away in places I couldn’t understand or didn’t want to. Family life felt like it had diminished to nothing. There was even a family joke that made me feel fat and awkward, and no one ever apologized, and I never asked them to. They’re not the type to apologize anyway. But every time that joke came up and was said, I secluded myself in an upstairs bedroom and cried. Few ever came to check on me. Others thought I simply overreacted. To this day my father and others probably can’t understand what such simple words did to me then. Long story short, friends were gone and untrustworthy. Family was falling apart and didn’t care what I felt, so I couldn’t talk to them. I’d found comfort for a short time in a friend a few years older than me. They made me stop talking to him for age reasons. With that outlet gone, I doodled a lot of dark things. I only cut once, but realizing it didn’t do a thing I never did it again. So instead I listened to sad songs, painful songs, empty songs. Music was my only outlet besides drawing and writing. Lyrics did something for me to let me cry.
The world was like a movie, and I was the sad protagonist. Sadly, of course, my life wasn’t just some movie with a mournful soundtrack. There was no prince charming or happy ending. It was a pointless fantasy I envisioned time and time again. Rain was my weather. Often times I looked to birds as a symbol for freedom, and instantly the next day, there was a dead sparrow on the sidewalk. One of the worst coincidental days in my life.

Then of course, there was christmas one year, where- despite family tradition- we decided to just turn around and leave the one thing we did to celebrate together. Something I used to enjoy full heartedly. On the way back to the car, it was dark and softly snowing. My cousins and my brother, all older and off for college, were walking ahead of me. People I could hardly register as friends anymore because of how rarely we talked like we used to. Behind me several yards was the rest of my family, all older, all talking about things I probably wouldn’t care about at the time. I was completely isolated between them. And as I walked under a single streetlight, the only light in the darkness, I caught myself wondering if anyone would care if I were to run out into the street in that moment and get hit by a car. If anyone would notice.

It scared me, so I sped walked to the car and forced myself to ignore the growing suicidal thoughts in my head.

So many little instances like this made me feel more and more isolated from the rest of the world. I felt cold. Like my heart had just… died, at some point. Nothing made sense. No matter how much I daydreamed and wanted to believe in simple concepts like joy and hope, nothing came to me. The abyss I had fallen into was so extensive. Sometimes one thought led to hours upon hours of contemplation, and there were times I just cried for no reason, or cried myself to sleep.

Amongst all of this worry, hurt and growing unease, I beat myself up constantly. All those little things I’d used to think were heartfelt beliefs at this point. I wasn’t just some average looking Jane- I was the abomination no one would ever bother themselves with. An unlearned lesson. Some sort of tragic story to be forgotten. And then I told myself I was selfish for thinking such things. It was stupid to think I could even think my sadness was justified. I still had a roof over my head, still had people who talked to me, didn’t really get bullied, save for bullying myself. I grew to believe my critic so much until I could never tell when I was exaggerating and when I was being truthful. So I let my thoughts run unchecked.

The summer of freshman year, I went on a vacation with another part of my family. I cried as I left, cried on the beach, and cried on my way home. I would look out to sea and just tell the world goodbye, that I didn’t want to stick around, and that things would be better with me gone. Everyone would be okay after a little while if I died anyway. I wasn’t something worth being dwelled on.

My parents, bless their hearts, tried time and time again to talk to me or just give me subtle hints that they’d get me therapy. But I’d come to believe therapy was a coward’s way out of depression. Therapists wouldn’t help, they’d only want money. I didn’t want them to have to pay to get me help, it wasn’t fair to them. Besides, I didn’t want to be perscribed any sort of medication. I wasn’t going to take some pills to make myself feel happy. If I wasn’t going to actually be happy, what was the point? There was no way I could ever get better at this point. I was a lost cause, and all I had to do was wait until one moment when I finally decided I wouldn’t wait for life to swallow me whole.

–
That moment came towards the end of sophomore year. I’d hit this generic feeling of ‘blah’ that made me feel like I would never get anywhere. Things wouldn’t get any worse, but they wouldn’t be getting better, either. So as my annual freefall into depression sunk in again… this time it hit like a brick. This time, I thought I wouldn’t get out of it alive.
There was a night I came home, one day at school. My brother was off at college. My mom and dad were downstairs, listening to a show. I sat there in awkward silence. And something hit me. Just a simple thought.

I know where the medicine cabinets are. I know how to remove the lid, dump a bunch of pills into my hand. I could swallow them all. And then I could die.

As soon as the thought hit me, I felt myself become numb. What was this sudden idea? Why was the urge so strong?
I forced myself to think of the consequences. I could end up having too little. I’d convulse upon the floor for a while in deep pain, get to a hospital and be fine after a while, and they’d force me into therapy for being crazy enough to try killing myself.
So I turned my music on and blasted it. Sang my heart out for an hour, forcing myself to just stay in my room, just get past the seemingly irresistable urge. It worked.

But for the next few weeks, I couldn’t function like normal. My sadness and fear were coming back stronger than ever as I realized I’d actually considered killing myself. It was then that I realized I couldn’t sit around anymore. If I let things fester like this any longer, the next time the urge came, I wouldn’t bother trying to stop it.
–

And this, I suppose, is where the story takes a happy turn.

I told a few people, who gave me hugs and told me I should really consider getting some help. I listened to them for once. I wasn’t ready to die… I had hidden dreams that still hadn’t been realized. I told my parents, and we started looking into therapists. After I picked one out and the school year ended, I began my visits to therapy and started trying to tackle old problems once again.

Boy was there a lot of change in a short amount of time. In just over two to three visits, I’d told my new therapist about things from the past, the feelings of self worth, all sorts of little instances. She told it to me like this:

“Do you know what game they were playing?”
“Was it a game of tug-of-war?”
“Well, almost.”

See, the game was this. Alice and Miyako both played a game with me called the ‘blame game.’ Now it wasn’t limited to blaming, because of course there was still all the ‘listen to my problems’ games they invented. But overall, the situation consisted of them telling me their problems, waiting for me to say something, then ignoring me and not letting me help the problem at all. Because they didn’t want their problems to be solved, they just wanted someone to share them. They just wanted to drag me down with them and be able to blame me for things, because I would take it. I wore my heart on my sleeve, and they loved that. Thrived in the agony they could make me feel which gave them more power. And when I finally decided I didn’t like the rules of the game and stopped playing? They got mad at me.

She told it to me like this, and instantly I felt- for just a brief moment in time that felt like an eternity- that… what if, I had never actually done anything?
What if all of those times I’d blamed myself for what happened to them… wasn’t actually my fault? That Alice was just using me, and leaving was best for both of us? That Miyako had just invented something I’d done wrong, to make me feel bad because she was bullied and wanted to feel stronger for once?

What if I’d never actually failed anyone, I’d only failed myself in believing I had?

With this newfound knowledge, I started to try and work on other things. I wasn’t stupid. I’d earned a reward given to only eleven students in my grade. Always had a 4.0 and tried to get homework done, got things done on time, even though I procrastinated. I wasn’t bad with friends. The good friends I have let me come to them just as much as they come to me. My new friends cared. My new friends supported me, and stayed by my side even though I was probably obviously depressed. So someone clearly cared.

I wasn’t ugly. I’ve gotten many compliments in the past that I simply ignored due to filtering out any positive things associated with myself. Paying more attention, I get compliments all the time, mostly from people I don’t even know.

I wasn’t weird. I simply liked to look into things no one else did, and that was okay. It made me interesting and out of the box compared to most girls my age. I’ve always been told I was more mature and creative than half the female population others have seen. Which was another compliment I ignored for a long time. It was also probably why most of my friends were years older than myself and in college. I just couldn’t handle people my own age, as most of them were still in the ‘blah’ phase I had just been in or only seemed to talk about trivial things.

Over the summer, which was just this past summer, I learned a lot of things about who I really was and why I did the things I did. I started to come to terms with my past and accepted that what happened was in my best interest and out of my control. It was best for me to leave those toxic relationships. It was okay to open up to people I trusted, and I was more likeable than I first thought. I was respected a lot by peers. And I’ve learned lately that a lot of people in my family also look up to me as a positive beacon. I was just told the other day that someone whom I barely know apparently had said that out of all four of the grandkids including myself, I was the one she thought would do great things. my cousin told me in a letter that I was her rock in this otherwise whacky family. My friends told me I was someone they could always count on to be there if they seriously needed someone. They trusted me with things, enjoyed my company.

My idea of myself has changed so much over the last four months than it has in the five years I’ve let depression run my life. I now know that, for a fact, things can get better. It only takes the courage to finally take that initial step towards recovery. This year I hope to completely avoid the cycle of depression that typically starts in a few months for me. If I manage to avoid it, I’ll finally know I’ve rid myself of depression for sure.

And now I look forward to every single day with a smile on my face.
Because I know that, despite everything, I’ve made it through perhaps one of the darkest times in my life.