Depression and Happiness: The Grade

I was enjoying my time being with Happiness. Depression was locked up and didn’t see me often.

But then, I got a bad grade on my math test. This was Depression’s chance to esacpe, when I was at my lowest.

I’m back, Depression told me.
“Hello, Depression,” I said.
I see you got a bad grade on that math test. Wow.
“It isn’t that bad, maybe I can retake the test.”
Why bother, you’re just going to fail again. You’ll never be able to succeed in life, maybe you should just kill yourself. It will make your parent’s life so much easier. And your friends, they wouldn’t have to deal with all your drama anymore. Plus, your boss can hire a much better employee in your place. What do you do successfully?
“I….. I don’t know, Depression. I guess I do fail at everything… maybe I should kill myself.”

At this moment, I heard some muffling noises coming from behind Depression. I saw that it was choking out Happiness.

Don’t listen to Depression! You are good enough! You do tons of things well! People would miss you!

“You know what, I think you’re right Happiness. I am good enough. This is one test, and it’s not the end of the world. Depression, get back in your cage!”

~FIN~

Depression and Happiness: A Comic

My whole life, I’ve been depressed. Depression has been with me for so long, that eventually, I saw Depression as a friend instead of a foe. Everything I did, Depression was there with me.

Until my doctor prescribed me Zoloft.

This made Depression quite nervous. Zoloft would take Depression away from me, and Depression didn’t like that. It wanted to stay with me forever.

After taking Zoloft for a couple months, I met a new friend, Happiness. I thought I had met Happiness before, but it turns out that Depression had been filtering what Happiness was really like to me. I had never met the real Happiness until now.

Happiness locked Depression up. At first, I was glad, but then I started to miss Depression. It sounds weird, and Depression caused me harm, but up until now, all I knew was Depression. Happiness was a stranger to me, and Depression was an old friend. However, I knew that it was in my best interests to get to know Happiness

Every once in a while, Depression breaks out of its cage to visit me. It misses me and I miss it. However, I know that the best thing for both Depression and I is for Depression to leave me alone.

Bullying and its Effects on Me

Bullying is a vicious cycle. Often, people who bully are people who have been bullied themselves. I fell into this trap, and I’m ashamed of it. Let me start at the beginning.

I can’t remember a time as a kid when I didn’t have this bully in my life. Let’s call him NH. NH was my neighbor when I was a kid, and he lived behind me. I can’t quite remember when the teasing or how the teasing started, but I remember some of the beginnings. I was at an odd age for all the kids in my neighborhood. Half of them were in high school and half of them were under the age of five. So, as a bored 10-year-old girl during the summer, I hung out with the five-year-olds. NH’s little sister, who we can call BY, hung out with me on occasion. NH and BY’s parents were rich, and they had a lot of nice toys that I had always wanted, like mini kitchens, swing sets, and those battery-powered Jeeps that you could ride around in. It wasn’t a very good friendship because she loved to boss me around. She would say

“It’s my house, so you have to do whatever I want.”

“Okay,” I’d say. The next time I saw her, I’d invite her over to my house

“I’m the guest, so you have to do whatever I want.” This made me so mad, that we often fought. I didn’t want to do whatever she wanted, I wanted to do what I wanted. One time she got so mad she slammed her pink, plastic Barbie playhouse door onto my big toe and ran inside her house. My mom was very mad that she had to fix my broken toenail, and probably cussed her mom out over the phone.

There is one day forever haunts my memories. I remember it so clearly. I was in the pink Barbie playhouse that would eventually smash my big toe, and I saw NH and his friends coming around the corner of his house. Oh sh*t was pretty much my reaction to seeing them. The bullying had been going on for quite a while at this point, but up until now, it had been just NH. Now, he was getting his friends involved. I can’t really remember what happens next. I think they noticed me and started teasing me. I can’t remember if BY was present or if she was inside the house sulking. One thing led to another, and I told NH to go.

“What does go mean?” he asked.

I was confused. “…. go?” Little did I know, those words would haunt me for the rest of my life. He and his friends broke out in absolute hysterics like I had told them the funniest joke they had ever heard.

“Go? Go means go???” they howled. Yes, I know it’s such a dumb thing to say, but this is what they used to torment me for the longest time.

“Hey Elizabeth, go means go!” they’d yelled at me in the hallways. When I heard it, it ruined me.

Most of the bullying happened on the bus on my way home from school. Since he was my neighbor, we rode almost all the way home together. His friends also rode the bus, so they were there too. They told me I was fat, that I looked like I was pregnant (most of my fat goes to my stomach), that I had hairy arms and a unibrow, and that I looked like a man. I want to be transparent here and say that I didn’t do anything to stop them. Maybe I even encouraged them a little bit by attempting to insult them back. However, what they said did hurt me, and while I was in the third grade, they were in the sixth grade. Sometimes I would come home crying, and my mom would have to call his parents to cuss them out. His parents never did anything though, and sometimes his dad would even laugh at me along with him. There is one instance of this that I remember in particular. Remember how I said he told me I was fat? Well, one day, while I was at school, the button on my jeans popped off. The zipper was still fine, but I had to walk out of school and on the bus with my hand gripping the front of my jeans to make sure my underwear wasn’t hanging out. This day the bullying was particularly rough. Maybe it was because I wasn’t really responding to their torments. I tried so hard not to cry until after I got off the bus, but I just couldn’t keep it in. The great thing about having my thick hair is that I can cry and nobody will ever know. I let my hair fall in front of my face so it was covered, and let the faucet turn on. It’s kinda sad that I have mastered the art of silent crying in public places.

Eventually, his friends started bullying me more than he did. Soon, he wouldn’t even bother to tease me if his friends weren’t on the bus and he would just ignore me. Maybe he realized that what he was doing was wrong, or maybe it just wasn’t worth teasing me if nobody important was watching.

As I mentioned before, when I was in third grade he was in sixth grade. The way my school district works is that after sixth grade you go to a middle school for the seventh and eighth grade, and then high school for ninth through twelfth grade. This meant that after third grade, I would be rid of him at least until my freshman year of high school, which at the time seemed like it was so far away that it would never happen. I remember when the final bell rang dismissing the school for the summer, I was so happy that I wouldn’t have to see him again. What made this even better was that his family moved across the neighborhood, so he was no longer living behind me (although, he did move in next to one of my friends). I was finally able to live my life without him.

I wasn’t scared about my freshman year for the conventional reasons. I knew where all my classes were and I knew who I was sitting with during lunch. What I didn’t know, was how NH would react to seeing me. I knew he would recognize me if he saw me, and it made me afraid that the bullying would pick back up. After he left for middle school, my self-esteem and confidence in myself were in complete ruins. Going into high school, I was just starting to figure out my mental health situation, and I wasn’t sure if I really did have anxiety or depression or if I was just imagining everything. Having the bullying start-up again would be catastrophic. So, lying in bed on the night before my first day in highschool, I was terrified.

Luckily for me, the bullying never picked up again. Although, when he first saw me in the hallway, he looked a little shocked to see me. Maybe it was the fact that I was looking at him like he was my worst fear, or maybe he had forgotten the torment he had delivered to me. Whatever the case, I didn’t see him much until my second semester. I was moved into a different study hall, where lo and behold, there he was. Everyday for an entire semester I had to sit in his presence for 45 min. For the most part, he ignored me. I’d like to imagine that he didn’t want to come to terms with what he has done to me, but I think maybe he didn’t realize how much damage he actually caused me. I never spoke to him, never confronted him, but seeing him everyday awoke something very hateful in me. I stalked his Instagram, trying to speculate as to what kind of person the world viewed him as. I saw him going on vacations, playing basket ball, and going to football games. But I also saw him bullying his little sister, BY. He posted numerous videos of her singing while in the shower, most likely without her consent and the intent to embarrass her in front of his friends. One video, which has 101 likes, nearly caught her naked chest. I can’t imagine her being any older than 13 at the time, and we all know that 13 is a rough year for everyone. I hated him, I despised him. He scarred my childhood. While other children were trying to build confidence he was ruining mine. And for what? To impress his friends? To make him look cool? I really hope all the suffering and pain he caused me was worth it to him. I hope the irreplaceable childhood time I spent crying and wondering why I wasn’t pretty like the other girls wasn’t wasted during his social ladder climbing. I wondered if his friends knew what kind of person he really was. I wondered if they would care. I wondered what he would say if I confronted him. I wondered if he would be sorry. I wondered if he had even the slightest idea of the crushing pain he brought on my world. I wonder if his perspective would change if he knew that my entire life I’ve been suicidal.

I’d like to say that whole ordeal has made me stronger, but it hasn’t. It’s made me so much weaker. Every year I get so much weaker and my mental health has taken a turn for the worst. I don’t think I can handle another year of high school, much less a whole life time. I’m so sick, I have to take SIX different pills a day just to have my basic health. I don’t think I can do this any longer. I don’t want to do this any longer.

After dealing with NH, I became very defensive. I would roast my friends to make me feel good about myself. I became a judgemental b*tch.

I want to confront NH. He’s in college now, but I can DM him through Instagram. I don’t know if this is a good idea, but I need some closure. Maybe I should ask my counselor about what I should do. I want him to know what he’s done to me.

Why I Started My Blog

This week, I’ve been having an identity crisis. Yes, I’m 16 and I’m already having an identity crisis. This isn’t anything new for me. I’ve struggled with mental health my whole life, but when I started high school three years ago it slowly became worse and worse. I’ve had this feeling that I should kill myself pretty much my entire life, and I can’t remember a time where I didn’t have this feeling. It isn’t a serious thought, and I’m not about to hang myself, but I’m still having these thoughts and that’s a problem. See, I want to end my life but at the same time, I’m afraid of pain and death, so it creates a middle ground where I can’t really go anywhere. I’ve been having a bad year. It hasn’t even been two months since school started and I’m already so done. I’ve always struggled with my purpose in life, but I realized recently that I don’t have a reason that relies entirely on myself to be alive. I have the my parents and friends would miss me if I died blah blah reason, but if I took away my parents and friends and all my interests in high school, then whomst am I? When I go to college, and all the clubs and sports and friends and my parents will be gone, who the hell will I be? And this is when I realized that all my interests are all for other people. My clubs and sports, I do them for the benefit of others. I want something I do for myself, something I can do and control all by myself. And that is this blog. Yes, I know it’s a bit of a random assortment of topics right now, but maybe in the future, I’ll narrow it down. Won’t you join me on the terrifying rollercoaster that is my life?

i hate myself

Have you ever been surrounded by people, but at the same time so alone? I say this as I sit next to my lunch friends. I haven’t said a single word and they haven’t noticed. For them, my silence has become a routine. I feel invisible, I feel like I don’t exist, I feel like if I disappeared right now and never came back to school again nobody would notice I was gone until they needed something from me. Which is how I feel all the time. I feel like if I took my earbuds out and turned to the nearest person and said “Oh yeah, by the way, I’m writing a suicide note right now, it’s no biggie,” they would just stare at me until I stopped bothering them. In fact, if someone actually did ask me what I’m writing, I would tell them, honestly. I’m waiting for something to ask me what I’m busy writing, I’m waiting for someone to acknowledge I’m alive, I’m waiting for someone to let me know that my silence is making them worried, I’m waiting for someone to ask me if I’m okay so I can tell them I’m not. Except, nobody does, and nobody will. Maybe after I leave this table someone will ask “do you think Elizabeth is acting weird?” Although, it doesn’t do me any good to be asking other people behind my back if I’m okay. Maybe if you’re so worried about me you should actually ask me, and not those around me. I almost feel like I’m not allowed to not be happy. If I said anything that wasn’t all peachy keen to them, they wouldn’t know what to do. If I’m being honest here, at least two of them would try to turn my plea for help into gossip. “Yeah, Elizabeth was being, like, super dramatic today. What’s her problem?” I hate that word, dramatic. Since when did being depressed or suicidal become being dramatic? This is why I don’t want to tell anybody what I’m feeling. Because every time I work up the courage to look someone in the eyes and say “help me before I do something I regret” they chalk it up to me being dramatic. They tell me to stop being a downer. I feel like a nuisance, I feel like a fool. Sometimes I wonder if there is anyone who would actually miss me if I died. The people I call my friends, would they actually remember me when I’m gone? How long would they care about my suicide? A month? A week? How long would it take for them to forget me? How many of them actually cared about me in the first place? Barely half of the people I call my friends would even go to my funeral if I had one. I don’t think a single one of them understands what I’m feeling inside, and not a single one cares. Now, my lunch hour is almost over. I’m sitting here all alone at my lunch table. Everyone has left except for me. Nobody waited for me to get up, and nobody asked me if I was coming. They left me behind, just like the inconvenience to them I am.