I look down at the floor, stare at my shoes. I don’t want to look at her in the eye, I don’t want to see her cry, but I still hear her. “I had no idea...no idea...I wish I knew...I just…” she murmurs through the tears. When I finally look up, I can’t help it, the tears start coming from my own eyes, “I’m sorry,” I say, it's the only thing I can say.
My therapist looks at me, she looks sad, perhaps pity is what I’m seeing in her eyes. She asks more questions, about by depression, by anxiety, self-harm; and of course attempting suicide, and if I had any plans. I answer by nodding while speaking short sentences. She asks for more details of my plans. I tell her. My mom gets more upset, murmuring again with tears choking her words, “I had no idea…” I tell her I’m sorry again. She answers with, “I wish I knew.”
The therapist goes on and asks me about my life, what I’ve been through. What do I say? I think. I mention that I was always surrounded by death. I mention how I lost my favourite person in the whole world, my papa [my grandfather] when I was fairly young. How I lost the close second, most important, and favourite person, my grandmother. How I was with them both through it all, until the end, countless days in the hospital...
I hate hospitals now. I understand their importance of course, but...I can’t help but think of them as places where I watched my loved ones waste away, slowly dying in front of my eyes.
I tell her what pushed me to my breaking point, to my multiple thoughts, and attempts: the bullying, the shunning, the angry threats, and email, by what I believed were my friends abandoning me; how I blamed this one girl, who I thought was a best friend, how she destroyed me, how she somehow got everyone to leave me. I was kicked out, shunned. Never to be talked to.
We were a group of friends...always hanging out, but one day, one mistake, and she managed to make that all change. I was kicked out of what I knew. I lost all that I knew and loved in one fell swoop.
I blamed her for what happened. I blamed her for my friend's death. I thought, because of her, I couldn’t reach out, or talk to her. She had made that friend turn her back on me! And because of that, I couldn’t talk to her, when I did run into her before she left us, she would glare at me, walk away with her face in the air… How that hurt me. It was like a receiving a deep wound; a cut, that would never heal.
When she left, I was destroyed. The hate grew. The thoughts grew. I was at the point, that I was going to blame this one girl, in my note: “This is what you did, you cause this. It’s your fault.”
I remember the day I first went in to see the doctor. I was a complete mess. I was crying, I could hardly speak. He could tell. I told him I needed something, anything. I told him how I couldn’t leave the house; how I stayed in bed, how at one time, my depression and anxiety was so bad, I didn’t leave my bed, or my room, or my house for three months. How I almost failed both my first and final years of high school.
I ramble to him, liked the derailed person I am. “My brain is broken.”
He helps. He nods, and smiles, “well we can fix that, we can help work on that.” He explains things, ways to rewire your brain. He explains the scientific backing behind it. He recommends me books.
He gives me a prescription for Paxil.
It doesn’t cure everything. I still get depressed. I still get anxious.
It ebbs and flows. Crashing like waves on a beach. There are still days where I can’t get out of bed. There are still thoughts that roam around my brain, that scratch and pound at my walls.I try to remember what my therapist told me to do on the bad days. To picture my depression and anxiety as something, looming over me. A monster, that I can visualize to fight. I did. I do. I don’t know if it really helps. Or helped...
The moments are tensed. Awkward. Cold. I feel horrible, I want to crawl into a hole and die a million ways.
“I’m sorry,” I say. Does it even mean anything anymore, those words?
“It’s okay. It just hurts to hear you say that”...she pauses. “I still remember that's the exact words that she said at our house one day when you guys were talking about it; no one would miss me, my parents would get over it.” Is that what I think? Did my best friend, my sister say those words all that time ago?
My mom is still crying, “I hope you know that I love you.” She’s saying more, but I’m fading out. “Of course,” I reply. “I’m sorry. I love you too…”
“It's like I have my daughter back!” my mom tells me. Was I gone? Was I that bad? What was the impact on her, to feel the need to say this to me?
“You're normal, again. You can function!” she smiles, I can tell she’s happy.
I do agree, I can function better than I ever could before.
I do on most days feel ‘normal,’ I go to university, I talk to friends, I go out with them. I’m not as anxious as I was before to go out, I can leave my house. I feel safer. I feel like I have my voice back; that I can speak up for myself.
Paxil did wonders for me, it still does; I still take it daily. With that, and therapy, some very important caring, and loving figures in my life, including my mum, my art teacher back in high school, that saved me early on, and kept me going in school, and motivated me to work hard, and without her I don’t think I could have graduated; and friends, such as the ones I made on here. I’m doing better, I still fight my depression and anxiety, and it’s a constant battle every day of my life, and the guilt is still there, and I still wrestle with that as well….It’s still one step at a time; a progress that takes every day, but I’m better. I’ve come a long way I believe, and I will continue to work for the rest of my life to improve and get even better…