The Girl Who Lived, pt. 2

It's getting brighter <3

(continued from The Girl Who Lived, pt. 1)

In December, my parents and I decided to end it. After finals, I would come home and reassess where I was at. But I couldn’t even get through finals—I had to approach my Western Civ professor and ask him for an extension on my final. He and another teacher let me write essays for them instead of taking the final exams; without the kindness of those professors, I would not have been able to finish at PHC. The night of the orchestra’s Christmas concert, twinkling colored Christmas lights lit up my darkened room as I packed up all my belongings to send them home with my parents after the concert. I would follow them in a week. As I lay on my bare mattress that night, tears soaking my pillow, I could hear my roommates whispering about me and their concern for me. It hurt so deeply that I couldn’t put into words what was going on with me. While I told them the reason for my departure, I didn’t know how to explain the suffering that I was going through. All I could do was hang on until I got home.

I returned home right before Christmas—all my belongings littering the cream-colored carpet of my bedroom. I would sleep on the floor next to my corgi, hugging her warm black-and-white body as I struggled to get through the long nights. I participated in the Christmas festivities as usual, painting a smile on my face and trying to channel the spirit of the season. But after Christmas and New Years came and went, it was just me, sitting alone in my room, facing the bitter darkness all around me.

At the insistence of my parents, I started seeing multiple counselors: one who helped me start eating more food again, one who shamed me for telling her I didn’t believe in religion anymore, and one who prescribed different drugs to help me. Though I was willing to attend weekly counseling sessions and had no objection to getting help, I could never seem to find the right counselor or combination of depression meds. One medication would cause me terrible indigestion, and the next would cause excessive drowsiness. It was a constant struggle.

So, I threw myself into activities—I started my own cleaning business, I went back to work in the food service industry, and I strove to be there for my mom as she helped my grandparents. But each day was a struggle: It felt like I was trying to move underwater—everything was sluggish and took a monumental effort. Getting out of bed for work was a battle. I would awake in the morning to a cloud of despair around me, and at night I would fall asleep with the icy fingers of depression grasping my arms. I would sleep during the day and stay awake for hours at night, watching movies and eating candy to solace myself. I had gone the other way with food—now I couldn’t get enough of it, and I was constantly eating in order to find comfort.

Eventually, my plastic knife was not enough to make me feel relief. I wanted to see the blood seeping from my skin and feel the adrenaline rush that came with having punished myself for my worthlessness, and a plastic knife was not providing the results I wanted. So, I graduated to box cutters, slicing my pale arms until little bubbles of red shone out from the lines crisscrossing my skin. I would wake up each morning to find my shirtsleeves stuck to my shoulders with dried blood. While I knew I shouldn’t hurt myself, I found joy and triumph in this little part of my life I could control. The depression muted everything and made it seem like nothing mattered, but when I cut myself, I could feel something.

In May 2015, my mom’s dad died. It was awful. He died right before my birthday, and all I could think about on my birthday was his absence. My family was devastated, and I tried to be there for them in their grief, but I didn’t know how to process my own. So, I shoved my feelings down and continued my daily struggle to live. Each day I got worse, and I considered ending it. At night I would lie awake and think up elaborate plans to escape—perhaps I could book a one-way ticket to Europe, or maybe take all the pills in my bathroom and see what happened. I flailed around, looking for something or someone to save me and searching for a reason to live.

(continued in the next post--Don't worry, it gets better)