God's been urging me to share this one for a while now. Maybe it's because it is the only thing that will truly help me move on, or maybe He knows someone else needs to hear it.
There's two times in my life when I've been depressed. The first was my sophomore year of high school. At the time I didn't know that I had anxiety, and I think those thoughts just consumed me. I was in a toxic friend group at the time and I felt so distant from everyone in my life. I didn't even know at the time that I was depressed. But I remember that hopeless feeling. I remember coming home from school and going right up to my room, where I would just lay in the dark for hours by myself. I remember my grades slipping because I couldn't bring myself to do anything. I remember feeling like I didn't matter to anyone and that if I wasn't here anymore no one would notice. But that is as far as that thought went the first time.
The second time. The second time was painful. It was so much worse because I knew I had a support system and friends and family that loved me so much. But the pain I was feeling was so heavy that I wanted it to end. Let me backup and explain more. Beginning of senior year, I was just about to start the whole journey with my stomach. I had been in physical pain for a while, but it started to affect me mentally too. For those of you who don't know, when something within your physical body is off, for me I couldn't absorb nutrients from food, that sets off everything else in your body. My stomach made my anxiety worse, and my anxiety made my stomach worse. A toxic cycle. Long story short, I didn't see hope for the future. My stomach was so painful that I couldn't get out of bed in the mornings, I feared going to school so much so that my parents would have to walk me to my car in the mornings. Things I would never want to admit and things I definitely never thought I'd be sharing. The depression hit me hard because I truly felt so hopeless, I didn't see the light at the end of the tunnel. I fell asleep at night thinking about the pills in the bathroom cabinet that could it end it all if I wanted. I would drive home from school and think about the bridge that would be so easy to drive off of, the guardrail that I could so easily slam into going 50 mph. I mean there were days that I had to pull over and cry for an hour because I was scaring myself so much. My own thoughts terrified the crap out of me. What stopped me? The people. The thought of my brother walking into the bathroom the next morning. The thought of my friends showing up to school and I wasn't there. The thought of the pain I would put other people in ended up overshadowing my own pain.
Now I share this because I get it. I've been in so many conversations with people who are so confused as to how anyone could get to the point of committing suicide, but I get it. I understand that pain and hopelessness, even when you so desperately don't want to feel it. I know that so many people that actually go through with it don't have that support system to stop them. They may feel like they don't have anyone so it doesn't matter if they are here or not. Maybe that's part of the reason I share my side to this story because it's a testament to how hard it is to get out of your own thoughts. I also share this though to share that it does get better. For me it took four months. Four months of so many tears and so much pain that I would never wish on anyone, but I got through it. I somehow saw the light at the end of the tunnel and now here I am. Here I am today, completely obsessed with life. It does get better I promise. I love each and every one of you so dearly, and I'm always here for anything any of y'all may need.
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