My Story

This is an email i sent to a place called Headspace and it shows a little bit of what I'm going through, this was also before i was diagnosed with depression. I am going to be changing the names in my post and mine will be HealingGirl.

Dear headspace,

I have tried writing this like twenty times already and it’s really hard to let someone read this but here I go.

Hi my name is HealingGirl and I need some help and advice. I’m fourteen years old turning fifteen at the start of August and currently in year nine. I’m not going to say I’ve had/have depression and anxiety all my life or at all, because I am not a doctor, but I think I have. I may not of know it at the time but my whole life up until year seven I knew something was different about me. I always wondered why everyone else seemed happier and enjoy more stuff. I always kept to myself because I was young and just thought that’s how I was, I thought maybe its normal for some people to be sad all the time so I just lived with it. I have also come to realise that my whole life I have had the signs of anxiety and depression and relate to a lot that also have it. Another thing I thought was just normal as a kid was having suicidal thoughts, now when I was younger I didn’t know what suicide was I just constantly felt I’d be better off not here. Though I didn’t tell anyone, but that was because I thought it was just something everyone went through and it wasn’t a bad thing. I always felt alone at school even when I was surrounded by people. Then it came to year seven, things got worse a lot worse, the loneliness and sadness got a hell of a lot worse and the suicidal thoughts and that was the year I realised something was wrong. I still kept quiet about it because I began to feel like no one would understand as I no longer felt it was a normal thing. I did try an open up to some friends of mine but they didn’t understand and thought I was just seeking “attention”, one thing I hate most, I didn’t know what to do I wanted to get rid of the pain. I found one way to get rid of pain but lead to an addiction, but not of drugs or alcohol but self-harm. I always turned to sharpener blades or knifes, well anything sharp. I felt like they were my best friend. One day I was in a library and we were told to find a book, so I was looking around the aisles of books and came across a book called “Girl Stuff”, so half way through the class I come across a chapter about depression. It was the first time I’ve really thought about depression and if I had it, as I was going through the list of signs of depression I kept saying yes, yes, yes to every one of the symptoms. I didn’t know what to do. I told my best friend at the time that I think I may have it, but neither of us knew what to do. I did some online test for depression and all said symptoms of server depression, but I just wanted to push it away and tried my hardest to forget about for the rest of the year but couldn’t. Then came last year which was year eight, one of the worst years of my life. There were times you couldn’t see any skin on my arm because of all the cuts. Although except for a couple times I never went to deep because I didn’t want any scars. Last year was the year the suicidal thoughts got serious, there were a lot worse and a lot more constant, I did attempt to take my own life a fair few times too. I’ve ran away from home a handful of times to, my mum texted me and I tried to explain without saying it, I mentioned in the long text I didn’t want to be here anymore, she completely ignored it and did nothing about it. Then there was one day, a day I thought everything was going to get better, but it made things worse. So that day I was driving back home with my dad, it was only us in the car so we had a chat I told him everything except the attempts on my life, how I thought I have depression and when I was younger, but he did know about the self-harm, it was a good chat because I like got it out and I thought he would try and help. He didn’t, after the day he found it all out he did nothing, not one thing. That made everything worse, no one wanted to help me. I felt like a massive waste in this world. I also felt like I’m the biggest disappointment and still do if I’m honest. I started hearing people talk about how their anxiety is through the roof, now at the time I had no idea what it was as I’ve never come across the word, so as I do with all words I don’t know, I googled it and did the same type of thing with learning about depression. I also did some test on that and the same answer came back symptoms of server anxiety. So at this point my life was a mess and I was beginning to kind of understand why. But back to the telling my parents part, my dad said I was seeking attention and mental health is just an excuse for everything, which I’ve never forgotten he said, and my mum told me to go jump when we had a fight when knowing I was having them thoughts already. Which I’ve also never forgotten. To top that me and my friend that knew everything had a massive fight and she made numerous jokes about killing themselves to get to me, even though she went through being suicidal too. Now finally this year, year nine. I don’t even know where to start, well same as last year still self-harm and attempts on my life. But all this whatever is going on with me got to a point where I hated myself so much I felt so uncomfortable in my own skin and I didn’t want to be me. I became extremely suicidal and am trying to fight the option of suicide every day, and I mean every single day. I could never focus at school because I was battling this fight, I lost a lot of sleep due to it to. It got to the point where I stopped going to school because I had no motivation. And no I don’t mean I was tired because I had no sleep but literally unmotivated throughout the whole day. I couldn’t bring myself to do anything but my anxiety was beating myself up at the fact I wasn’t. I did nothing, I couldn’t get myself to get dressed or eat or anything. Now it was a long time of not going to school until the school started calling and we had a meeting. I tried to explain but I literally couldn’t say anything. Here is a fact when I’m in a meeting or like at the doctors or in a situation I have to talk about myself I freeze and go blank, I also feel like I’m held captive and have to agree to everything they say. So they just put it down to anxiety and since then my mum thinks my problem is school, no matter how much I tell her it isn’t and that it’s me. My parents took me to the doctors, that didn’t end well, so because since I was little id freeze in the doctors room and my mum would have to say what’s wrong, my mum said what “was wrong” she told him that I have a problem with school and it was because of one of my old teachers but it wasn’t. So my doctor then filled out a mental health plan for me and this time I was willing to answer the questions but before I could speak my mum would but in and say something for me that was so wrong. My whole mental health plan was wrong which lead to my not being to get the proper help I need from my psychologist. I was dreading the first session with her but the day came, so because of the information she got she just thought I didn’t want to go to school so she tried to help me with that, even though I didn’t need help with that., and me being me I couldn’t speak up and say it’s wrong because I felt trapped in what my mum made everyone think was wrong, I felt as if I had to try and make it true so I could get help because I couldn’t get help for what I really needed. So a couple more sessions with her later I had another doctors appointment, I told him that it’s not helping so I got put on anti-anxiety tablets. They didn’t seem to be working either so I’m now on a higher dosage and also have some anti-depressants. I haven’t been to school in months but the last week of school I went to one class. So now that you know a bit about my past here are my questions. I would like to know if there is any school alternatives that get me a basic education year ten pass. Or a way I could just go into a course to follow something I’ve always wanted to do like hairdressing, owning a café or be a person trainer. As I don’t have the confidence within myself to face a typical high school again because of the battles I’m fighting within myself. I would be happy to do my school work just not there in a school, I would love to at least get a year ten past and still do my school electives, as one of my electives is to help out at an elderly home. Thank you in advance for reading and hearing what I have to say and for any advice you can give me. I’m sorry it’s so long.

Kind regards,

HealingGirl

Now i sent that in maybe july and there are some things in there i had never told people. But maybe I'll do an update of what has changed since then but thanks for listening.