Coping With Depression

By the time I was eleven, I started showing signs that something might not have been alright for me. Although my mom did usually catch when I was feeling not myself in these early stages, everyone else would just crack multiple jokes about how I was "just starting puberty".. so that's what I would constantly remind myself.

It's fine.. You're fine.. You're just growing up.. Everyone feels like this.. It's normal.. Stop obsessing over it..

At first, I believed it was working. I thought telling myself that everyone goes through this same thing was helping me get through it.. but I was far past wrong. I was just confusing myself more and more with each reminder I'd tell myself.

By the time I was twelve, I started to have very specific kinds of thoughts. I never acted on them. I just had voices going off in my head telling me information that I probably should have never listened to considering I was at the age most pre-teens start to go through their "puberty phase".

Being the age of twelve, I felt like I had nobody to talk to. By now, my dad had already began to distance himself from his family. My mom already had my father to worry about.. there was no way I was about to add to her lists of burdens with my own personal problems that were probably just something all teenagers go through at some time or another. Not to mention, I also had one grandmother who started to constantly put pressure towards me because my body wasn't "the perfect standards" for attractiveness, and another grandmother who constantly made me feel as if she was only wanting to be around me because she owed it to her son to be with me.

So I isolated myself.. this was definitely not one of my brightest ideas, if I do say so myself.

The process of isolation was a technique twelve year old me did so innocently, not realizing I was about to teach myself a way of using it for the rest of my teenage life (and also something I still use today during my adult life). I learned how to push myself away from everyone from my life simply because I didn't feel like ruining their lives all because mine felt miserable.

The worst part about isolating myself was the fact that, even after pushing myself away from everyone who I thought cared the world to me, nobody ever came up to me to ask what's wrong.

They just watched me disappear into the background after being such a happy, giddy little kid and thought to themselves, "Eh.. She's fine."

The Curse of Isolation

If I could go back to age twelve, I probably would have told old me to rethink the whole isolation part. Shutting out everyone just pushed me to find new people to talk to on the Internet. As someone who was twelve, that probably would've been the biggest red flag right there. I mean.. it did work. I did meet someone. A guy. Joe.

Joe was the sweetest guy I've ever met. He was kind, caring, and most of all he was the one person who seemed to want to talk to me when I wasn't feeling myself. He was the one person who made me want to talk out my feelings whenever I felt not-so-myself. Joe made me feel like we were the only two people in the world. Eventually, it got to a point where I was talking to him every day. Every time I got a notification from him, I couldn't help but smile. He made it feel as if the greyness surrounded my life changed into the brightest of colors. Knowing him made me think that my problems had all disappeared and I was back to my old, usual self again.

There was only one small problem with Joe..

..he was eighteen.

C'mon. It couldn't had been that weird.. right? He just saw a sad, young girl and decided to lift her spirits up again. It's not like he made her swear to never tell another soul about him or about their relationship. It's not as if he got pissed at her because she once told one of her friends at the time about the guy who made her feel like she was at the top of the world.

Looking back at what happened between the two of us, I cringe at the red flags I ignored simply because I never knew they weren't "normal" for someone to do to another person. He literally asked me out by telling me we'd just "pretend to date" to "see how it feels for two people of our age gap", and I said yes thinking it was the best moment of my life. Not to mention that after asking me the question, he didn't forget to add that I could not tell my parents about him or "our relationship" because they wouldn't understand how we felt.. and I just accepted it like that was a normal offer to receive from someone.

To this day, I still refuse to acknowledge that this was my first ever "relationship". I would much rather confess to never having dated anyone by the age of twenty three then to tell someone that I let an eighteen year old take advantage of my vulnerability when I was just twelve years old.

For the longest time, I was ashamed of this time of my life. To this day, most of my own family still don't know that this happened to me. I was so afraid that people would tell me that it was my own fault for letting this happen to me, that I just remained silent. I didn't want people to think I was dumb enough for thinking some eighteen year old guy actually cared enough to fall for a twelve year old girl.

When I finally accepted that I wasn't the problem in this relationship, I was eighteen years old. Six years later. It took me six years to realize that his own actions were not because of anything I did.. meanwhile, he probably forgot who I was the second we stopped talking to one another.

But now I can share about my own story.. I can make jokes about what happened to me.. I can bring awareness for all those young girls who may be in that same boat I was in eleven years ago.

You are not alone.

It is not your fault.

You will get through it.

When I was twelve, my dad walked out on us. It was the final weekend of 2011. My mom was so close to cancelling the New Years plans she had to go out to visit her mother because we were having money problems, but he insisted on her going. He just reminded her that you do anything you can for your family and that was that. When we came back that first day of 2012, all of his belongings were out of the house and he was gone. All that was left in his place was a stupid letter placed on my pillow claiming that his actions had nothing to do with me. To this day, I do wish I still had that letter.. but I angrily shredded it and threw it in the trash that night in 2012.

A small part of me wished that this was like three months prior when I caught him and his mother packing his belongings in the car because at least he came back that time. I hated that day. I had the pleasure to witness my grandmother being so okay with the fact that her own son was all prepared to just leave his family in the dust and not look back. I had to carry the weight of that for years, while everyone else forgot that moment existed. My grandmother passed away March of 2021 and while people were remembering the good things she did, I was remembering that day. I never found out why she was so alright with my father's choices that day. I never found the courage to ask her before she passed away.

But now it's January 2012 and he was gone for good. A week went by and he still wasn't back home. My mom was keeping herself together for my sake, but I knew about the tears she shed when I wasn't around. Two weeks after he left, he finally agreed to see my mom and I again. He met up with us at an Applebee's by our house for dinner one night. His main focus that night was probably to make sure I knew that his leaving wasn't because of me, but all I remember from that night was the way he made my mom feel like complete shit after she found a way to cope with his disappearance in the last two weeks. It was almost as if he heard she was feeling so much better and figured he'd reverse all the feelings on her that night.

I still can't walk into an Applebee's without thinking of this one night.. even eleven years later.

After that, I started alternating between my moms house and my grandmother's house (my moms mom) more and more. My mom would just tell me that it was just until she was able to pick up the pieces and get our lives back on track, but eventually I had dropped out of school and began living with my grandmother full-time.

If you read the article I wrote about my eating disorder history, you'll know that was when my self image began to go downhill.

When I was thirteen years old, my father passed away. The day my mom told me felt like the end of time. She sat down on the couch next to me and started her sentence with, "I just got off the phone with your grandmother.." and I couldn't even process what was going on in the moment. I just sat on the couch knowing that something big was going to happen.. I just never knew whatever was about to come out of her mouth was about to change my life.

"You father passed away yesterday, September 19th 2012." she told me.

My mind shut down. The last moment we had been able to share together, since that one night in Applebee's, was a birthday phone call a month prior to his death that he would have never done if my mom didn't force him to call. He didn't even want to see me that past summer because of some stupid, petty little argument he had with my mother over something her lawyer said, so I couldn't even get my chance at having one last, final hug.

This was it. This was the moment my world shut down for good.

The next year was brutal for my mental health.

At least this year was the year I finally found a therapist.. right?

Ahh. The therapist. The person my mom told me to not be afraid of because she was a professional trained to help those like me. The older lady who, after I told her how I once picked up a knife while doing the dishes and thought about how relieved I'd feel shoving it into my gut, just looked me dead in the eye and said, "If you truly wanted to die, you'd already be dead."

Thirteen was the age when I started experimenting with different ways to self harm myself (to avoid giving possible ideas for those who struggle with this same issue, I will not be stating what they were exactly). In the moment, doing so made the pain disappear and I felt as if this was exactly what I needed to "cure my depression".

It was not.

When I was fourteen, I met my best friend. The one person who, to this day, is still the one person that means the absolute world to me. I just know that I wouldn't still be here without her. We met in high school and instantly formed this bond over our love for One Direction. Now, it's been about ten years later and I couldn't imagine my life without her; we've been through too much together to just let it all go away now.

The Confession

When my mom found out about my eating disorder, I couldn't really keep any other secrets from her. It's not like I didn't try.. oh boy did I try. She was just more onto myself and how I was doing after finding all that out. It's understandable, to be honest. What I probably needed most after this whole time was at least one person who showed that they cared.

When I finally built up the courage to tell my mom I haven't been feeling myself, I was fifteen. Boy, did it feel like such a huge weight got taken off my shoulders. For four years, I've been keeping so much to myself; my depression, my self harming skills, and especially the fact that I haven't really been too keen on living any longer (I still have no idea how I managed to keep my attempted unalives secret all this time but I guess I was either that lucky or not as important to most people as I was once to believe).

Coming to Terms With My "Truth"

Although I finally came clean at fifteen, it still would've been another five years before I finally came to terms with my own truths. I've endured a lot from abusive situations to toxic friendships to inappropriate relationships with multiple teachers (don't worry - not romantically.. from my side, at least) during the short life I've had to live through.

At age twenty, I finally was able to accept that this will always be a huge part of me. My depression and I will always be a team; she's like that sibling you never really wanted but got anyway.

It took me so long to finally realize it but I finally got the chance to be able to hold my chin up high and scream towards the mountaintops, "You will not define me!"

Of course, I'm still coming to terms with the trauma from my past.. that's a whole lot of unraveling to go through before I could ever find my way around it. But overcoming my depression.. that was a battle I never thought I'd ever get to the end of.

Coping with your depression doesn't feel that easy to do, but trust me.. it's possible to reach the end. Now this does not mean I'm completely done with my depression. No. There are plenty of battles I've had to fight through but with each new battle, I have been able to tell myself one important thing:

You made it past the first battle.. you can overcome this one as well.

It's not much but it's still something.