Day Seven: Someone Who Has Made Your Life Worth Living

Day 07: Someone who made life worth living.

First off, I hate this topic. No one person has ever been my reason for breathing, my reason to continue living. I am my reason for living. But, in the spirit of things, I guess the reason I am still alive is my family. Not for the obvious reason of my parents procreating.

Depression runs in my family. I would probably say that I started dealing with depression in elementary school. It started off slowly, the way anything does. I didn’t want to go to school, I would sleep through my alarm, I could never turn my brain off, falling asleep was difficult, I was constantly paranoid about friends. Slowly it turned into something much more serious than standard feelings of insecurity that come along with growing up. Sleeping became more and more difficult. I would spend multiple nights in a row staring at the ceiling trying to find shapes in the popcorn. I would think about conversations with my parents, friends, teachers, they would replay as an infinite loop in my head. I would imagine altercation that I knew were about to happen between myself and my friends or family. I could almost always predict what would be said verbatim. Then, my alarm would go off and I would go to school. Rinse, repeat. Days would pass without any sleep. Yet, I was rarely tired.

At school and at home I would pretend to still be hyper, happy. I would laugh with my friends at all the jokes, none of which I found funny. I would tell stories animatedly, dance around, sing, and generally pretend to be an overly active yet well-adjusted kid.

Eventually it started to become more obvious that something was wrong. In middle school I stopped skipping because I didn’t “feel good” (aka over slept/didn’t want to go), my interactions with friends stayed relatively the same, but I was fighting with my parents and brothers a lot more. It sounds silly to say, because what preteen doesn’t fight with their family daily? But, I would argue and I would feel worse afterward because it seemed like I could never just make anyone happy, least of all myself. I didn’t understand why I constantly felt alone and numb.

Soon, the numbness turned into something painful. If there is a word to describe the feeling, I am unaware. Emptiness is the closest, I suppose. I felt like a shell, hallow. Looking back, I think my brothers and parents sensed something was wrong, they just were not sure of the seriousness. It seems that the roots of our arguments were how much and why I had changed. They knew something was different, maybe even that something was wrong, but I do not think they had any idea of what I was dealing with secretly.

I was never a cutter; I never wanted to show on the outside how I was feeling on the inside. Plus, as mentioned previously I am super vain, even back then. But, I do remember doing things that would cause pain in order to make sure I could still feel and in order to release some of the emotions I otherwise had no idea of how to express.

Pinpointing when things got really bad is impossible. I am not sure if I started heading to the next step because it is the likely progression of things, or if there was a specific incident that made it seem reasonable. At one point I grabbed one of the knives from the kitchen and decided to keep it in my room. The knife was my ‘just in case’. Fights with my parents would break out, they would try to show tough love, or find out why I was doing so poorly in school, why I was so different from my brothers. My brothers would tell me I bring all of these arguments on myself, if I could just fall in line and play it cool I would be fine. I always took this as my family saying I am not good enough. Then, I would go in my room, sometimes cry, sometimes wonder why I couldn’t cry, grab the knife and press it against my wrists. I never pressed hard enough to break the skin.

Sometimes, after school before my brothers and parents got home I would look in the medicine cabinet. I would look at all of the prescriptions and OTCs and wonder what would happen if I took them all. I wondered how many I would have to take to achieve the desired goal. Every time I shut the cabinet without taking a single pill.

I truly hated myself. Honestly, I think I truly hated my family. I wanted nothing more than to die. I thought it would be better. I knew my family would be upset, that they would blame themselves and I knew they shouldn’t. I knew the issues I was going through were my own and no fault of my family. Every single day I thought about ending my own life. And every single day I wanted to do it. At one point I had a letter written out, I had it folded neatly my bedroom’s desk drawer, next to my knife.

My fights with my family always pushed me that much closer to wanting to kill myself. But I knew they would never understand. And I knew the afterlife would not bring me solace if I unfairly punished my family in that way. There was no way I could, in good conscience, take my own life after sharing angry words with my family.

Eventually my mom got tired of me never sleeping, failing my classes, and generally being a complete stranger. She took me to the doctor because she thought there was something mentally wrong with me. Not in the sense of my psyche, but she thought maybe they missed some type of mental disorder. In the only good move my parent’s quack of a doctor ever made, he gave me a short mental health test. For multiple years my mom had brought me in to talk about my sleeping issues, days without sleep, long spats of nightmares, weeks of broken and minimal sleep. Dr. Quack always brushed it off as the quirks of childhood. For some reason, this time seemed different to him. It was like a light bulb went off in his head; he started to see the pattern.

He gave me a short test with simple questions asking about my sleep patterns, my mood, my weight, and if I ever thought of taking my own life. Obviously, I did not score in the “rainbows and sunshine” section of the test.

I have very little doubt that had my mother not intervened by taking me to the doctor and continued to let me spiral down, I would have attempted suicide. And, I do not want to say I am here solely because my mom took me to the doctor at the right time. It is not like she had some type of strong motherly intuition as to what was wrong with me. Had she not taken me to the doctor, and by some miracle had I not tried to end my life, the reason I would still be here is my family. As much as they infuriate me, I could never leave them with the burden of “what if”. Not upsetting my family any more than I already had was my reason to get up every day and put on a smile, regardless of how I actually felt. They were the reason I floated through life, pretending I was whole.

Now, I am mentally stable, off anti-depressants and still a horrible sleeper. But, I no long need a reason to get up every day, get out of bed, and do something…even if that something is sitting on the couch watching bad television and eating a can of Pringles. I no longer think of ending my life, keep a knife in my room, or have a letter to explain why I cannot continue living. I simply live. I live because I am enough. But, I am not sure I would be able to say any of this had it not been for the love I have towards my family.