Youthful Blossom

CHAPTER 15: Autumn's Depression

I remained depressed and anxious even after I had the most convivial friend ever. The mental diseases were impossible to get rid of and the medication never worked until my psychiatrist had finally decided to prescribe me new medication, but unfortunately, it didn't work as well. I had to take it for a couple of weeks to give it time to do its job in my brain, but it never worked. During those weeks, I was hoping to feel some positive changes soon because of my change of medication. I couldn't stand staying alive any longer as the world kept turning darker minute by minute. My anxiety levels had reached a new peak. It was different from how I felt in 2015-2017. This was probably even worse than my mental state of health in 2016. Every second, I wanted to die. Not just everyday, every second. I started missing school again as I saw no point in it. I thought, "Why go to school when I'm going to die someday anyway? There's no point!" I was having an existential crisis. So much guilt went through my body caused by OCD. I felt like the innocent Alessa from the 2006 movie 'Silent Hill', who was burned alive by a religious cult. Alone in the world, suffering, with no help. I always liked to compare myself to the movie character Alessa because the way I mentally suffered felt like I was physically burning. The medication wasn't working but I had to give each new pill some time to work, and a couple of them didn't work, so I had to suffer for a couple of more weeks.
I posted on my Snapchat stories multiple times about why I wanted to die. I had some friends from school follow me there, so they saw. I barely spoke to them in person, but I texted them, sometimes, on social media. I got to know most of them through Jordan. One of Jordan's friends, Ryan, who followed me on Snapchat, saw my stories in late October 2019, on my last day at our school. She had taken screenshots that very day (as Snapchat notifies you who has taken screenshots of your stories) and I believe that she was the one who had showed or told one of the counselors at the school about my Snapchat stories, as she was the only one to screenshot them. I didn't know about this for a few months until my father informed me about what the school counselor had told him through a phone call about my Snapchat stories. The school counselor was a very kind woman, who I had met weeks before the counselor was informed about my Snapchat stories by someone, who might've been Ryan, who too, was very kind and caring. She had just lost a friend who commited suicide, so she probably didn't want that to happen to me, even though we weren't close. My father and I had met the counselor a few weeks before my last day at school, who was one of the few Spanish-speaking counselors at the school. She was Hispanic like us. My father didn't know much English, so the Spanish-speaking counselor communicated everything in Spanish to my father about my progress at school. She would tell me that if I was unable to attend school due to my mental health, it was excusable. A couple of days later, I went to her office and spoke to her about something that had me distressed. I spoke to her about what I had shared with a few of my classmates in my health class, who I met through Jordan. It was Jordan who had told my fellow classmates about my atheism and political support for Bernie Sanders. I was okay with what she had said as it gave me a chance to socialize with her friends. They told me that they believed in God and supported President Donald Trump, which I respected. They were respectful about my beliefs, but I felt very anxious because I thought they had hated me for my different beliefs. Plus, they knew I was gay and even though they were never homophobic, my self-hating mind was full of doubts. Later on in health class, we went outside to the school's football (I think) field to do some laps, and play sports. I only sat on one of the benches at the field to hate on myself for what I believed in. I told Jordan that I hated myself for what I believed in, right after we were leaving the field, but I don't think she heard what I said clearly. I wanted to change and be like her friends, so that I could be like them and maybe then, they would accept me, despite their respect for my beliefs. This was all just me, the enemy of my mind. After I told about the situation to the school counselor, she said that it was okay to have different beliefs. She talked to me for about half an hour, and positively sparked my mood. Days later, I got to stay home from school after my father and his friend from work picked me up as I had texted my father about feeling depressed in class, and since then, I never attended school in person, again.
The month of October was the darkest of 2019, but with one light so bright, the birth of my sister, and youngest sibling, Jesiah Bridgette, who was born on October 20, 2019. I didn't get to see her during her first few months of life because she lived with my mother in Missouri; I did not. However, I did get to see a couple of pictures of Jesiah until we finally met in person in February 2020 when my mother moved back to Georgia with my four younger siblings.