Dear Counselor: My Story.

Letter Five: Thirteenth of April

Alexis Poniewierski

5:26 PM

4/13/2016

Depression is like getting betrothed to someone, and being forced to marry them, no matter how bad it hurts you. It's like a marriage with no divorce papers- no escape. It's abusive, it hurts you mentally and emotionally to the point it becomes physical.

I am married to my depression, I guess. Not by choice. I was betrothed to it at a young age, but the proposal did not hit me until five years ago when I had become engaged and then I was fully committed to it. Not by choice.

This wasn't my choice. I am not in love with my depression. I hate it; and if there were divorce papers, or separation papers, I would take them whether it cost me my entire life just to get rid of it.

I guess I need to stop asking myself why, because there is no common explanation as to why depression begins. Why it forces itself into your brain and turns your brain into a muddy battlefield where you are left with no weapons pushing against the enemies with them.

I am lost, and damaged. I am screwed up. I'm not perfect. I am not perfect. I will never be perfect.

I'm not fine. It's hard to sleep. I always have a crushing fear that something bad is about to happen every second I am struggling with this. It became hard to breathe- like I am drowning.

I miss when I was five years old. When I didn't know depression existed. I just knew what it was like to be upset because I lost a barbie doll or my Dad was yelling at my Mom.

No amount of pills, medicine, help is going to desecrate my depression and permanently rid me of this thing. It's like a sickness, that won't go away. It mentally and emotionall kills me, and I don't think it's going to become easier. I really hope at the end of these, I have a happy moment.

I helped my Grandma garden today, and I listened to the song Zombie by Cranberries and it seemed to relate to me on so many levels.

To many people, the song is just about a war. But little do they know it is about a child, or children being put in the middle of a war. Whether it be with parents, or their own thoughts, it is about a helpless child who is barely surviving but is still living despite how bad it hurts.

It's hard to be happy. I constantly have breakdowns at school, and I don't know if it's because of my anxiety or if I can't handle being sad in front of all these people- the sick feeling I get when my head is staring at my feet, while my legs are shaking and I am crying and nobody is noticing.

When I went to try to get advice from my school counselor- it was considered disturbing the peace at school. So why become a counselor if you cannot handle an assigned student to you- why be a counselor if you can't help us? If you can't help your distressed students when they are crying wish they were at home buried under blanket after blanket just to ignore the world?

No. I'm a distraction to the staff, the students, the faculty. I can guarantee if I were to go again I'd be kicked out. It would have been the last straw for them. I can't handle being kicked out of school, so I have given myself two choices.

Stay at home or do online, or drop out and get my GED.

The thought of a GED destroys me because I want my diploma. I want to go to college at some point. Maybe do architectural design, or interior design. But maybe, just maybe, become a school counselor or just a counselor because I KNOW what depression feels like. I will be that counselor at the school that will sit and listen, and give the best advice I can to the students in pain because it seems counselors at schools are incapable of having hearts. They just ship you off as if you are the biggest problems in the world.

I would be there for the students. I wouldn't ship them off or make them feel like they are distracting me. Because you know what? They wouldn't be distracting me. They are coming to counselors as a cry out for HELP. What does Mr. K not understand about that? That when a student goes to his office in tears and breaking down that they need comfort? That they need help and that they need someone to care for them?

But yet he ships them all off. Unfortunately, I was one of them.