Dealing With Anxiety and Staying Strong

Depression

It took me a while to get over what happened with that guy. I could never process why it happened. I know that I'm a nice person, and I know I have such a good heart, so why would this happen to me? I never understood why bad things happen to good people.

I still continued to self harm. Self harming made me feel better in the moment. Depression is like this dark hole that you can't get out of. When thoughts come pouring in I feel like I begin to suffocate because it gets hard to breathe. Most people don't understand depression and anxiety. A lot of people say it's all in your head, or that you'll get over it, or that you need to grow up. I've been told all my life that anxiety is in my head and that I needed to grow up and get over it. It hurt me a lot to know that the people I cared about most didn't understand what I've been going through all these years.

I was sad for a while. I couldn't do anything, and I couldn't motivate myself to do the things that I loved. I was uncontrollably sad, and I felt like I was going to stay this way, and it killed me inside.

Not long after the whole guy incident, my parents had a fallout a couple days later. I wish I could remember what started it, but I remember waking up at seven in the morning to find blood spots all over the walls, doors, windows, and floors. I started to panic because I was asleep and didn't hear anyone yell for help. I walked down the hallway and saw a mop down the hall. What was going on? What happened while me and my siblings were asleep?

I went in the guest bathroom to wash my face and brush my teeth, and then I walked out to the living room. I saw my dad laying on the couch and playing on his phone. My mom wasn't home because she went out the night before, and she must've stayed at a friends house. I looked at my dad and said, "Why is there blood everywhere?"

He quickly says, "I cut my finger."

I said, "How did you cut your finger?"

He replies, "I was ripping mama's clothes and cut my finger."

I had no reply but, "I'm going to walk the dogs."

When I came back from walking the dogs I went back in my room. It would've been awkward to go back in the living room when everything is a mess around the house. All of a sudden I heard someone knocking on the door. I heard my dad open it, and then I heard my parents starting to scream at one another. My aunt came in too because I heard her yelling at them to stop acting like this with the kids in the house. My aunt has always had our backs, and she's always been there for me and my siblings. My sister walked in the kitchen and I heard her yell, "Stop it! Joshua is sleeping in his room and y'all are going to scare him. Act like adults for once and just stop!"

They didn't stop.

I heard my mom yell, "Don't touch me."

I heard my aunt and my mom go into my moms room, and I heard them calling the police.

This happened recently too. All of this happened about two years ago, and still until this day I always wondered why my parents fought like this. It was a daily routine with my parents, so my sister and I were used to it. My little brother was scared out of his mind because he didn't know what was going on.

All my sister, brother, and I could do was cry. Us three were in my room crying together. My heart was racing, and I didn't know what to think or what to say. I knew I had to stay strong for us three, so I collected myself, and I said, "I'm texting our uncle to see if it's okay for us to go over there."

He said it was okay, and so we walked over to his house. I remember my sister and I saw my dad talking to a police officer, and my dad had blood on his shirt. The whole day was just depressing. My parents gave me the worse anxiety all the time. Every time they fought I didn't know what to do but panic. I panicked until I collapsed. Just looking back on this and writing this is making me shake. My parents traumatized me, and they don't even know it.

I still continued to self harm. Nothing in my life was going good. I felt like crap all the time, and I felt like I had to keep myself looking happy to everyone, so I can bring happiness to the people around me. I've always been known as the happy one, and I wanted to keep it like that even though I started to feel really depressed. I kept masking my emotions, and I wasn't taking care of myself. I felt like I had no purpose in my life, and I just wanted to always be left alone. I didn't want to be here anymore, and I couldn't stop thinking suicidal thoughts.

Being at home wasn't helping my depression and anxiety at all. The environment I live in has always been very toxic. I live with negative people who always down one another, and it never made me feel any better. I started to become less talkative, and I wanted to block everyone out. I remember one night I sat in my room on the floor, and I felt completely empty. I felt numb. I remember slowly turning my head to the left to look at my closet. I felt like I was literally a zombie because I felt so distant from being in reality. I remember just sitting there, eyes swollen from crying, staring at the scissors in my closet. I slowly got up, took the scissors out, and I just stared at them. My scissors were a weapon, and I knew I shouldn't attack my body, but I did anyway, and in the moment it felt really good to attack myself.

I know how that sounds. It sounds terrible in all honesty. How could one hurt themselves? How could one destroy their temple that God gave them? How could someone not see the worth in themselves? How could someone not feel good enough or worthy of life?

I watched the blood drip down my legs. It looked like a gash and all I could see was red. At night I was drowning silently in my tears. My thoughts were still suffocating me, and yet people can easily say 'get over it', or 'you're so young what is there to be depressed about'? These people don't know my life, they don't know my story, and they don't know the hell I've been through. I have tons to be depressed about, and it blows my mind that people don't take anxiety and depression seriously.

Days passed and nothing made me happy. I was broken inside, and I didn't know how to fix myself. I wanted the suicidal thoughts to stop, but they never did. One morning no one was home, and I turned on some music. I broke down to Human by Christina Perri, and I knew I had to stop the pain. Self harming just wasn't cutting it. I had to numb the pain even more. I had to erase what I was feeling, and I had so much self hatred towards myself that was building up from over the years.

I picked my head up from the computer desk, and I stared blankly ahead. I didn't even recognize myself anymore. What did I become? Who did I become? Why do I feel this way? I couldn't think straight anymore. I swallowed hard, and as tears rolled down my cheeks I knew what I had to do. I had to end it all.

I quietly went to the medicine cabinet, and I took out a bottle of Children's Dimetapp and a bottle of vitamins. I took several vitamins and put it back in the cabinet, and I took the Children's Dimetapp, and I went to the bathroom, closed the door, and locked it. I was silently screaming inside and whispering to myself that I needed to do it. I couldn't keep living like this. So, I took the bottle out of the box, and I started to drink the medicine like it was water.

I stopped a couple of seconds later, and I put the lid back on the bottle, and I put it back in the box. I went to go lay down because I felt tired. I went to my brothers soccer game with my ex boyfriend, and I told him I had to go home because I wasn't feeling good. He asked what was wrong, and I told him I took too much medicine.

We came home and he called my parents. I was sick to my stomach the rest of the night and was super drowsy. My mom called me crazy and asked if I needed to go into a mental institution with the rest of the crazy people. Who says that to their child who's already hurting? It didn't make me feel any better. Weeks passed by and my mom made comments like great I'm out of medicine because you took it all. Thanks mom, I really needed to hear that.

Months passed by and I felt a little better, and it was all thanks to my ex boyfriend for making me stronger.