The Book Of Beautiful Souls

LizzaM_

The Story of @LizzaM_

Okay where do I start? I want to start what the fact that my story isn't absolutely horrible or as bad as others ones are and that used to make me feel like I was a horrible person. It made me feel it was terribly wrong to have depression, but I learned that it's not and I'm not.

All of our stories are different, all of our lives are different and this is how I have dealt with mine.

When I was 6 months old, I moved from my father and family who lived in Florida, to my grandfather's who had lived in Ohio. From then to the age of 4 my childhood was perfect, idealistic. I was bought basically anything, my family was all together, and I was loved, but then it all changed. My mother had started seeing this man who was not a very good person.

My mom had only interacted with drugs twice before in her life until she moved in with him. From that age on, I grew up in a world where drugs were a common thing. Now I don't want to get this confused because it wasn't anything like heroin and cocaine, it was mainly just marijuana, crack, and maybe one or two other things that I don't know about.

I had to grow up earlier, I had to mainly take care of myself. They didn't work well together, it was a toxic relationship. They they argued 24/7. He would shove her around, he never hit her but he would throw things at her and me. Finally after multiple times of being kicked out and then coming right back, we had finally moved to a new apartment and my mom promised he would never be in our life again. But had she known that it was going to actually be a lie, I don't think she would have never made that promise.

He would always come with us, and while he didn't live there, he stayed quite often. Every time I would think my mom got better, he would show up and everything would go back to how it was. Soon my mother and I didn't see eye-to-eye on anything anymore and I was threatened to be kicked out or sent to juvie every weekend.

My grandfather had passed and he had a very large impact on my life, I didn't know how to cope with that. I had never lost anyone in my life before. So I held all the emotions inside and that's when things went downhill. My anger had skyrocketed and our fights were now inevitable. I would dread coming home from school because it was either an argument, drugs, he was there, or a mixture of all three.

From the age of 9 - 12 I won't actually mention too much of what happened, but no child, no person. should ever have to go through that. And I won't tell you because I'm not entirely comfortable, so we will skip that part. I had been falling into depression. Anxiety. Separation anxiety, social anxiety, it was pretty bad. I had soon learned the objects called razor blades. What I had once thought were my friends I now realize are my enemies. I also learned that alcohol and pills gave off quite an amazing effect when mixed together. The people who I had thought to be my friends were in reality, just toxic.

I got worse.

I had turned to alcohol, pills, drugs, anything that could have made me numb. I was bullied often and became many of my ‘friends'’ punching bag. Had I bruised easily, we all would have been in big trouble, but I kept silent. It was no one's business. Then the panic attacks started.

In my 7th grade year I had told a lie and to this day I'm still disgusted with myself for this. The topic makes me much more uneasy than it ever should. Then, around the end of my 8th grade year a new counselor had come to our school and I thought, “I'm going to do this right. I'm going to get the help I think I need.”

During freshman year I tried. I tried to be what everyone wanted me to be. I went to the counselor almost every day. We talked, but back then I never really realized she never actually helped me. She wasn't very good at her job no matter how much I wanted to believe otherwise. She encouraged me to see if I could go to a psychiatrist another. To see if I could try out medication and I did. They didn't work. I had attempted to take my life, using what I know best, pills. I should have died that night. I really should have, but my tolerance level had gone up thanks to all the meds I had taken before.

After that I was horrible. I really was. I took more meds, drank more, and smoked more. I did more drugs. I had no real control over my emotions. I fought with my mom so much, she actually threw most of my clothes in a trashbag and left them out front. I flirted and had a guy practically cheat on his girlfriend just because I wanted him. We ended up together and that was no good either. He was very addicted to all types of drugs. Cocaine, heroin, and I believe even did acid. He was really bad. I got into fights and held on to those toxic people.

Finally, towards the end of the school year, I had realized what a mess I was. I needed to stop. I needed help. So I turned to religion. Mind you, I'm not a very religious person, but I was desperate. I soon found Buddhism. It helped me, possibly saved me. I learned so much and I've changed from this. Today, I have an amazing best friend, a pretty good relationship with my mom, a pretty decent family, and school is going great. I have a job, I have plans for college, I have plans for the future, one I didn't think I was going to exist in. I've learned that its okay to feel that way. It's not wrong to be depressed or have anxiety. It's not wrong at all.

That has helped so much. I know this has gone on forever, but I want to show you what I wrote a few months ago, when I first realized all of this.

“You know, a while ago I didn't even want to be alive, depressing I know. But now, I don't know, I feel like I'm going to be okay. I mean sure I still have anxiety and I'll have my down days, but that's a part of life isn't it? That's not going to be my whole life, I'm going to be happy one day, that's my goal in life. A little silly, and probably unorthodox to make that my main goal, but it is. Because if I'm okay right now, I know I'll be okay again, and I really want that. I'm sort of proud of myself. If I look back just a year ago, I didn't want to be here, I couldn't care less what happened and what I was going to do with myself. But today, today I have goals, lots of them. Today I'm slowly learning to love myself.  Today...today I'm okay. No, I'm not perfect and wondrous, but I'm okay. And I'm perfectly happy with that. I'm okay, and I hope if you aren't okay right now, I hope you will be. You will be okay, and you will be happy. Like me.”

If anyone ever needs to talk, don't hesitate to message me. I'm serious, I'm here for you. All of you.

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ThePsychoMadHatter: Things do get better. All we have to do is keep fighting and be strong. Sometimes it gets too much, I know, but at the end, all the pain was just worth it.

If you do not know poverty, you will never know the value of money. If you do not know pain, you will never know the value of happiness. You can't disagree on that.

Life is a beautiful thing. As beautiful as the Yin Yang. In every good there is bad and in every bad there is good, and that is called the circle of life; in balance. You have to value happiness to know happiness.

Depression is not a bad thing, well not always. It's depression that finally teaches us how to smile. You can compare depression to a kid learning how to walk. You have to fall to cheer the first time you make it.

Everything takes hard work, if it didn't, then how would we cherish the win after the battle?