Life update

4/21/18

Dexter Lara
4/21/18
2:40 PM

I wish people could truly understand depression or just mental illness in general. I hate it when people say they understand things better than me because they had a psychology class or just because they're older. You can try to understand with your textbooks and lessons or memories of your youth but none of that will show insight to what goes on in my head. None of that will show you what ridicule and abuse I've had to endure. Sometimes people ask me why I want to die. I just think about how I've been self-harming for almost six years now. I think about how I've been starving myself on and off for all those years. I think about all my failed suicide attempts. I think about all those useless medications and unhelpful therapists. My relatives complain that I'm ungrateful because even after being hospitalized several times, I'm just getting worse. I tell them they just don't understand and then they shut me down, saying "No! I understand! You don't!" But if they understood they would know I need to be loved and not hushed. If they understood they would know that recovery isn't a straight line. Mental illness isn't like physical illness. My depression won't be cured by taking medication. My depression won't be cured by sending me off to a hospital. Just because I seem to be handling things well doesn't mean the bad days won't come back. I wish I could yell at them about how they don't understand, but they'll probably start yelling or try to hit me. Sometimes I don't even have to yell back. I remember trying to walk away from the house and my dad was yelling so much, he grabbed me by my neck and I fell. So there I was, crying in the middle of the street. When a car was trying to pass through he just motioned them to drive past me, as if there was nothing to see. I remember my mom yelling "I don't care if you do drugs! Just get away from me!". A few months later when she found a few grams of weed in my bag she just started screaming "I want to kill you!" It's ridiculous though that the next day, my teacher noticed the cuts on my neck. At the end of class he called me into his office and asked me about what happened. He asked to talk to my mom and she came in as she was picking me up. He confronted her about what she said and she just laughed and gave excuses. I felt so relieved because he obviously wasn't taking any of her bullshit excuses. 

to be continued