Hi everyone! I'm a new admin for this campaign and I'd like to tell you my story.
I can't pinpoint the moment I realized I was depressed. When I was a child, child protective services almost took me and my sister away. I don't remember much, but they didn't take care of us.
Looking back, I believe I've been depressed most of my life.
When I started first grade, I started to get bullied. I was chubby and straight out weird. It was a small class and I only made two friends. Even those two made a few 'jokes'.
It wasn't until 5th grade the bullying stopped. The year my house burnt down. My sister and I were lucky though, we still had some things at our moms house, where we spent every other weekend at.
The first time I selfharmed wasn't cutting, I cut off skin under my feet. Sometimes I would cut off so much skin it started to bleed, making it difficult to walk sometimes. At the time, I never thought I was harming myself. This went on for about a year until dad moved away from the reminder of what happened in that town.
Since I lived with my dad, I had to move to. The place wasn't a complete mystery, we had gone there every year for as long as I can remember. I didn't have any friends there though, but it didn't take long for me to get a few. This is where I met my now former best friend of six years. She didn't go in my class, but a girl I started to hang out with during breaks was my first contact with body issues.
She was incredibly beautiful, skinny and she had body issues. At lunch I would see her grab some sallad most of the time only. Being the antisocial person I was, I was perceptive to a lot. I was one of the chubbiest people in the class, and the guys would make comments about it to all of us. For a while, I started eating less and less and at times I wouldn't eat for a whole day. I developed a love/hate towards food.
I lived in that place for a year before I missed home and wanted to move back to my mother. From there, I moved roughly once a year until I found the place I'm living at with my boyfriend.
When I moved back to my mom, I started to wear black more. I even dyed my hair black from my dirty blonde. I got in touch with one of my old friends there, but the boys who bullied me until 5th grade, started bully me again. This is the time I knew I was harming myself. I would burn myself with a heated hair clip.
I never got caught, and my relationship with food got a lot worse. I would hide it in my room and throw it out whenever I got the chance.
After a while, burning myself didn't help with the feel I wanted anymore so I cut myself with a razor for the first time. From there my selfharm started to escalate radically. I started to cut almost every night and reopening the ones I already had.
After living with my mom for a year, I moved back to my dad, wanting to escape. When I did move, I didn't get in the same class as I was when I moved so I had to start over with making friends in the class I was in.
This is where things went from bad to worse. The only friend I made was friends with my now former best friend. We three were inseparable. All of us had problems, which to make it sort of a competition. One of them had problems at home, the other ran away more then once and ended up in the foster system which left me with only one left. We were basically neighbors so we hung out almost everyday.
She was difficult to handle, and we had many fights and she many times told me to go kill myself. I tried to cut my wrist more than once, but I didn't have it in me until one night. That night I swallowed a bunch of different pain killers. I did write to her that night that I swallowed 120 pills, and to this day I never forget the number.
The next morning I started to throw up and I stayed home from school, my dad and his wife never suspected a thing. Until he came home during lunch and said he'd gotten a message from my friends mom saying her daughter had talked to her.
From then I was hospitalized and got my blood taken and some IV thing for the amount of paracetamol. When I was in the hospital, I threw up at least once every half hour for a hole day. I couldn't keep any food down. When I got home, my parents sent me to a therapist and my friend got back in touch with me so we started hanging out again.
Even though my family thought I stopped cutting, I never did. When I weighed myself when I got home, I had lost four lbs in the time short period of time I was there. From then on, I stopped eating completely.
I remember one time like it was yesterday. My friend and I were at McDonald's standing in the line to order when all of the sudden I started to get cold sweats and my vision started to get blurry, I had to hold on the her so I wouldn't fall over. That day, was the first time I ate in almost four days.
In 10th grade, we sort of drifted apart a bit, she had stopped going to school in ninth grade and I started a new school twenty minutes away. During that time, she got pregnant and I had just gotten my first boyfriend. And that meant I had to stop cutting, so I got more extreme with the food.
She was a bad influence on me. She, her other friend and I pulled a three day drinking spree, we were drunk for three days straight. My dad hated her because of what she did and said to me, but I ignored him and hung out with her anyway. When my dad got divorced, we moved thirty minutes away and that meant I didn't spend as much time with my friend as I used to.
She got kicked out and crashed with a new friend. That way, we started hanging out again. By that time my boyfriend and I had broken up. She was the kind of girl seeking for attention, writing to everyone on Facebook, meeting up with strangers one time and then stay in touch on snapchat.
This is actually how I met my current boyfriend. She had gotten contact with his friend and ditched that friend when she got to know him. She kept pushing him onto me and at the same time try to get him for himself.
When he and I hung out at the person she lived with when she wasn't there. From then on we haven't spoken to each other.
I think I'm still depressed, as I've started before I don't think I know anything else. I don't cut anymore and I'm glad I don't. I no longer have to think that I have to wear long sleeves to cover up my arms, or I can't wear shorts. I still have a love/hate relationship with food but I'm taking it day by day.
My boyfriend is the light in my life and without him I don't think I would be alive today.
