On the 21st of March 2016, my life changed (in the least cliched way possible). I woke up fine having spent the weekend with my friends and ready to face the last week of term before the Easter holidays. I left and knocked for my friend and we walked to the bus stop and went to school like any other day. However when I got to school things felt different. I felt empty and almost numb inside and felt even more quiet than usual. I just shrugged it off and hoped everything would be better tomorrow, but it didn’t, the feeling just lingered all week. I remember doing group work in English and just feeling so out of place as if my presence wasn’t even noted by my friends. I started feeling guilty and went and brought food for my close friends as a sorry for dealing with me. On the last day of term when I got home this feeling had intensified and I decided i needed to tell someone what was happening. I messaged my closest friend at the time and told him what was going on and he told me he had been going through something similar and we should talk more so we’re not alone. Had it not been for him i’m not sure where i’d be.
Easter holidays came around and things looked like they had calmed down. Me and my family went on a holiday to Devon and I had my friend who i would talk to until around 12 every night. I was spending more time in the comfort of my room but at the time this was nothing strange. Everything was normal during those 2 weeks so when the summer term had begun I presumed everything was fine and I must have been having a rough week.
But it wasn’t. I was feeling this emptiness creep back all day but it wasn’t until me and my friends were walking home I released it was back. They were all laughing and being happy and I once again felt like my presence wasn’t noted and I’d be better off disappearing. As the week progressed this feeling got stronger and I began to lose control of it. I started distancing myself from mirrors cause I couldn’t stand the way I looked. I was even quieter around my friends and family to the point where I may not of even spoke to them during the day. And that feeling of maybe i’m better of disappearing changed to maybe i’m better of dead. One day when I got home from school i went to my bathroom and grabbed a razor and started scratching my arm with it so it was completely red and sore. I did this for a week until I cut myself for the first time and started bleeding. I had become this ball of self hate and numbness and guilt as if I failed my family by not being this perfect son with a girlfriend and good grades. I just felt like shit. I was losing my libido and stopped masturbating or even just getting erections for weeks as i found nothing enjoyable anymore. I lost interest in TV shows and games and Youtubers that I loved before. I couldn’t pay attention in lessons anymore and as a result fell behind massively and lost a term of knowledge because I couldn’t even pick up a pen. My self body image was also becoming a big problem. I felt fat and ugly and my head told me the only way to cope with this was to just stop eating and I listened to it and went about 20 hours a day without eating and feeling intense guilt when I gave in, at school I used to give my lunch to my friends so i could avoid eating for as long as possible but this of course led to more guilt.
All of it started becoming too much to handle. I started to take the blades out of razors and self harming more severely. On my 15th birthday I fell asleep crying cause I felt so irrelevant and I felt no one loved me and no one would ever love me. I just felt as if I didn’t deserve to be alive anymore so on the 23rd of April I went into the bathroom and filled my sink up and attempted to drown myself. Looking back i realise it’s impossible to kill yourself that way however the intention I had was too end my life.
Eventually my parents and the school started realising something was wrong with me. Some teachers had told my school’s well-being center that they were concerned for me and wanted them to talk to me. My friend from earlier had spoken to them about his issues a few days before and took me to see them. When I spoke to them it took me a minute to think of what I wanted to say until the words came out with a crooked throat. ‘I think I’m depressed’. That was the first time I had said the word depressed out loud and saying it nearly brought me too tears. But the lady in the well-being center was very helpful, she told me they would phone my parents to tell them they have spoken with me and told me i should sign up for counselling and get a mentor through the school and could have a time out card for when lessons felt too much.
When I got home I spoke to my dad who spoke to my mum at work who came home and hugged me and told me she has had depression before and she booked me to see her doctor the next day who diagnosed me with moderate to severe depression. She weighed me and I was 9 stone, 2 stone less than I was the month before. This started the 2 month process of me being referred to CAMS who prescribed me 50mg of the antidepressant sertraline. Unfortunately my story wasn’t as simple from that point on
Now that my parents knew there was this guilt that i was ruining their lives which whenever it got too intense usually reverted to me self harming. There was a Incident at my mum’s friends party which we were all invited to where I had a massive depression attack and my dad had to take me home or when my mum was away on my sister’s football tour and during the day I had harmed and my dad had to stay at home as he was too worried to leave me. Or the time I nearly cried in front of my mum as i hadn’t lost more weight and was still 9 stone leading to me trying to make myself throw up at home.
I also started to get really bad anxiety. I had my first ever panic attack in a drama lesson where I couldn’t breathe or pay attention and my emptiness turned into nausea. In this lesson we were learning about a death of a soldier and how their family reacted leading to everyone crying and I couldn’t help these people as I was too busy panicking. I told my Councillor at CAMS this and they increased my dosage to 100mg
However after about a month of taking my meds I finally started to get my mojo back. I could start talking to my closest friends, I was eating more and I was harming less. I haven’t stopped harming completely and relapse occasionally but that’s only when things get too much too handle. My parents were very helpful during this time so much more than I could have asked for, for example they booked me tickets to see panic! at the disco in November 2016 so I had something to look forward too and gave me a paper round so I could go outside and listen to music and get at least some vitamins in me. My friend who was also depressed (more severely than I was ) was also a huge help, we would sometimes stay up until 2am if one of us felt really bad and it made me feel like I wasn’t alone.
I haven’t wrote this for sympathy or anything like that, I did it to inform you of signs and to show you how talking actually has a huge impact. I’ve also done this to tell these people who treat mental illness as a fashion brand that depression doesn’t just destroy your lives but everyone’s around you. I realised my friends really did care for me when we were walking home one day and I walked into the road while a car was coming and my friend slapped me but not in a mean way. They did it to say don’t do that what would we do otherwise. It showed me I was harming them as well as myself and encouraged me to try and be strong. So to those people who think depression is cute, it’s not and stop acting like you have it for attention as it nearly killed me and I wish I never had it. to those who do have it talk to someone cause as soon as you do the sooner you can get help to help you beat it.
hi 