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Alone in the World
Copyright, Slices of Me
My junior year of high school was the worst year of my entire life. I started getting depressed at the end of my sophomore year and it got worse over the summer. By the time junior year came around I really didn't care about anything.
I thought about death all of the time, I fantasized about it, wondering what it would be like. I decided that I wasn't going to let anyone find out about my problems, I was ashamed of myself. I felt that I wasn't good enough and my friends would only leave me if they knew how I felt. I was constantly worried about my image. I was anorexic and I cut myself all the time because I was disgusted with my body. I was 5 ft 6 in and I only weight 119, but I still thought I was fat. I hated myself.
Trying to hide the cuts was the hardest but I was good at it and no one ever suspected anything. I always put on an act. I would wake up in the mornings and try out my best fake smiles for the mirror before going to school. I would talk to my friends and laugh, but underneath I was always worried they would find out there was something wrong with me and stop talking to me. And even farther back in my mind I though they they might even already know and they talked about me behind my back. I was constantly anxious and paranoid. After a while I just stopped caring what people thought and I stopped making an effort to look happy and make conversation. I would go strait to my classes when I was at school and sit down and stare at my desk all hour. The worst part was that my friends didn't seem to notice. They just went on without me. No one cared whether or not I existed. I would pray to god, not knowing if he even existed, that I would get into a car crash and die. Or I would stand outside in the rain and pray that lightning would strike me. I was never afraid to walk around alone at night because in the back of my mind I was hoping that someone would kill me. That's when I decided that I was going to kill myself. I figured that since no one cared enough about me to even ask how my day was going that there was no point in me being here. By this point my need to cut had gotten so bad that I would even do it at school in between classes. I went out that day and bought sleeping pills, I was planning on taking them the next night after getting drunk. I figured that the combination of the alcohol and sleeping pills would definitely kill me.
The reason I didn't kill myself was because someone finally showed that they cared about me. It was so small but it made such a big difference. I was sitting in fourth period government staring at my desk as usual for the entire hour. After class the teacher came up to me and asked if everything was ok and told me she was worried about me. I was so scared and shocked by this that I told her that I was fine and made up some excuse about being tired. I wanted to tell her everything but I couldn't because I was so afraid of my friends and parents finding out. But at the same time I finally felt a little better just knowing that someone actually noticed and cared. Somehow I think she knew I was lying about being ok because every time she would see me in the hall and every day in class she would talk to me and ask me how I was doing and what was I doing this weekend and such. Just small but I could tell she was trying to get me to talk to her. I finally started to feel better but I still refused to talk to anyone. i decided on my own that I was going to get better. I was hard but I made myself stop cutting and I tried to start eating. I relapsed a few times.
I am better now. I am currently a freshman in college. I still sometimes get depressed over nothing. But now I know to talk to someone about it now. Learning to talk to people has been my greatest accomplishment, it helps so much. If I could go back in time, I now think that I would have told my teacher the truth because she could have helped me and I would have gotten better sooner. I was stupid of me to try and get better on my own and I am very lucky I was able to get out of hole I had buried myself in. But I did gain one thing, and that is the ability to share my feelings with others which is such an important thing for people to do.