Letting It Out

Hi everyone.

This is my first and probably last post on this site. No, it’s not because I’ll be dead tomorrow. I just need to let out my feelings on here, once and only once, because I can’t do it in real life.

First off, I don’t care who’s reading this, since it’s anonymous. I’ll say that I probably can’t be considered truly suicidal anymore, because I don’t ever seriously think about suicide–it’s mostly a compulsive thing that plagues me when I’ve had a bad day. The reason I’m really here is because I’ve had so many feelings lately and no one to talk to about them, and I really like writing, so here’s my story. Keep reading or scroll past, I don’t mind. This is for me more than anything.

I’m not really sure when I first realized I was different from the other people I knew. I’ve always gone to private school, and everyone at my school is wealthy, white, and Jewish. There is no drug use, smoking, or drinking that anyone is aware of, and there have only been three serious relationships in our grade so far (one of them previously belonging to me). Next year, we’ll be going off to high school, all separate since my school only goes through 8th grade. I guess I should tell someone about my problems soon, because I probably won’t see them much anyway once I leave.

I guess the first time I ever had mental issues was in 2nd grade. I visited a therapist to deal with my issues with germs, and I had severe problems with emetophobia (the fear of throwing up). I compulsively washed my hands, and I was even given a bag of dirt to put my hands in every time I felt like washing them. I had anxiety attacks almost daily, and during those I felt nautious, sweaty, cold, and hyper. I was a hypochondriac: I always thought I had a stomach bug, cold, or even worse things, like cancer. It was a horrible period; I just didn’t realize that this would be the beginning of my string of problems.

Sometime, a few years after, I began to notice myself growing (probably around 4th grade), and I thought about how “fat” I was getting (I have always been very skinny and short, but I still viewed myself as fat. I don’t really know why). I felt anxious about this, but I didn’t say anything to my parents because I knew they would worry and probably yell at me.

In the middle of 5th grade, I had pneumonia and was in the hospital for 3 days and 2 nights. During the second day, I suffered from a panic attack after not having had any issue of the type for over a year. After I was released from the hospital, I began to think about how lucky I was to have come out perfectly fine: no scars, no worse illnesses, and only antibiotics to take for a few months. My friends had been so caring and kind, sending me get well cards when I was staying in the hospital. I began to feel severely depressed, for absolutely no reason at all (or so I thought at the time; perhaps it was just because I felt that I didn’t deserve all the attention I got or that I shouldn’t have come out so perfectly fine). I spent the next two months exhausted, having trouble focusing in school, and watching movies with my dad while nearly bursting into tears at almost everything. As spring came on, however, I began to feel a bit better. I slowly forgot about my depression as I became closer and closer with my group of friends, and by summer I was off at camp, totally enjoying myself.

In 6th grade, however, I began to get even worse. I can’t remember exactly when it was that I started, but it was probably around the winter or spring that I began to feel fat again. I was “maturing”, as my mom put it, and I had hit puberty much earlier than most of the girls in my grade. My hips were growing, and when I went in for my annual check up at the doctor’s office, my doctor exclaimed, “wow! She’s gained over ten pounds this year, that’s great!”. I know I should have felt wonderful, as I had been somewhat underweight in the past, but all I felt was that I was too fat and that I should try to lose weight. I became obsessed with nutrition and, though I did not actually starve myself, I counted calories obsessively and began to plan out each meal of the day.

In 7th grade, I began what was perhaps the darkest era of my life so far. Soon after returning to school in the fall, I began to feel severely depressed and uncomfortable with my body. I began to starve myself. At first, it was only things like skipping dessert and eating less at meals, but it soon became worse as I limited my caloric intake to 1000, 800, 500, and even 300 calories per day. I cried every night looking in the mirror, and all I could see was a broken girl, unable to cry for help. With time I progressed, forcing myself to eat, and I was fortunately unable to become bulimic due to my still-present emetophobia. However, all of my eating problems came to gradual halt when I developed a crush on a boy. This boy had been a bully to me and my friends in the past, but I had known him my whole life and always secretly found him cute. On top of that, he was caring–he actually founded a charity organization after the tragic events of 9/11 that left him wondering why he couldn’t help too. I chatted with him, flirted with him, and eventually decided to leave a valentine in his locker on valentine’s day (childish, I know). He asked me out, I said yes, and we dated for nearly a year. During this time, I felt less anxiety and depression, but occasionally my past haunted me (usually late at night). I shared my first kiss with him, and I truly did come as close to love as I could get at the state, age, and mental capability I was in at the time (it sounds stupid, but it’s true). However, as time went on, I suspected him of liking another girl, and my worries were confirmed after he broke up with me just over a month ago.

Soon after we broke up, I began to feel extremely depressed–worse than I had ever felt, in my entire life. It wasn’t just the fact that we had broken up, but also that he was flirting with a friend of mine right in front of me. It hurt to see that he had never loved me the whole time we were dating, even though I had loved him all the way through and even afterwards. The girl and I are becoming closer because we both act in our school’s plays together, along with the boy and several other friends of mine. Just before we broke up, all of the cast members in my grade had played spin the bottle, and word got out eventually that the boy and I had kissed other people (this was not my idea, but the boy had suggested that we play with the other people, and I felt bad denying him this). I was honestly fine with it, but after some of my friends started asking me about it, I began to feel like a worthless slut, especially after we broke up.

In addition to all this, I have been fighting with my mom a lot. She seems to pick a fight over EVERYTHING, and she constantly makes me feel fat and stupid. She’s always complaining that I eat too much, and the only thing I can do to comfort myself is remind myself that she doesn’t know I had anorexia. Also, I had been having some problems in my math class due to the teaching style of my honors math teacher, who does not teach things fully and often bullies me and the only other girl in my class, my best friend, for being stupid and terrible math students.

Last week, after a long time worrying, panicking, sulking, and questioning, I began to self harm for the first time in my life. Though I had bitten myself before, it had been more an unconscious thing, like sucking your thumb or biting your nails, that I had done while taking maths tests. But this was for real, this was real cutting, real pain, real blood. I have been cutting at least once every night since (except for one, when we had a blackout in the building), and I have been unable to stop thinking about it. I cry every night and try to hide my scars during the day, and fortunately I have been successful. However, all I can see is that I am a worthless human being, incapable of doing well in school, eating properly without binging or starving, and even staying away from cutting myself. I am a broken individual, unable to cope with my life in any other way. I got worse when I found out that a sweet drawing my ex had done while we were dating actually turned out to be a drawing of the other girl, while an annoying character in the drawing had been me. In addition, a boy in my class made a joke yesterday about how I was writing a suicide note, and everyone laughed. I am beginning to have suicidal thoughts, and while I know I will not kill myself for fear that I will hurt my friends and family, I still fear myself and what I might do if things get worse. I have attempted to stop, by doing things such as the bracelet project, but nothing I do seems to help, and I am afraid to seek help from my parents because my mom will never forgive me if I tell her, and the fighting will never stop.

Wow, sorry for the rant. That took forever to write, but I’m glad I was able to write it. I doubt anyone actually read this whole thing, but if you did, thank you for being so considerate. 🙂