Okay. Here we go.

I first cut myself at age twelve. And tried to commit suicide. I was diagnosed with depression right before I turned thirteen.

Now before all of you come at me saying “that can’t be true” or “12 is a little kid,” I have been an extremely advanced individual all my life. I was reading above most adults level at the age of ten. Most people thought I was lucky but to be able to understand everything going on around me at such a young age was torturous for me. My mother and father had very hard psychological pasts, my father being handed around from person to person and my mother living undiagnosed bipolar for most of her adolescent life. I wasn’t set out to be perfect. And I knew about my mother and father before I was five.

When I cut myself, as I had learned that year, it released endorphins with every drag on my skin. I wouldn’t stop. It had gone on for 3 months before Mom found out. I went to go see a therapist, Sallie. Sallie helped the dark clouds go away. I saw her for a year. Then Sallie moved back to Idaho. I haven’t found someone like her since.

My friends Kylee and Brandon knew about it. The cutting, and the attempt to end my short life. But they didn’t do anything about it. They didn’t know what to do. We weren’t educated on self-harm or suicide, but we knew that it was a tense subject, that people don’t talk about. So nothing happened. The first time they saw there were 55 cuts on my arm. I still have the scars today. I got a tattoo, hundreds of tiny stars, so when I feel like cutting I look at the stars and think of each of the stories they represent. I still cut though. The stars can’t stop the faults from flooding into my mind.

I still suffer from severe depression and anxiety. Terrible thoughts wrack my brain every night, and I cry myself to sleep. But I focus my energy on poetry, and literature; I meet with the fictional friends that are better than any ones I will have in real life.

I guess what I’m trying to say is my life is shitty. And I want to end it a lot. The terrors will never end. But when I focus on what I love, the dark clouds go away again. And sometimes the sun shines through.

I hope the sun shines for you.