My Story

Hi! I’m going to remain anonymous but I’m a 13-year-old bigender person who has never really been happy. I doubt I’ll ever post here again because I have other places to vent (where I’ve posted this, but I feel really bad so I’m gonna write it again. For some reason it makes me feel better), and I prioritize those places. Anyway, here is me.

I was born to my dating high-school-sweethearts mother and father. They lived with my mom’s mother for two years after that before getting an apartment together (with me, of course). They didn’t love each other anymore. My dad says they weren’t even sleeping in the same bed. There was no fight or anything, they just fell out of their lasting love. So, one fateful day, my mom took toddler me and said we were going to stay with her mother for a few weeks. And my dad knew that we weren’t coming back. My peers love to have a good laugh at that story.

So we moved into an apartment a city over and lived together for two years. My dad would come and see me sometimes or babysit or such. Shortly after I turned 5, in 2007, my grandmother said that she was going to help my aunt financially, meaning that instead of living with us, she would be living with her, her husband, and their newborn daughter. We had to find a new place.

We did, a much smaller apartment close by. I remember seeing my now-stepdad a lot then because this was when he met my mom and they started going out. I started kindergarten and loved it. Everything seemed great.

One problem, my parents were still married.

So now the three of them were fighting a bit, but no matter. It wasn’t too bad at the time. My dad still visited. Things were okay.

In April 2008, my mom and my stepdad and I all moved into a new apartment in the city I was born in. This was the end of the moving around. I would live in this apartment for 8 years.

However, I hated the apartment at first. I wanted my old apartment back, but way more importantly, I wanted my old school back. I wanted all my friends and classes back. That September, I was stuck in a new elementary school that I hated every year I went there, which would be first through sixth grade. The kids there never really took a liking to me, they never really talked to me much, and I didn’t talk to them. I’ve never been very social.

My parents started getting worse. Court started getting involved. My dad, between kindergarten and first grade, made so many mistakes, so bad I don’t even want to confess anonymously. Soon I was told I could only see him during supervised visits, once (maybe twice if I was lucky) a week with his parents, and that has never changed. I haven’t seen my dad as much as I would like to the past 7 years. Things were getting so bad between them, and I had no idea. I always told my mom what my dad had done that week or my dad if my stepdad was still living with us. My mom and stepdad started to hate my dad and they still do, they still say bad things about him right in front of me. I love my dad. It got to the point where my mom and I were both in therapy.

First through third grade were sprinkled with bumps in the road like that. In the summer between second and third grade, I had to stay with my grandmother for a week because the police got so involved, but I think my parents visited a few times. In third grade a man came to my house and questioned me about my dad. I didn’t even notice. I think it was about third grade when my parents were finally divorced and my mom and stepdad immediately got married. Thinking back it was probably second grade when I started developing symptoms of general anxiety.

Anyway, back on track. Second and third grade were quite uneventful besides all of that mess. Fourth grade was interesting. By then I had long started to become more okay with switching schools. I had friends, or so I thought. I would play basketball with them at recess. I was awful so they would fight over who had to have me on their team. Sometimes someone would insult me for my lack of skill so I would run away, thinking they would come after me. As you can predict, nobody ever did, so by the next day I would return like nothing happened. This was a very happy year for me.

Fifth grade was not.

In fact, it’s safe to say fifth grade was the worst year of my life, and I barely remember anything about it at all. I became very depressed, but I didn’t realize it. I just knew there was a constant dark cloud over my head and I felt worthless and drained. Then again, I’d never been a confident kid. I’ve hated my face, my art, my writing, everything, for as long as I can think, except my weight. That started in fourth grade. I thought my thighs were a bit big. Maybe it was fifth grade when that thought travelled to the rest of my body. I also remember hating my teacher, scratching my arms, and being made fun of a lot. I was realizing everything about my parents and my peers and I hated it. Everything was falling apart and I wanted to die. I was suicidal. I didn’t hide it as much as most would. I admitted to feeling really down and hating myself and lots of things. My mom had my brother. For anonymity, I’ll call him James.

Sixth grade wasn’t much different. I begged my mom to get me therapy because I wanted everything to end. I stopped scratching my arms. I cut myself once but I got caught so I stopped. I was still bullied. I feel like I remember the bullying well and not at all both at the same time. People would make fun of my feelings, annoy me purposefully (especially because my obsessive-compulsive disorder started worsening then, and people would try and trigger me, probably not knowing what they were really doing), say I wasn’t interesting, ignore me when I tried to talk to them, yelled at me to go away when I tried to join a conversation, make fun of me for liking music and not sports, the list goes on. I had no friends and I never wanted to wake up and go to school in the morning. I was still suicidal. My mom did get me therapy. There I found out I had depression, general anxiety, and OCD. A few months later I was also diagnosed with social anxiety. I still have the same therapist today and it’s not helping. My mom had my second brother, who I’ll call Oliver.

And then I graduated elementary school and moved up to junior high. Thank GOD. The people were much nicer to me there. Of course, I still wasn’t the most-liked person, but it was way, way better in comparison. I met my friend there, too. I smiled and laughed way more. Unfortunately, it wasn’t ever genuine.

A lot happened in seventh grade.

I started to hurt myself more. I scratched my arms again and eventually started punching myself and cutting myself. I’ve almost taken pills. I started skipping meals sometimes. I started venting to my friend. They were very nice about it at first, and I was so grateful. But the more I revealed, the less nice they got. They would ignore me or tell me I was being stupid. I vented over text and in real life she was less nice too. She would annoy me on purpose to call herself annoying, snap at me, and be very dramatic (I asked if she had paper and she sighed deeply before getting me a piece and then being annoyed with me the rest of the day). So I stopped venting and they stopped being mean.

My sight hallucinations started getting worse. I’ve had them for a super long time but I never thought much of them. Now I see a cartoon stereo-headed man who tries to strangle me or bite me, a blue thing that’s kind of a cross between a rag doll and a Sour Patch Kid who usually just stands there but sometimes punches me, and a zombie girl who attacks me in various ways. I did some research and found out that a lot of things that were happening to me were not normal. It was not normal for voices to be in my head (another thing I’ve had for a long, long time; an angry man who insults me, and less often, a woman who encourages me (but she creeps me out) or a whispering man who usually just agrees with the mean man), it was not normal to think I am a psychic and the only psychic in the world who is being hunted my a special government. No doubt about it, I’ve been delusional for a long time and it is not normal to hallucinate. Thus, my therapist and I think I’m schizophrenic. It’s been hell.

Here is where I would like to throw a few rumors out the window: OCD is not just having things perfect and schizophrenics are not murderers.

Another thing, I started getting bullied online. The short version is a popular girl told everyone that I was purposefully making another popular girl jealous, and suddenly everyone hated me. I didn’t even find out for a few months. I felt awful because that corner of the Internet was where all the outcasts went…and I was still an outcast. They never really liked me much anyway.

Anyway, in seventh grade I tried to kill myself. I remember it well. February 2015 was horrible, I would walk home in the snow and try and calm down, only to run off to my room and cry and wonder if I would live to see tomorrow. March was better, but that was the eye of the hurricane. April was the worst month of my whole life. I felt even worse than in February, absolutely hopeless, numb and yet feeling the weight of everything. I would never stop being scared, I would never live in the same reality as everyone else, I would never be loved, I would never be happy. I had never felt more suicidal. So I decided that was it. If, in a few days, I still wanted to (because a rule of thumb is to give yourself a few days), I would kill myself.

So on April 15th, 2015, I definitely still wanted to. I knew that nothing was going to get better and I was ready to end it. I had always told myself I would leave a long, long note, but I didn’t even bother to write a note at all. I went to my closet and then realized the railing was shorter than me. I couldn’t kill myself on that.

The next day I somehow felt even worse, and I knew I had to make it work somehow, because there was no way I was resorting to my backup plan. I took my scarf, tied it up, said goodbye to my friend (again), and tried to lift my feet off the ground. The scarf untied itself. I tried to hold the scarf so that I was off the ground. I wasn’t strong enough to hold my own weight. So, a teary mess, I went back and told my friend I had failed. I felt awful. I had even failed at failing. Would I ever be good at anything? That’s what I consider my real suicide date-April 16th, 2015. My friend counts it as two attempts, but I don’t see how.

My relationship with my parents started deteriorating. They make fun of me a lot, mostly calling me emo and making fun of my resting bitchface (even though I got it from my mom…?). They tell me I’m too sensitive and laugh about it or yell at me if I cried when they were mad at me. They make me feel really bad about everything. My mom says that by staying in my room often, or even just sitting on the couch, I’m moping and wallowing in depression, she says I’m not trying. I’m terrified to come out as bigender and pansexual because my stepdad will definitely make fun of me. I’m pretty sure he’s transphobic (“if I can change gender why can’t I change race? People need to accept themselves”), and he DEFINITELY thinks that being transphobic/homophobic/sexist/racist is okay because “people get their feelings hurt too easily.” Whatever.

In late May, we moved into a house across town. It was out of the school district which made me even more upset about leaving the place where all my memories were. I had heard really bad things about the school (a lot of people would say “yeah but people say that all the kids at your school now are stuck up,” but that never helped, because they were) and I was terrified and really upset. I still hate this house and I still miss my old school. I finished up that year and went through a boring summer featuring babysitting and my mom constantly yelling at James (another thing I didn’t mention, if I mention anything bad about my parents’ parenting style, my mom will get offended and won’t talk to me). I started my new school a week and a half ago and it’s okay. Not as good as my old school at all but not so bad. I’ve talked to some people.

I think it’s funny. All people see on the outside is a happy, laughing girl who likes to listen to music and play guitar and hopes to be a musician someday and loves life in general. In reality, I cry myself to sleep nightly, hurt myself, hate myself, and want to die. Nobody knows a thing about me. It’s also funny because that’s not how I’m going to be remembered. I’m going to be remembered as the weird girl who was different and messed everything up all the time. Huh.

A lot of these stories throughout the Internet have a happy ending, but mine doesn’t yet. I still have suicide on my mind every day. But hopefully I’ll get better. Thanks for taking the time to read this. I hope you have a nice day.

(she/her or they/them)