|Depression timeline|

Intro: This post is about my depression through out the years ranging from childhood to young adulthood. The post is comprised of approximately 900 words and has an average reading time of 4-5 minutes.

Hope it’s not too long!

Childhood

I have been struggling with depression for years since childhood (Now 25 years old). It never quite struck me that i was depressed up until i hit the age of 12, when i first thought of suicide. I remember feeling so unhappy that 12 year old me just wanted to end it all by strangling myself with a belt.

My depression started to manifest out of bad circumstances such as: an abusive father (both physical and emotional abuse), unstable and chaotic home situation, failing at school, my mother becoming physically ill (high blood pressure and kidney failure) induced by chronic stress, due to years of abuse at the hands of my father.

Financial struggles (we could not afford to keep on the lights at times) and many other personal issues.

State of emergency

At 17 years old my depression become so severe i barely left the house (no social life), i didn’t shower nor did i clean my room. I had no education (i did not get accepted into my community college course), i had no job despite applying for a job on numerous occasions. 

I also become aware of me being transgender. I’ve always had this discomfort with my body especially at the beginning of my puberty. I had no knowledge of trans identity at the time (2013) and could not get the help i needed. All i knew was that i felt so depressed with my body developing male characteristics (such as facial hair and large muscles etc) that i felt like committing suicide.

My depression became unbearable. I was crying regularly and going through what i can at best describe as psychotic like episodes (intense mental agony, intense fits of rage and thoughts of suicide).

Eventually i started actively planning my suicide and attempted to hang my self on a few occasions.

Young adult

I went from a 17 year old depressed trans girl living with my mother, to a young woman (living almost independent) at 21 years old, with 24/7 assistance of social workers and a psychologist, all in close proximity (literally next door).

Things seemed to be going well at the moment (2017). I was going to school, made new friends and had a social life again. I still had depressive episodes on a few occasions, but not as severe as before.

Then 3 years along the line i started slowly but surely falling back into my depression again…i could not afford my education so i had to drop out of school, i couldn’t find a job despite rigorously applying for jobs.

This went on for 6 months until i managed to get into school yet again…this time being able to finance my education. So i started school in 2020, i was getting good grades and i managed to score an internship at clothing retailer Primark.

Everything seemed to be going better than ever before! I was eating healthy, exercising, getting 9 hours of sleep every day and i started my hormone treatment to feminize my body and thereby alleviate the extreme mental discomfort i was feeling.

It felt like a huge turning point in my life!

Covid-19

March 18th 2020 changed everything yet again…the covid lock down emerged and took my social life away from me. Life became so stressful that i developed constipation that lasted for months, literally tearing my insides causing me to bleed when i went to the bathroom.

My depression was back again with a vengeance. I was crying almost everyday. My depression became so bad that i felt drowsy most of the time (as if i was on drugs).

I also had bad luck and got into trouble with the law.Long story short…i was riding the bus and tried to buy a bus ticket from the vending machine but it was malfunctioning at the time. The bus supervisors still wanted to write me a €50,- fine for not having a bus ticket. 

They demanded my ID card to which i refused, not agreeing to being fined because of a malfunctioning vending machine. It eventually escalated and they unnecessarily grabbed me, throwing me out of the bus and then calling the police saying i was resisting arrest.

I spent up to 6 or more hours at the police station and missed my final school exams that day. Now for the first time in my entire life i received a ”criminal record” as well as 28 hours of community service. All because of some minor incident that took place in the bus (f*ck my life – now i’ll have an even harder time finding a job).

Despite the mental hardships i still managed to finish my education in 1 year time (2020-2021), which is the only positive thing i can think of now at the moment.

Present day – March 31st 2021

I’m losing hope for the future.

I don’t know what my next move will be in my school/work career, i’m at home everyday and have no social life (the Covid lockdown took that from me a year ago).  On top of that my hormone treatment is not going well causing allot of discomfort with my body due to lack of results from the treatment.

And there i am again…posting on The Suicide Project like i did 4 years ago…feeling like one day i might not be able to cope with my depression anymore. My suicide feels like it’s close to becoming a reality some day.

My depression timeline