My Battle With Depression and Self-Harm Pt I: The Storm

Hi friends!  Seeing as writing short stories that I’m pleased with takes quite a bit of time and this platform seems to require frequent posting, I figured I’d start blogging about various things between stories. 

When trying to decide what to write about today I flip-flopped between different things but this topic eventually won out.  I’ll admit, despite my generally open personality, it still makes me a tad nervous.  I’ve only ever shared my past with select people and select groups, never on a broad platform like this before.  Yet, these are the sorts of stories that need to be told.  If I want to be an authentic storyteller sharing my perspectives and visions with you all there’s no better story to start with than my own.                               

                                            

I was ten years old when I began to suffer from night terrors.  Every night was a battle.  I would wake up screaming and while most children would remember nothing I remembered everything.  I would lie in bed each night shaking in fear, my mind spinning from the vivid nightmares that plagued it from the nights before.  No one really believed me (which is a normal reaction that I don’t hold against them, it’s one of the side effects of becoming an adult to take children less seriously) and I spent most of my nights crying in the bathroom.  The sleep deprivation eventually led to severe depression and it all spiraled down from there.

     

                                                                

The older I got the more frustrated I got.  While my relationship with my dad was tenuous at best at the time (he’s one of the people I trust most in life now), I had a good life with a loving family and it made me so.  Angry.  I was angry at the fact that I was surrounded by beauty but stuck in a ditch, surrounded by love but hated myself.  I had absolutely NO right to feel the way I did and yet it was there.  I can honestly say there were days I contemplated whether or not I was a psychopath.  I would go into slumps that lasted for months where I felt literally nothing at all, no love for my family or friends, and when I finally rose out of those moments I was just angry and frustrated.  
I began cutting myself around the age eleven and it continued on strong until fifteen.  Until that point it was pretty much your typical self-harm situation.  I couldn’t stand myself and cut regularly.  I’ll never, ever forget the first day that I cut myself.  I had just finished and was pressing a paper towel over my arm when my mom called me down to dinner.  The sheer panic I felt in that moment was indescribable.  Alongside the cutting I developed a porn addiction and became trapped in my own head.  

(Before I continue with the story I just want to affirm any of you reading who may suffer with Depression as well:  It IS real.  Your struggle is REAL.  It's not something you could get rid of if you could just power through it, if you were just stronger, if you just had more faith.  The truth is there is something very physical and real going on in your body, not just your brain but your body as a whole; and there IS hope.  There's a light at the end of the tunnel, there are answers out there, my  friend.  We'll find them together. ❤️ )

                                   

I’ve grown up in a Christian home schooled family with Christian home schooled friends and man, I felt DIRTY.  When I looked at all my peers they just seemed so...normal.  I wasn’t.  I knew things they didn’t, I had seen things they hadn’t.  I was messed up and they weren’t.  Because of this I felt I couldn’t talk to anyone, I couldn’t let anybody know just how much I was breaking myself.  Most days after doing the bare minimum of work required I would turn on some music on my battered CD player, lay down on my bedroom floor and check out.  I basically lived in the worlds in my head.  I don’t know that there’s really any way to describe the loneliness and heartache that I felt in those years.  Anyone who tells you children are incapable of feeling and knowing deep sorrow and pain is either an idiot or a liar.   

I know this is probably a bad time to stop but I want to devote more words to the victory part, to the beauty, and this post is already starting to get pretty long.  Don’t worry though, it doesn’t end there, I’ll post the rest in a day or so.  Thank you for reading this far, however, it means more than I can put into words for you to listen to as simple a story as mine. ❤️