The lesson I learned for this year: Guidance can help you a lot more
than you think.
About seven months ago, I started feeling bad for reasons I couldn't
explain. Everything started bothering me more that usual; a lot of times, my thoughts were so paralyzing that I couldn't think about or do anything else.
My family life has always been sort of bad because we all don't get
along, so I've always avoided my parents. They're always yelling for no
reason. They've always made me feel like crap so I never talk to them. Unfortunately, the fact that you have no help from anyone but your friends is a big problem when you're having a nervous breakdown.
Between having to play for two soccer teams, the effects of September 11th constantly bothering me in the back of my mind (along with all this other fear of things), my parents not allowing us to express anger, and getting made fun of a lot for being weird was driving me crazy. I wanted to die.
So I started slitting my wrists. Eventually, one of my friends thought it would be interesting to see how my teacher would react so she told her. My teacher told the guidance counselor. At the time, I didn't know what was wrong with me. But all the guidance
counselor did was ask me what I thought was wrong...I guess I didn't really want the help because I didn't think anything was wrong with me, and I didn't believe that guidance counselors could help anyway. So I stopped going, but the pain inside kept growing.
Soon, I couldn't handle much more. I quit the basketball team and
stopped doing my homework. I spent endless nights locked in my room just thinking about everything. I didn't sleep, and the cuts were getting deeper. I slept during classes sometimes and my grades went from straight A's to really low. I even talked to myself and got dizzy sometimes. But my parents never took the hint.
I saw an "In the Mix" episode of your show about ecstasy so decided to go to your site to find out more about it. I ended up finding the part about depression and realized I had all the symptoms. My
sadness got to the point where I couldn't even focus on my friends anymore. My fears were scaring me more than usual and one night, I pictured my own death and even wrote up a will.
The day after, when I realized I was still alive, I went to guidance and waited for her to come back from what she was doing and I told her
everything. I felt a little better after we talked about everything. She promised not to tell my parents, if I kept coming back and promised
not to slit myself again. Now, I'm starting to change my perception on
things and trying to not go nuts over things I can't control, like when I'll die. She told me that I have to decide which roads I take in life, and that hurting myself doesn't change anything. I should stop thinking about the outcomes of everything so much and just do what I think is right.
As much as I've hated the 8th grade, I think I've learned more this
year, than I have during my entire life. Guidance Counselors can help a
lot, but only if you want the help. And thanks to a few good teachers, many supportive friends, and a guidance counselor that I had no faith in, I might some day feel like myself again.
I also wrote a poem:
Take a razor
Slit your wrist,
Scream
Until there's no sound left,
Beat the crap
out of yourself
while no one cares,
Until you finally
Dig to the bottom
Of your being.
Go as far
as you can go,
On the road of self-discovery,
Even if it results
in death.
