My Struggle With Depression And Anxiety
By Anonymous
This year I’ve felt alone more than I ever have, and it’s the year I’ve had the most friendships.
I’ve found myself locked behind the bathroom stalls at school multiple times during lunch, because I had no one. All those friends I called and no one answered at my moment of desperation, those text messages sent— none replied.
I found two best friends after that, and a significant other which I will call Mason. I lived all my teenage idiocies with them until my best friends graduated, both of them leaving me as they went away for college, far away. A week later Mason also decided to leave me, as he said he didn’t fancy me anymore.
Lonely girl, what will you do now?
A few days passed by and I started feeling alone all over again. I called friends at 2 in the morning sobbing, taking deep breaths to speak—only there was no one on the line, because no one had answered any of my calls.
I saw myself falling into depression, everyday a little more. I’d wake up at four pm because I didn’t want to deal with my problems. I’d wake and lay in bed all day listening to music and crying, or reading a book and crying — every single day crying. I missed them so much. I resided to smoking three to four cigarettes a day, it worked until I ran out of them, and had no one to buy them for me—my friends were gone.
One night as I was having an anxiety attack and could barely contain myself from crying I decided to make a trip to the meds cabinet. There, I found from Ibuprofen to antibiotics to narcotics. I took a little bottle filled with the Hydrocodone I had been prescribed a few months ago when I broke my foot; I went to my room and took three of those.
I waited in bed to feel something—anything. I looked at the clock and it was 3:03 am, I researched online about the narcotics I had just taken and over dosing on them while it kicked in.
3:33 hit the clock—I felt my whole body floating and happy thoughts over powered my head, I was euphoric.
I woke up the next morning and smiled, I had just found my new best friends.
For the next two weeks every time my depression got bad, I would reach my little blue box that read “best friends” and opened it, take out the Starbucks napkin and unfold it to my hidden narcotics, my holy narcotics.
I read on the Internet that too much pills would fuck up your liver, and although I thought I had the awesomest liver, I decided to chill out for a while, that, and I was running out of them.
The first day I didn’t take them was a Friday, it was getting really bad, I felt alone, I wanted to cry, I felt anxious and I reached for my laptop — I found myself writing about death and suicide. I got scared and shut my laptop down, I walked towards my mom and asked her to go somewhere with me, she shrugged and looked back at her phone. A few minutes later she walked into my room dressed up “I’m going out with my friends.” At the sound of the shut door I started crying uncontrollably. I reached for my blue box and found my happiness again.
Exactly a week after that my mom went ballistic on me for misplacing something. That’s when things fell apart.
“It goes inside, the scoop goes inside! Do you think anyone’s going to give you a job if you can’t even put the scoop of the sugar inside?”
“Okay mom, sorry”
“So you’re going to be offended after YOU did something wrong?”
“I said I’m sorry mom”
I took a shower and when I walked out she went up to me and apologized for being too hard on me. “But you do have to accept you screwed up honey” she added on. I started crying, it was the panic-y cry, the one I get every night.
“It’s not because of that! I’m not like this because of that! Don’t you understand? I’ve been depressed for the past two weeks and you haven’t even noticed!” I shouted in tears
“Of course I have, have you seen your head? You’ve been pulling again”
“Yeah I have, I’ve never stopped! And I also have no friends and when I asked you to hang out with me because I felt ALONE you ignored me and went out with your friends. How do you think that makes me feel? I’m so depressed mom!”
“So now you’re gonna blame me for being depressed? What are you even depressed for? You have everything Camilla! It’s because of that boy Mason, huh?”
“Because I have no friends mom! It doesn’t have anything to do with him!” Lie, he had added on to my depression.
“So you’re pulling your hair because you have no friends? That’s pathetic Camilla. Have you ever thought that maybe it’s your fault that you have no friends? Because it is, it’s your fault, so stop trying to blame me for everything okay?”
She walked out of my room and it took me a good half an hour to recuperate from what had just happened. She couldn’t understand that her perfect daughter could be depressed, or that she suffered from anxiety and Trichotillomania. She had never understood I was messed up.
“Do yoga so you won’t get those anxiety attacks, or find something else to do but don’t pull your hair!”
She vacuumed when she was stressed, I’d pull my hair.
I went on tumblr and wrote to my followers, then I went on facebook and told everyone I was secluding from social media for a while, following that was my ask.fm, I deactivated it. I did the same with my Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.
When I was done deleting all of my social media accounts I opened up Microsoft and started writing. I picked up my blue box and a water bottle and as I had researched on the internet I took 9 Hydrocodone pills, exceeding the 4,000 acetaminophen (the active ingredient) limit, killing me within 30 minutes and left open a document on my laptop that read “Dying in bliss, with my newfound best friends.”
I woke up in an emergency room the following day, someone had saved me.