Dear Diary,                                                             August 21, 2014                        
Hey. I’m Chloe. I was browsing through sites online, and everyone said  that if you keep a diary, it could help with depression. If I tell anyone, they will think that I am just a teenage girl acting up. They will think I am a spoiled little brat. They won’t understand how difficult it is for me to get out of bed every day.  No one gets that I wish I could go to bed every single day, and when I am in bed, all I can ever do is cry about how awful my life is and wish that tomorrow will be better. Guess what? It never is. They don’t understand that all I ever wanted was to be normal, but I just can’t be normal. I’m fat, and stupid, and ugly. Nothing provides relief from knowing that you are the one person who just wasn’t born with luck. I wasn’t born with that beautiful face that everyone wants.
  Every day I get up and do the same thing over and over again. I skip breakfast, I go to my school, filled with the fake people who make me want to go hide somewhere and cry. I don’t have friends. I say nothing in class, and never eat during lunch. I get home and do absolutely nothing. I eat an extremely small dinner, and go to bed. Of course my mom is in the house, but it's not like she pays attention. So diary, you might ask why I keep doing this, over and over. Why do I live if there is no purpose to my life? I will tell you why. Maybe someday it will be different. Maybe when I look at a slice of pizza, I won't get an anxiety attack. Maybe someone will talk to me. Maybe my life will get better.

Dear diary,                                                         August 22, 2014                                      

I'm not really seeing the dramatic difference that this diary promised. But at least I have someone to talk to. Like its actually kind of funny. It's a big school full of so many people, but not a single person wants to talk to me. Well it's still the beginning of the year, so I might have a chance? Wait I'm forgetting that everyone in the school already has friends and I don't. My only friend will probably be this diary.

Dear diary,                                                         August 23, 2014                                  
Saturdays always suck because I don't even have school to keep me busy.  I mostly just sit around and listen to sad music. So I've decided to make a pact. I'm going to force myself to be social and make a friend on Monday, because I am so tired of being alone. I don’t want to be by myself anymore. By the end of the day I will have exactly one friend.

Dear Diary,                                                           August 24, 2014                                    I’m tired. I’m tired of just existing without a purpose. I want to know that I am living for something, and that my life isn’t a complete waste. That is why I need to have a friend. I need to know that someone cares about me.

Dear diary,                                                                 August 25, 2014                                  
   So I didn't really make a friend, but I talked to someone, this new kid, and she was really nice! Okay, so maybe it is possible that I can make friends. I felt a little less awful today, and I think that is the right step. Okay so this is how our day went:
So during lunch, I see this short girl with really pale skin , and a pixie cut hairstyle. She has red highlights in her hair, and two piercings in one ear. No one is talking to her, so I see an opportunity. "Hi," I say in this chirpy voice that I don’t even know I could produce.
“Ummmmm... Hi?” She has a deep, but pure voice.
“Whats your name?”
“Jo”
“Okay,” I’m a little confused now. How am I supposed to know how to make friends? “ So why did you move here?”
“My parents split up after my brother died of cancer,” she says in a monotone. Shes looking at the wall. I can tell she’s trying not to cry. “I’m living in my dad’s new house.”
“Okay...so...um,” All I can think is that only God can help me. You can tell I’m desperate because I’m not even religious. “I don’t have any friends and neither do you do you wanna be friends?” Oh my god. Did I just say that? No wonder no one talks to me.
“Um sure” she says.
I’m not sure if she’s just trying to be nice, or if she actually wants to be friends. So I show her her classes (I know the entire school inch by inch. All I can ever do during lunch is walk around the halls so it looks like I’m actually doing something), and I try to learn more about her. So she loves to paint (of course she’s an artist, of course she has a special talent.), she loves to read, she couldn’t live without music (yay! something we have in common), and she used two have two cats. One named Percy, and the other one Annabeth (I didn’t really get the joke but she explained that it’s her otp).
Then she asks me about myself, and I tell her that I have no hobbies, no talents, and that my life is just really boring. I really tried not to sound depressed, but I’m pretty sure that she figured out that something was going on. So I just go on to explain the other people, and how to survive in this school without getting noticed (not like I really know how to survive, i’m more like slowly drowning without anyone noticing). I don’t have any classes with her, so that is the last time I see her for the day.
I know right? For the first time I feel actually hopeful, because I know tomorrow will be better. I will see her again.

Dear diary,                                                                                                          August 26, 2014

Today was...different. So the entire day, I was looking forward to lunch, so I could see my friend again (I love saying that word. Friend. It sounds so happy.), And I see her. She is wearing a black romper with floral patterns. She gets her salad (thank god it isn’t something sugary), and then we sit down. I look at her and I see that her eyebrows are all knitted together, and she’s looking at me with a curious look on her face. Knowing that i’m probably going to regret this, I ask,”What?”
“Yesterday you didn’t eat. Today you didn’t eat. Why aren’t you eating?” She asks.
Oh. My. God. I wanted a friend, but I just can’t do this. I can’t talk about why I don’t eat or why I am depressed or why I don’t feel like doing anything. What was I thinking? A friend? Am I going to have to explain everything that I don’t even want to face myself? “I’m not hungry.”
“Its okay, you can tell me”
What? It’s okay? its anything but okay. Its awful. How am I supposed to share everything with a girl that I just met yesterday? “I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not.”
“I’m fine,” I repeat, my voice more shaky. The tears are threatening to spill out of my eyes.
“Tell me,” she insists. She actually looks like she cares, which is weird because I don’t really know her that well.
“I’m fine,” I say, my entire body shaking. The tears fall, making tracks along my face, but I don’t even bother to wipe them off, because she still saw them, and it’s not going to make a difference. All I can think is that I can say goodbye to all my hopes of a friend. Who is going to want to be friend with a mess like me? Then she does something surprising. She hugs me. I feel her arms around me, and a sudden warmth rushes through every inch of me. It’s like I didn’t even know that I was freezing until I was warm again. Then I’m suddenly crying into her arms, wanting, no, needing the protection and friendship of Jo, who is almost a stranger, knowing that i will break apart If I don’t have it.
“I know we barely know each other, but I want you to know that you are not alone. I am going to be here for you,” she almost whispers. “But first you need to tell me how this started.”
I brush my tears off and tell her everything. I tell her about how I try not to eat much, and how I hate myself, and how I needed a friend so badly. The whole time, she is just nodding, and when I look at her face, I see no judgement.
“Thank you for opening up. I just want to help you and be your friend.”
“Okay,” I whisper.
I know that I am not fully okay, but Jo has shown me that I will be. And that is what I needed, what I was longing for without even knowing, that person who will help me through this. All that matters is that I will be okay. I will be okay.

Dear diary,          August 27, 2014

So after what happened yesterday, we are a lot closer now. We talked about random things during lunch, and then she jumped on a table where people were sitting, and started belting out Ariana Grande off key. They just started laughing. At first I was horrified, but then I caught myself laughing too. Actually laughing. I didn’t even remember what it felt like to laugh, but I felt so free. I felt empowered, like I didn’t  even care what people thought about me. I’ve never not cared what people thought about me.
  Also, I’m slowly trying my best to eat again, because it’s not like I have anyone to impress. Jo has made it clear that she doesn’t care how much I weigh. I don’t need to be the person society wants me to be, because I have someone in my life who respects me for who I am. We might not have much in common, but I have never felt so connected to a person. I don’t even understand how we became friends so quickly.

Dear Diary,                                                                                                        August 28, 2014
Today, when I went to school, I saw her looking at her phone and crying. I rushed over to her and asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Today was my brother’s birthday,” she said in between sniffles, “He was only five.” She was looking at a picture of a little toddler smiling with a birthday hat on his head. There was cake smeared all over his face. When I saw the cake, something triggered inside me, but I knew that I couldn’t think about it then. I needed to think about Jo, and her baby brother. All I knew is that I cared about her and I wanted to be there for her like she was there for me. I needed to provide a shoulder to cry on.
“You know, he’s in a much better place now. Even if there is no heaven, at least he doesn’t have to live in this awful, cruel world. He was special, and now he’s not here anymore, but when he died, he probably wanted you to move on with your life. He probably wanted you to be happy and live a long life, because he didn’t get to. Your brother will live on in your heart, until the day you die.” I knew that that wasn’t a good enough speech, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say.
“Thank you,” she whispered, “You are an amazing friend, and I am so thankful.”
“I’m thankful too. I don’t know where I would be without you.”
“Me too,” she said with a small grin, “You were a pretty big mess”
“Okay sure, make fun of the depressed person. Ha. Ha.”
It’s funny that I could actually smile freely and joke about it now, because if anyone mentioned my depression a week ago, I would have cried.

Dear Diary,                                                                                                              August 29, 2014

So I have decided that this needs to end. This depression. I mean sure I have Jo, who’s like my best friend, and I have this diary, who’s my other friend, but I’m not fully better. So I am going to take up a hobby. Painting. Abstract painting. Jo was actually the one to recommend using the paints to paint my emotions, and to provide an outlet for all my “negative thoughts” and my “negative energy”.

Dear Diary,                  August 30, 2014
So I went over to Jo’s house for a sleepover (it wasn’t a normal sleepover. She basically Googled things for me to do to make me calm and relaxed), So after we took those charcoal masks off our faces (they actually work wonders, my pores have never felt this clean), we went up to her room and I took the paints and the brush and started painting with blue. Blue represents the depression. I used long strokes to represent when I could sort of deal with it, and short strokes for when I was getting anxiety attacks every two days. Then I started to paint red for the anger and annoyance that came with believing that I was nothing. Then yellow to represent the sun, which would rise every day, and give me hope that the next day would be better. Then pink, because pink represents girliness for when I was hanging out with Jo and “draining my negative energy”.
At the end it looked like a big brown blob on a canvas, but I don’t think that it’s a bad thing, because that represents the last two years of my life. And maybe my life was a  mess, but that’s okay, because everyone else’s life is too. We all experience ups and downs in our life, and we all get confused because we are human. Maybe I’m not the most functional human, but I’m still human.