If you are in a room with other people, take a look around you. What do you see? How many faces are you surrounded by? What can you read on those faces? Are you able to tell whether the person to your left is beyond joyous with what’s happening in her life right now, or if they feel like they’re stuck in an inky black spiral that only goes down, down, down- can you tell? Chances are, even if you are able to read the emotions they’re expressing right at that moment in particular, you still have no idea what’s going on inside of their head. Present-day especially, more and more people are struggling with inner turmoil but don’t feel comfortable expressing how they’re feeling to those around them. Instead, they struggle on silently, fearful that others will judge them if they explain why they haven’t been carrying out day to day activities as properly as they normally would. Nobody is exempt from the risk that they can become stuck in a dark corner of their mind with no clear way out. It could be the star quarterback, the up-and-coming poet, the valedictorian. For the people in my life, it was me.

I’ve always known my emotions were something that I struggled to deal with. When I was younger, I would get tremendously angry and not know how to calm myself down other than to attack my pillows in a flurry of punches. Not the most level-headed first grader, most would say. Eventually through time I was able to overcome that chapter of my emotional instability and could handle my anger with a clearer head. However, the roller coaster of my mental issues had just begun. After my Hulk-like anger years, I began to get anxious over the littlest things to the point that I would become sick to my stomach. The tiniest worries would whirl around and around and around in my head until they were all I could think about; they would spread from my brain down to my stomach until I couldn’t eat, could barely breathe as the worry filled my throat and choked me. The worry lasted for years; it consumed me from fourth grade to seventh grade, as I remember. And yet, as dreadful as it was feeling that way, it was nothing compared to what came next in the soap opera of my emotions.

When I reached the high school in seventh grade, the worry and stress that I was feeling began to keep me up when other kids my age were deep in a carefree sleep. Every night I would lay in bed, staring up at my ceiling, wishing beyond anything that my brain would just quiet down long enough for me to get some sleep. Not able to shut it off, not able to spend another night alone with my thoughts. This is around the time I finally reached out to my mother for the first time to seek help. She and I went to more doctors than I can remember, struggling to find someone who would give me a solution. Now, the issue with modern day doctors is that they are extremely hesitant to give any kind of prescription to a minor, especially when said minor is thirteen years old. This was, in some aspects, understandable given that certain prescriptions lose their effectiveness over time or that there’s always a chance that a patient will become too dependant on the drug they’re given. So instead, I was handed more “natural remedies” than I can remember. Take a shot of cherry juice before bed; the natural hormones in it will surely put you to sleep. Try some valerian root; it smells like death but has a calming effect on most individuals. Ever heard of taking straight up melatonin? Me either, but hey let’s give that a shot. I tried every whacky remedy they threw at me, hoping and praying one of them would work so I could just give my mind a break. Of course, no such luck was in store for me. The sleepless nights dragged on, and as more and more time passed it only got worse.

The exhausted fog began to settle in my head, condensing into a deep, dark mass that I felt weighing me down every day. Scared to give in to the darkness I felt, I began trying everything I could think of to keep myself awake. I would pinch myself throughout classes every day to keep from falling asleep; I didn’t want my teachers thinking I didn’t care about their classes to the point of passing out. That barely kept me from drifting off however, so I looked for alternate awakening tactics. I remember in one episode of my favorite childhood TV show, The Suite Life on Deck, Cody would wear a rubber band on his wrist and was trying to train himself to stop thinking of his ex-girlfriend by snapping the rubber band every time he thought of her. This sounds like a foolish solution to me now, but at the time it seemed like it was worth a shot. For weeks I wore a hair tie on my wrist, snapping it every time I started drifting off. Shockingly, this tactic from a 2008 children’s show wasn’t very effective. Eventually, through much trial and error, one solution seemed to work; scratching at my skin. It was just noticeable enough to keep me from drifting off, and it wasn’t as obnoxious as snapping a hair tie against myself. But of course, that resolution came with it’s own flaws. I began to scrape at my skin so much that it would leave marks, long open wounds that stood out against my pale skin like a bright, flashing stop sign. Embarrassed at how my skin was torn up and worried that someone would notice and alert someone else about it, I began covering up my arms by wearing long sleeves every day no matter how hot it got. Countless weeks passed by, and it became unbearable covering up the marks on my skin all of the time. Eventually I was simply too tired and ashamed to even try to keep myself awake. The wounds on my arms eventually healed and faded, but I was still walking through every day in a fog of exhaustion and misery.

Finally, a shining beacon of hope shone through: summer vacation. As soon as school ended I could sleep as late as I wanted into the day, and I had nothing to worry about or stress over. Even though I would be up until crazy hours of the morning just simply thinking, it got better because I could sleep off the drowsiness the next day without having to worry about if my homework was done or if I had to get up the next day and go back to school. For that year, summer vacation saved me. I was able to slowly but surely reset my sleep schedule and with less to stress over I began to sleep at more normal hours. For awhile, things seemed to be going okay for me. For two years life was endurable; I was able to act like a normal teenage girl, hang out with friends, do well in school, spend time with my family. Sophomore year of high school changed all of that.

I can’t pin it on one exact thing, but the days just began to feel too long with too little in between them. I dragged myself out of bed in the morning and went through my day like a zombie; going through the motions but not getting anything out of it. At the beginning of the school year, I showed up to school, did a mediocre job but still got my work done, talked with friends, went to soccer, lived my life like I would ordinarily. Inside of my head however, nothing was normal. I struggled through my schoolwork, unable to focus on anything with the colossal amount of thoughts whirling around my brain like a hurricane. Every time I hung out with friends, everything I said or did seemed simple minded and meaningless to the point where I didn’t feel like talking anymore because there didn’t seem to be any point. Every soccer game began with a drowning amount of anxiety. I would walk onto the field terrified of letting my team down or embarrassing myself or getting injured. Everything began to build up, weighing down on me as if I was pinned in place under a ten-ton block of concrete. I couldn’t pull myself out of the funk I was in and as more time passed it only seemed to get worse. I began having nightly panic attacks, crying myself to sleep and waking up to swollen eyes and a lump in my throat that I couldn’t get rid of. I felt completely isolated, unable to confide in anyone about what I was feeling. I was petrified to say anything to my mother, worried that she would blame herself for somehow giving me a gene that made me depressed. I’ve always been a daddy’s girl, and I didn’t want my father to know that his little girl was in pain. I had one or two friends I could talk to, but nobody seemed to be able to comprehend what I was going through. It was impossible finding someone who understood that most days all I wanted was to fall asleep and not wake up, but that it wasn’t even an option for me because I would never be able to put the ones I love through that.

I kept hoping that in time it would pass like my past anxiety and anger would, but every day it just seemed to get worse. Dark thoughts began invading my everyday life, preventing me from going through every day functions. My grades began to slip, my soccer performances got worse, and as everything began slipping out of my control I only felt worse about myself. Thinking that I was so worthless I couldn’t even pretend to be normal anymore, couldn’t even plaster a fake smile on throughout the day. I hoped that when soccer ended things would get better; I would have more time to myself and I could focus on my schoolwork. Instead, the opposite happened. The extra time just created more time for me to get lost in my head, overthinking to the point that I couldn’t remember how to breathe. Every night went down like this, staring at the piles of homework I had to finish but unable to move a muscle because I knew that whatever work I managed to accomplish would never be up to my own standards for myself. Months went by that I can barely remember now, but seemed to last for an eternity at the time. Eventually it all became too much for me to handle on my own, and I knew I had to reach out for help. So I decided to finally take some action. One day I walked into the living room when I was sure it was just me and my mother home. Through all of the haze that those days were filled with, I remember our conversation with clarity. My mother was sitting on our recliner reading a book, her glasses perched on the tip of her nose. I sat down slowly on the couch a few feet away. I was so scared to confide in my mother for a minute I couldn’t even open my mouth. After a bit, she looked up from her book and asked what was up.

Panic overwhelmed me and out of instinct instead of telling her what I wanted to all I said was, “Nothing, just wanted to say hi.” She smiled, replied hello, and went back to reading. I sat on the couch trying to keep my breathing even so my voice wouldn’t crack, even though I had no idea if I would actually be able to say what I needed to say. I remember opening my mouth to speak, then closing it again, then scolding myself in my head for being such a wimp. Again, I opened my mouth but couldn’t get anything out, and shut it once more feeling stupid and thinking that I probably looked like a fish opening and closing my mouth like an idiot. Finally, after screaming at myself in my head for not being able to say anything, I finally just pushed it all out in one breath.

“Hey, I wanted to talk to you about something real quick.” Keeping my voice clear and even. Making sure to speak in a nonchalant tone so as not to worry her. My mother looked up from her book, a questioning and slightly concerned look on her face. I felt my heart break, and I nearly bailed on the whole conversation to avoid hurting her in any way. The only thing that kept me on that couch was knowing that I couldn’t keep going the way I was going on my own. I rushed through a quick summary of what was going on, explaining how I’d felt overwhelmingly dismal for a long time for no reason and that I wanted to see someone about it. All the while I stared down at the wine-red arm of the couch, unable to make eye contact. From that point in the conversation on, it was all a blur. I remember her forehead creasing with worry, and asking how long I’d been feeling like that and what exactly I was feeling. I remember giving vague answers to try and ease her worry, but after finally confiding with someone after struggling alone for so long it all rose to the surface and before I knew it I was holding back tears. I quickly finished up the conversation and hurried back upstairs to my room, where I sobbed uncontrollably for hours.

I had thought that reaching out for help would give me a relief of some sort, but instead I felt worse than ever. I hated myself for putting this added stress on my mother. I hated that I wasn’t able to handle it on my own. I hated having to ask for help when I knew that help would require prescriptions and hours in a quiet, secluded room struggling to express how I was feeling. After awhile, I cried myself to sleep and woke up the next morning the same way I’d been waking up for months: exhausted and miserable, filled with self-hatred. The next few days were nothing worth remembering, until my mother sat me down to talk about who she’d talked to about what I had told her. She said she’d been searching for days but most psychiatrists refused to take on patients under eighteen because, once again, they didn’t want to give prescriptions to minors. The only place she found that would take me in at my age didn’t have any openings for a consultation for almost three months. Frustration and anger swept through me like a forest fire. I had finally reached out for help, and now there was nothing I could do but sit and wait for another three months. Another three months of torment and struggling, of dark thoughts I would try with no avail to sweep out of my head. For those three months, I felt like a sitting duck. I was beyond scared that a day would come before the appointment where I wouldn’t be able to keep up any longer. The days dragged on, each one as bland as the last.

Finally, after countless days of struggling, the day came. I showed up at Suburban Psychiatrics feeling hopeful, but also terrified that they wouldn’t be able to help me and I would just have to live like this for the rest of my life. The whole appointment was an embarrassing blur for me. The second I stepped into the office I began crying and I couldn’t stop. My psychiatrist was an incredibly sweet woman, but I had built up so much emotion and buried it deep within me and now that I could finally let it out it was overwhelming. To this day, that appointment stands out as one of the most important moments of my life.

Nothing magically changed over night after the appointment. It took months of trial and error to find something that worked even the slightest bit for me. Even today they still alter my prescriptions slightly every appointment to try and find the exact right dose of the exact right drug for me. Things in my head aren’t nearly as bad as they used to be, but bad days are still inevitable. It’s already been a long struggle trying to make myself better. I know I’m still nowhere near being an idol for perfect mental health, but I’ve already made incredible progress. I’ve found ways to calm myself down even if it’s just the tiniest bit when I begin feeling anxious. I’ve found people I can count on and talk to when everything in my head begins to feel overbearing. I wear short sleeves and don’t care who sees my scars because what used to be a sign of weakness to me now is a sign of progress and achievement. I know life isn’t all sunshine and lollipops. I’ve lived through hell daily for months on my own and as hard as it was, it showed me that I’m strong enough to make it through anything. There will be some days that are worse than others, I am fully aware of that. But after living how I did in the past and finding people who support me, I know I can tackle every day one day at a time.