I lost myself. It wasn’t a physical loss, of course; but I was completely gone mentally. It was like the whole world had vanished from me; even I was vanished. All that was left was a soulless body who lied in bed doing absolutely nothing. That body felt nothing. I have a hard time even believing it was me. Since my mind was dead I was more like a zombie than a living human. I was missing, but I eventually found myself.
I was lost for quite some time. Part of me had been gone for about five years, but I was completely gone for a year. When I say gone, I really mean gone. I was not myself at all. Every day would be filled with tears and blood. I would sleep continuously, not getting up to eat or to visit with others. I lost my happiness, but I wasn’t depressed; I was numb. Everyone tried to change me; they all wanted me to get better but nothing helped. I became worse, actually. It was as if I was a magnet for traumatic experiences. Bullying and abuse incessantly occurred. At one point I couldn’t deal with the issues anymore and decided to quit school. The loneliness intensified, as did my feelings of hopelessness. I didn’t believe I would ever do anything with my life; I didn’t believe I had the capabilities to fulfill any of my hopes that still remained with me. Deep down I thought there were only two possible outcomes for my life: I would either sit in my room and rot forever or I would end up leaving the world through my personal doing. Whether it be physically or mentally, both outcomes would result in me killing myself.
That whole year was quite a mess for me. Quitting high school after only a year and a half wasn’t the best thing to do. With all of my friends being at school, as well as my family being busy, I had nothing to do but sit around by myself. Sitting alone is not good for depression, and I consequently became worse. I ended up having to go to the hospital to help my problems; it didn’t do much for me. The months following the hospital stay were worse than before. Everything was still the same, except after the hospital I recognized my depression on a deeper level. I was starting to realize how horrible it was and how much it impacted my life and the lives of people around me. With all that, I lost even more hope. I knew I would never get better; Part of me didn’t even want to.

Without hope in life, there is absolutely nothing. If you don’t look past your problems, you can never overcome them. I always understood that, but for that long year I didn’t care enough to do anything to get through my problems. After a year of struggling, I finally came to a point where I started to overcome everything. To come to this spot, I had to go through a tough experience. This impacted my life greatly, and it helped me to suddenly get over everything.

It was a typical night. I was alone downstairs, doing homework. An issue arose with my family. It was nothing that should have affected me, but for some reason it did. I had an episode that night where I attempted suicide. “I want to die!” I screamed to myself over and over. My mom pounded on the door, yelling at me to let her in. I wouldn’t though. I continued my rant of breaking things and hurting myself. There was blood and broken glass everywhere which my mom had to try to avoid when she busted in my room to help me. When she came in she touched my arm and I screamed as loud as I possibly could. If we had neighbors, they surely would have been able to hear my shriek. I didn’t want to be touched, and I didn’t want help. I just wanted to finish it; I wanted to finish off myself. The rest of the night my mom sat with me, watching me cry and asking me questions I obviously didn’t want to answer. I couldn’t even answer if I wanted to. After the earlier scream, I no longer voice. I had no words left in me besides jumbled up thoughts that couldn’t escape my lips. The night was way too chaotic to remember all of the details and I blocked some of it out of my mind; it was not a night I wanted to remember.

That night was one I will never forget, though; it could have changed the lives of many if I had gone through with my suicide attempt. However, the events of the following day are what started my recovery process. When I got out of bed in the late afternoon, my mom informed me that my younger sister had asked about what happened. She had apparently been so worried that she was up late in the night crying and trembling. When my sister saw me that day she walked up and hugged me close, whispering, “Are you going to be okay, sissy?” Those words affected me. I knew she cared because I’m her older sister; she looks up to me a great deal. But hearing those words come out of her mouth, as well as seeing the look on her face and hearing how worried she was, made me tremble. Emotions had become a foreign concept to me in the last few years. At that moment, though, I started to understand again.

The next week was spent sitting alone as I always did. But unlike before, I didn’t wallow in pain; I didn’t sit there stuck in a state of numbness. The loneliness of the past year got to me, as well as the incident from the previous week. It all dug into my soul and pulled emotions out of me that I hadn’t encountered for some time. I had a moment of complete solitude one day. It’s hard to pinpoint exactly how it happened or why, but at that moment I lost my numbness. I came back to the world; I came back to my body and once again became myself. It was confusing at first. I couldn’t comprehend why all of a sudden I was back. In reality, it wasn’t one moment of impact like I first thought it was. It was the whole year leading up to then. Figuring everything out had been a process. I was just too oblivious to notice that I had actually been doing things all along to help myself. Looking back, I came to the conclusion that I hadn’t spent a year alone in my room doing nothing of importance. The time I spent in there was not a waste in the least bit. I used techniques I learned at the hospital to help with my anxiety and anxiety which included talking to others, seeing a therapist, and writing down all of my feelings. The mind is something people often overlook, and I hadn’t realized having strong thoughts. I had been figuring out my issues and correcting them the entire time, but my life felt like a dream so I didn’t understand that it was really happening. I patched up my old scars long ago, but was too down to understand until that one moment. I hadn’t had the belief that I could get better; there for I didn’t heal until I believed I was capable.
Finding myself changed my world completely. After figuring out who I was, my hopes and dreams started flooding back to me. As I progressed, I kept becoming more hopeful. I started out hoping my anxiety would lessen enough for me to spend time with my old friends; it got so much better that I was able to recover old friendships and make new ones along the way. I had a huge dream of passing all of my GED tests, and I did it on my first try. The level of confidence that gave me was tremendous. I started to realize my potential. I had a lot going on for myself and I finally understood that it was time to take advantage of that.

I am still continuing on this journey full throttle. Currently, I am attending a community college and looking into transferring. I have dreams about future schooling, careers, and about things I had thought were way bigger than myself. These dreams were out of my reach when I was lost, or maybe even before then. Now I am finally rolling along, though, and I am not going to stop.

Everyone has issues in life. I have struggled through many which nobody deserves to suffer. I have overcome them all, though. With everything I have overcome, I know there is nothing that I will let halt my life again. I’ve crossed a mountain in my path; everything else will be nothing more than pebbles. Of course I know that I will continue to have problems throughout my life, but that also means I will continue my life. I must continue my life and be who I have dreams of being. I know I have the courage, and I now know I have more than enough strength. I’m on my way now, taking one step at a time.