I WANT TO LIVE

I want to experience my senior year of high school, get my driver's license, go to college and live the life I’ve missed out on the last five years.

I am motivated to not continue as the revolving door patient anymore. I live with chronic depression, an eating disorder, and anxiety. Mental health treatment has mostly helped me but it’s been very difficult, too.

Out of the last five years since my problems began, I’ve spent two of them in mental health treatment. I’ve been in psychiatric hospitals three times, where I was strip-searched, injected with sedatives, and witnessed other patients harming themselves and screaming obscenities at me and others. I spent three months having electromagnetic pulses sent through my brain via transcranial magnetic stimulation in hopes to help my depression, but it only got worse, and I went to residential treatment three times, where I stayed at long-term facilities with people anywhere from ages 11-55, going to therapy three times a week and having everything I did monitored; from what I ate, to my showers, to wherever I was at all times. I attempted suicide last summer, and it became clearer than ever that I needed to make drastic changes to my life in order to keep going.

I have learned that in order to live my life, I have to ask for help– especially when I feel the self-destructive impulses that have ruled my life for all of my teenage years.

To any teens reading my story, I offer this advice:

Don’t wait until things get so bad that existing is unbearable and unsustainable before you get help. I used to call crisis lines all the time just to get me through nights where the urges to harm myself became overwhelming. It takes a lot of effort and perseverance to find the right kind of help, whether it’s a support group, medication, or a therapist who you feel safe with, but it’s worth it. It’s worth it to live instead of simply surviving, and going through the motions. IT'S POSSIBLE.

YOU CAN DO HARD THINGS.