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I know that saying ‘I feel like a whole new person’ is kinda cliché and cringe but I literally feel like a whole new person. I’m feeling productive and excited about little projects and I don’t have to fight myself to get out of bed on 90% of days. Wild.
And it’s wild to me that some people have never not felt this way? Like they had a childhood with healthy mental health and without depression and anxiety and OCD thoughts in their brain 24/7. It’s almost like I’m seeing a whole new life and world for the first time. Damn.
Like, yes, I had to have 6? Years of counselling and therapies and take meds to get to this point but I’m still here somehow. Looking back on how dark I felt baffles me. It baffles me that when I said something wasn’t right at like age 12, people told me I was just being a teen.
(TW) I went to so many doctors who told me it was just teenage hormones, and that all teens feel that way sometimes. It baffles me that I had to become suicidal and relapse into self-harm before anyone even thought about fighting to get me some help.
(TW) It also sucks that I knew people who felt like me, who’s parents paid for private therapy and that allowed them to get meds and proper treatment straight away, and yet I wanna as discharged from mental health services multiple times because I ‘probably wouldn’t kill myself’
(TW) it makes me angry sometimes, but it also makes me sad. I had to grow up way to young, and I’ll never get that time back. No 11 year old should ever hurt themselves and go without help for their mental health for nearly 7 years- until they are 17 and on the brink of suicide.
I didn’t have parental support when I was 11-17 pretty much at all, and so I relied pretty much entirely on teachers at school to ‘parent’ me, and without them I would not be alive today. School ending so abruptly this year was very tough on me because of this.
It wasn’t just the end of schooling like it was for most kids. High school for me was my only safe place for 7 years. Teachers helped me learn who I was and encouraged me to embrace that. All of the opportunities I’ve been given in life stem from the support of teachers.
After it all ended I felt like I went through a grieving period. I felt as if I was in mourning for about a month and a half. I couldn’t get out of bed, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t eat, felt like crying all the time - but something new has come out of it. I feel hopeful.
I’ll stay in touch with some of the people that changed, and saved, my life, but also I’m ready to move on. I’m so grateful for all they did for me, but I have a new life now. I want to be a teacher, and besides my love for writing, the main reason is that I want to help kids.
I want to help kids like me. I want to be the support that a child needs, because sometimes school is the only safe place they have, and the only sturdy and stable thing in their life. I had a few wonderful teachers who were that for me and a few others, and they were invaluable.
I hopefully start uni in October, on a course I’m so excited to study. I can’t wait to meet new people and reinvent myself. I won’t be the anxious, nerdy one that I was in school. I still am those things, but I’m also hopeful and excited and I have a fashion sense now.
And I’m kinda hyper sometimes and also excitable and weird and I can be really funny!! I just can’t wait to start a new life basically. And as a child who didn’t think I’d see it past 15, then 16, then definitely not 17, this hopefulness is refreshing and new.
So here’s to a new life - and hopefully a future where kids won’t have to literally be days away from ending their own life before they get some help. Because I survived, and I’m thriving, but some weren’t so lucky.
