As I mentionned on my main page, this site was created for many reasons. One in particular, though, really stands out. My work on these pages has been very therapeutic and my research has helped me develop a greater understanding of the difficulties I have faced. I believe that I have gained a better perspective on life and that I will be better able to cope with the daily battles that I face.
It certainly has not been an easy road, these past ten years. At the age of nine, I began my descent into darkness and it is there that I have remained. When my desent first began, even though I was not suffering from a major depression, my life seemed hopeless. A hopelessness that was tolerable, mind you, but still there. Four years later, however, the real trouble began.
Ever since I was little, I had battled with my weight. I used food as a method to lift my mood and excersized little. Obviously, this behaviour caused me to gain even more. At the age of thirteen, I was approxiamtely five feet four inches tall and weighed two hundred and forty pounds. At that point, something inside of me clicked and I decided that the weight needed to go. I began excersizing excessively and stopped eating. I dropped approximately sixty pounds in a little over six months. Needless to say, this was not a good thing and it launched me into a six year battle with various eating disorders. To this very day, I still battle with my weight, losing and gaining rapidly.
While I was fighting with my self-esteem, I was still trying to pull myself out of the darkness. Since it began, I had not really gotten any worse or any better until I graduated from Grade Eight and began high school. It was then that I began to learn the true meaning of inner pain. After a few significant losses (perceived or real) of people close to me, I seemed to give up hope. Until this time, I had never even given the option of suicide a second glance but I knew not what else to do. Suicide became my number one priority although when I look back on it now, I realize that I wasn't really suicidal at all. Soon after I had given up hope, I was hospitalized for the first time. My two month admission did nothing to help me but I did end up learning about a great way to ease the pain. I began cutting my arm to eliviate some of the despair. The self-injury then moved on to other, more serious methods when I realized that the scars on my arm were becoming too difficult to hide.
Even though the self-injury did help me escape from my depression momentarily, it certainly did not cure me. If anything, it made everything worse. I became increasingly more suicidal and was admitted to the hospital two more times (for two months each) and became even more frustrated. There I was, disgusted with myself for the way I looked and for doing such awful things to myself that I became determined to escape, once and for all.
When I woke up in the morning, the first thing I though of was "the day"; when I went to bed at night, it was what I dreamed of and every moment in between, I could think only about my way out. Although I am still not sure if I am greatful, I guess I should say that I was "saved" by a few good people. They knew about "the day" and consequently, I was again admitted to the hosptial. This time, the day before I was planning to "leave". Despite being in the hospital, I was still determined to acheive my goal.
Shortly after midnight on my first night there, I took a serious overdose and drifted off to sleep. I awoke the next morning to the sight of my nurse who instantly knew that something was wrong. I had an extremely high temperature as well as blood pressure, I could barely think let alone walk and my body had begun to shut down. I was rushed to another hospital where I had my stomach pumped to try and rid my body of all the chemicals that I had consumed. The doctors did not think that I was going to pull through and if I did, they thought that for sure I would have serious kidney and/or liver damage. For some reason, my body helped them fight the pills and when I awoke, everything was the same as before.
They tell me that I was incredibly lucky. To me, it was not luck, it was yet another failure. Whatever the reason, I am still here today. What I do know is that I lost a day of my life (I rememeber very little of that day - most of the stuff that I have mentionned here was told to me after). It is a horrible feeling knowing that time went by and left you behind but I am slowly catching up. Every day is a struggle... combatting the depression, trying to fight the urge that compels me to hurt myself and blocking out the inner voices that speak of self-hate. I know I will always have my past that will haunt me but hopefully, with a lot of hard work and a great deal of assistance, the future will be brighter.
