Personal Narrative: The Sickness

The sickness that I live with is one that some would find excessively appalling, making it impossible to talk about; so I kept it to a whisper. This sickness I thought was to embarrassing to talk about, making it impossible to seek help, left me feeling alone in the dark. This sickness ruined friendships, without me realizing it. This sickness that made getting out of bed a struggle for me. This sickness made it impossible for me to see a positive future, until the day I stopped calling myself “crazy” and began to grow from what we all call, depression.

The first time I experienced depression was in seventh grade. It sort of hit me out of nowhere. I can’t put my finger on what exactly triggered my depression, and I think that’s what I struggled …show more content…
I did what all teenagers do in high school. I became obsessed with the thought of fitting in and knowing when the next big party was. I thought I was happy, or at least I convinced myself and everyone else around me that I was. I would go out on the weekends, drink enough to forget the sadness, that is until the next morning it came crawling back. I still did not truly accept the fact that I had depression, because how could I? I wasn’t on medication or anything. But I did, and my family knew it to. I remember always feeling like my friends didn’t truly like me, that they felt it was more of a chore to be my friend. I like to call my depression, my untrusting friend. My depression constantly had me thinking my friends didn’t want to hang out me, and that my family didn’t care about me. I didn’t have a bad life, so I didn’t understand why I felt this way. I couldn’t tell anyone because I was too ashamed and I didn’t want to be known as the girl who seeks attention. It was like living in hazy thunderstorm; living in a storm in which I couldn’t shake. Things got worse. My depression seemed to have gone from mild to severe in what seemed like seconds. But this time it was more than just the overwhelming sadness. I had developed a distorted self-image of myself. First it just started with constantly looking in every mirror I passed, and hating what I saw. It then went on to me restricting myself to less than 1,000 calories a day, while forcing myself to run on the treadmill for two hours every night. I took diet pills in hope to make myself more attractive in hope that people would focus on my outsides, and hopefully not notice what I was truly like. I felt trapped. This wasn’t who I was, and it wasn’t who I wanted to be. I was so caught up in the thought that I wasn’t good enough, that I ruined myself even