Happiness

I know way too many people with mental health problems, and one of these people is me. I have always been someone that loves to spend time by herself but in the last four years these moments became dark. I felt lonely even though I had friends. I had some traumatic experience in life. I know many people had experienced worse things in life and that those people came out stronger. Well with me it was the other way around. When my parents divorced, I blamed myself and because of that I tried to take care of my little brother who was two at the time. Now he is almost 13 and I still do it, but he hates it. I am always trying to keep everyone around me happy. I didn’t care about myself because as long as my loved ones were happy, I could move on. This sometimes came to moments where I cried myself to sleep because I didn’t show how broken I was. I still don’t show it.

New School, New Friends

Because my grades weren’t that well I had to switch schools. Of course none of my friends had to switch, so I had to make new friends which is really hard for me normally but it wasn’t that difficult this time because I already knew some people from middle school. The first day I already made new friends. They were really nice; the first few weeks went by pretty easily. That soon changed… They showed me this app called Meetme. You can talk to people all over the world, but it soon turned out to be more like a dating site. Almost every guy who send me a message wanted more than just talking. At our age (around 16) it seems to be normal to send people you don’t know some, let’s say, daring pictures. So almost every guy wanted me to send them. I always said no. Then I fell in love with one of the guy on that app; we were really close and had a lot of fun. He lived on the other side of the country, but we never met because of two reasons. The first reason my mental health was so bad that I had suicidal thoughts daily, the second reason was he had never travelled that far on his own. So we stopped; we didn’t want to hurt each other so we became "friends." I cried for a week, and my mental health was so bad that one day I rode my bicycle to the train station and almost jumped in front of the train. Life went on and MeetMe was still on my phone but I never used it. I had made some new friends on there and we talked daily but slowly they all wanted more. Slowly they all disappeared. Six months later (now), I only talk to three of those people.

Suicide

Everyone tells me suicide is not an option but that is not true. Why would I think about it almost daily if it isn’t an option? They tell me why would you commit suicide, you are so smart and sweet and helpful, why would someone like you commit suicide? I don’t know anyone who really hates me, then I don’t mean like hate like “euch she is such a show-off.” No, I mean like real hate, that they would wish I never existed. I try very hard to help everyone and always be a good person. I know what it feels like to be lonely. I never ever want someone to feel like that. I know there will always be people who feel like that but I want to do everything I can to change that. No one should feel lonely, useless, not wanted, no one should feel like I have felt for the last five years. The worst thing is hiding it; it takes so much of your energy to smile and act like everything is going great. One moment all the cropped up feelings come out. You will be trying so hard to keep back the tears but you can’t do it anymore. You cry your eyes out, even in that moment someone asks "are you okay?" All you can think is, "do I look okay?!?" But you say, "yeah I am fine" anyway. You don’t want to bother people with your stupid little problems. The longer you keep it in, the more it starts to eat you. After a few months it has eaten almost all the positivity out of you and you can’t see any other way out than death or hurting yourself. In moments like those you don’t think about how much you hurt the people around you if you do it.

Friends

I haven’t talked to my friends in three months. Some people at school are like “if you haven’t talked to your friends in that long, are you sure they are still your friends?” I am starting to question our friendship and in school it isn’t going very well either. For the last month, the friends I made have been ignoring me. They say I said something bad behind their back even though I can’t remember I did that. So in school I am a loner now. Yes there are people who I can sit with in the breaks but I never talk to them. I made some new friends online in the last six months. I don’t have many left but the ones that stayed mean the world to me. They are always there if I need them; they pick me up when I am down. They stop me from making stupid mistakes, and they help me try to get happy again. For the last three weeks I have been calling a lot with one of them. I haven’t been this happy in years. Yeah of course there have been some good weeks, maybe even months, but happy like this, it has been quite some time. I never want this to stop. I know as soon as my friends leave me or some bullshit happens I will be back at the start again but I don't want to look too far ahead. The future freaks me out because there I'm not sure what will happen.

My Look

I have always had this like edgy hipster kind of style. I have always had long hair which I dyed blonde around June 2017. October 2017 I was so done with the blonde that I just dyed it turquoise, because after all the dying, my hair became dry and looked very dead. In the beginning of the year, I wore simple outfits black jeans and sweaters; the more I became comfortable at school, the more I started to wear other clothes and sometimes heels. At those moments, I was still friends with those girls and my style looked a bit like their. In January, I was so done with my dead hair that I cut it, and a day later I posted a picture on Instagram. I got a few good comments but there was one that bothered me a lot because it made me hesitate the choice I had made. All I could think was “Did he really think that or did he say that so they would like him more?” “Did he really not like me as a friend?” “Is this really because of my hair or is there more I did wrong?” It made me hesitate myself again. They didn’t know how bad it was in my mind at that moment but even if they knew they didn’t really care. I have been so self-conscious because of that, I really want to buy some new clothes but everything I see I am like, “oh, I can’t buy that. It looks like something she has.” “If I wear this, I look just like her.” I am just scared to buy clothes because I don’t want to look like her.

Change

All things happen for a reason, and there is a reason that I have felt like this for so long. So I planned to turn my life around. I am having my finals in May and after that I will move to a new city and start at a new school; new school means new friends. This time there is one easy/ good thing; everyone will be new and I will study for something I love. I choose to go to an arts school, because people say I am very creative and I can make my hobby my job. But that will be a lot of change in a short time and I am scared it will fuck me up real bad. I am thinking about finding myself completely before the new school year. Figuring out my future plans, clothes I really really love, because I start at a new school I don’t have to worry that I look like anyone. No one knows me and no one would really care. I planned out a lot but a lot is still a question mark. Like how the hell do I get a healthy lifestyle and keep it? How do I convince my mom to let me throw a lot of clothes away? How do I make more time for my hobbies, and how do I clean my room completely and then I mean really clean it, like taking all of my clothes out my closet and put everything back in, throwing away stuff I don’t use anymore? Stuff like that but the most important is keeping it clean.

Conclusion

The conclusion is I am far away from being completely happy but I am working on it. I have people to help me achieve my goal. I have my goals planned. I have made plans of how to achieve them. I am working hard even when it doesn’t look like it. For all the people who struggle with the same kind of mental problems, I promise you this: it will get better but you will need to work hard to make it better. So keep going, make goals, make plans, do what you love, study hard, make your life worth living. This life was given to you for a reason. Take it and make the best out of it.