Amanda’s Story

I have struggled with depression for as long as I can remember. As a child of 8 or so years old, I yearned to just cease to be. I hadn't yet started to fantasize about dying--just not existing. I burst out crying without any particular reason. I had wild mood swings, which my family joked about by calling me "Eeyore." I felt myself to be horribly, painfully different from my peers, and some part of me felt it was wrong that I should feel that way.  At around 8 or 10, I went to my mother and told her that I felt "wrong," and that I was never happy like other children. One of our neighbors was a psychiatrist; I only had a loose grasp of what that was through television, but I felt like he was supposed to help with issues like mine.  With anxiety tearing through the pit of my stomach, I went to my mother and tried to express my feelings, and asked her if we could make an appointment with that neighbor.  She told me that what I was going through was a "phase," and that "no one feels happy all the time."  She also told me that I would later feel "embarrassed" if I went to the family friend and explained how I felt. 

I internalized all of that, and it took years of self-hatred, brooding, fantasizing about suicide, secret self-harming, two suicide attempts before I finally sought help. Today my mother wonders why I never come to her when I'm upset. I don't want to tell her it's because I still don't think I can trust her, and that her reaction when I was a child made me feel it was never safe to share my painful feelings with anyone. 

I managed to graduate from college after two suicide attempts and one hospitalization. For various reasons, finishing my senior year felt like dragging myself on hands and knees through hell, but I made it. I'm currently taking an astounding cocktail of medications, and seeing a wonderful therapist whose cognitive behavioral therapy has helped me learn to deal with my illness. I remind myself each day that it IS an illness, a chemical imbalance, and I should not be ashamed. I'm still struggling to get my life on track, and my mother has advised me not to tell anyone in the family about my illness.