My Truth

I feel like I'm not being completely honest with you, and that's something that I think I need to be. How can you trust me if I'm hiding something? I've never had a problem opening up to people before, well, at least not recently.

I suffer from migraines.

Yes, migraines can be horrible, but they're not the end of the world. Yet mine never go away. I've had a migraine every single day since November of 2006. The pain never seems to end for me.

Doctors don't know what to do so they just put me on a lot of medications. I don't want to bore you with the amount or the names, just know that it's not enough.

I also suffer from depression.

Wouldn't you? If you had chronic pain like mine, wouldn't that make you want to bawl your eyes out? Wouldn't you be depressed if you had to drop out of school twice because you were failing due to the migraines? Wouldn't you be upset if relationship after relationship failed, jobs ended just because you were sick?

As the migraines continued, the depression worsened. More pills followed, which led to me always being tired, yet not being able to sleep. This of course made me more depressed. It was a circle that I was trapped in the middle of. As one problem got worse, so did the other. Eventually I lost hope of recovery. Maybe that's what made me start.

I'm a recovering cutter.

With the depression and the migraines causing me so much pain, I grew numb. I lost control. I wanted to feel something. If I was going to be in pain, I was going to say how and where and when. So I stole pocket knives from my brother's room. I hid fingernail clippers in my purse. I used the razor in the shower. It was never enough, though. It started to escalate. I needed to do more. I hid most of them, only cutting on my arms in my most desperate hours.

Eventually I had the courage to tell my mom. It was my cry for help. But she didn't know how to make me stop.

There are several particularly painful nights that stand out in my memory. One night, I barricaded myself in my room and started cutting on my arm. I was going to cut the entire length of my arm if my parents hadn't broken in and managed to stop me. After that, I took a piece of glass out of a picture frame and broke it. I used the pieces to slice up my arm over and over again. It went on and on until my parents grew so scared, they took me to the hospital. I was quickly admitted to the psych ward.

It's very hard to me to talk about those two day that I was stuck in the hospital. I block out most of it because it's still so raw. That was the first time I hit rock bottom.

I was terrified at what I was doing and I quickly responded to help. I was allowed out if I promised I would attend outpatient services. At those services, I felt like I was on the road to recovery.

The next months are a blur for me. I remember trying so hard at school, but never feeling like it was good enough. I was constantly letting people down. I had so few friends that would talk to me that I felt completely alone most of the time. I was in a new relationship that was quickly going south. I was trying to handle a job.

There were several occasions that my parents had to convince the RD of my dorm to let them in my room because I was so depressed I wouldn't leave the place. They had to drag me home, crying. It was one of those nights that I fell even harder than I had before.

I tried to overdose on pills.

I never wanted to die. My reasoning was, I can go into a coma, I can stop the pain for just a little while, just long enough for me to get the strength I need to win this. I didn't even take enough to do anything. I was too scared, too weak. . . I thought it was weakness. I now know that the real me was fighting too hard to let go.

When my parents had realized what I had done, they called an ambulance. I remember kicking and screaming at them as my brother and father pulled me out of my room. I was not going back to the hospital. But of course, I had to go.

I was laying in a hospital bed, unable to stop shaking, when an arrogant man came in and told me how I was going back into the psych ward. I refused. I wouldn't sign the papers. With that smug little look on his face, he told me if I didn't sign myself in, I would become a "ward of the state." I was 21 or 22 at the time and completely pissed that they would do such a thing. He told me I was going and that I might as well sign it myself. I yelled at him that I had to stop shaking first before I could sign the damn paper.

I was only in the hospital that time for about a day and a half, but it felt like forever. I had to sleep up in the "mature adults" wing because they had no beds down in the regular ward. My doctor, convinced that my actions had been related to a medication change, hurried me through and I was soon able to trusted with shoelaces again once I was out in the real world.

This was a real turning point for me. I finally found a therapist that I clicked with. I found some doctors that were actually helping instead of overdosing me. I felt HOPEFUL again.

Not everything went wonderfully from that moment on. I was trapped in a relationship that had ended a long time ago. I had managed to convince myself that things were fine, not realizing I didn't even know who this guy was that I was dating. I should have seen the signs: isolating me from my family, putting people I care about down, telling me I was a failure, calling me unattractive. . . It was emotional and verbal abuse. And then it was physical. I should have run away at that first time he shoved me, but I was in too deep. I convinced myself I owed it to him because he stuck with me through the really hard times. HA! What the hell was I thinking?

Somehow I escaped. I really felt alone because then I had no friends. No one had stuck around during all of this. I don't blame them. Who would want to be around depression?

I had to start from scratch. I built a new life. I found a truly pure heart in an old friend. He and I have now been together for 6 months. He constantly encourages and makes me believe that I can do this. While I'm not in school full-time this semester, I am taking classes at the community college and I feel capable of handling school again. There are bad days, mostly bad nights, but I'm able to handle them.

I now believe that all this happened for a reason. Through this I've discovered that I want to use everything that I've gone through to help others that are suffering. I want to ensure that no one has to live without hope, because I know how scary that is.