When I was 13, and depressed, and suicidal, I missed five months of school.

Well, I was homeschooled. But I wasn’t at school.

Only my teachers knew why I was gone.

I had no friends.

I told no one who was my own age.

 

When I got back, everyone had questions to interrogate me with.

I avoided these questions

brushed them aside

the way you would brush dirt off your clothes.

 

I skipped lunch and did homework in the library instead. I would rather go hungry than desperately wander around the over-crowded cafeteria

hoping for a familiar face

maybe just someone who sat next to me in a class

someone who would take pity on the frizzy-haired

pimple-covered

friendless girl named Claire who was

smart and

shy and

sad.

 

The time I was late to class in the morning and was getting something out of my locker

my teacher walked by and asked if I was ok

I burst into tears

cried in the bathroom with my teacher for ten minutes and went into my first period with

red eyes

red face

broken soul.

 

I hate loneliness. I hate it worse than fear, than hunger, than pain.

 

I was scared of failure. I was scared of rejection.

 

I was afraid they wouldn’t understand

would make fun of me for cutting myself with a pair of scissors that used to be in my pencil pouch.

 

Depression isn’t like cancer

it isn’t visible,

you don’t go bald and

go on charity runs to raise money and awareness.

 

What happens is you don’t shower for weeks at a time

go to therapy three times a week

drive to the ER twice in 36 hours because you’re going to kill yourself

call 911 because you can’t find the number of the suicide hotline.

 

It’s hell. But no one but you can feel it

no one can see it.

 

My parents were there for me.

But that’s their job.

 

What killed me was that

every day at school

out of the dozens of people I interacted with

not one, not one damn person bothered to ask me if I was ok.

 

Because the answer would have been no

absolutely fucking not.

 

I shut them out, out of my heart, my personality, my

caring

smart

loving

honest

hard-working

kind

personality.

 

I am a person.

I am a human being, like every other human being who

can’t live without love.

 

But how could I find love, when I hated myself?

My self-esteem was 6 feet below rock bottom.

 

At one point my browser history would have shown

Google searches for

“how to commit suicide”

and

“how to commit suicide without a gun”.

 

Now,

I have friends.

I know I’m smart, and have a good heart.

I like, maybe even love myself.

I’ve taken the mask off.

 

I am a wonderful human being.

I know that now.

It took four long years of misery to fully realize that.

But now, I’m strong.

I can take whatever life throws at me.

I love myself.

I’ve burned the mask in the bonfire of my self-hate.