In grade 12 English, I had to write a memoir. A lot of people had no clue what they were writing about . . . What event had a huge impact on their life. This is what I handed in for my memoir assignment . . . I knew what I was writing right away.
I don’t know what started the depression to begin with. To be honest, I should really stop referring to it as ‘the depression’ and start calling it ‘my depression’. Either way, I don’t know what started it. But, it happened.
I’m not sure if it all started when I was eleven or when I was thirteen. I was eleven and in the sixth grade when one of my best friends suddenly died of a heart condition none of us, her friends, knew about. I carried on next-to-normally after that. I continued on living in a way that most people wouldn’t even perceive a change in me. In retrospect, I don’t think I dealt with my friend’s death effectively. Maybe if I had, my depression wouldn’t have started. I believe, though, if I wouldn’t have had that battle with depression, I wouldn’t be the person I am today. Or maybe I would and everything would have just happened in another way.
Two years after the initial incident of my friend’s death, when I was in the eighth grade, my friends and I all had a really bad year. We were being bullied by many kids in our grade, what our vice-principal chalked up to nothing more than boys being immature, and beginning to experience the spike of hormones that come along with puberty. Incident after incident was reported to the administration and the guidance counselor. Nothing happened. By the time an appointment was set up with mediation services, it was made for the end of June, four days before our middle school hell ended. No resolution would be found then, anyways. All we cared about was getting out of that school once and for all.
At thirteen, I spent my time writing—a lot. Writing pieces that a year before I don’t think would have even crossed my mind to write. Poem after poem poured out onto my computer—I still have them—about bleeding, fighting, running away, challenging authority, self-mutilation and, the big one, death. I’m fortunate in the fact that I never did anything self-destructive that year, although cutting and killing myself at times were floating dangerously within that thought-bubble line, the line where thoughts become reality, although were never attempted.
When the summer after eighth grade approached, apprehension and anxiety added to the already dark cloud of depression above me. When I think back to that summer, I remember falling into darkness, either feeling like I was about to cry or feeling nothing at all.
Finally, two and a half years after my friend’s death, I started feeling the pain of losing one of my best friends in a permanent way. This added to my already dark emotional state. Talking to anybody about how I was feeling was so far from my mind. I was having problems at home with my parents on a constant basis. When I told my mom about the bullying, initially, it was only because other parents found out and were planning on taking action with the school and the school board—I wanted her finding out from me, not them. When I told her, she acted like it was nothing.
Yet, that ‘nothing’ had the ability to drastically change who I was turning into. I was no longer happy, in some ways I felt like I was no longer innocent, and, I was no longer whole. At this point, talking to anybody was out. I was so sick of everything in general. Thoughts of death permeated my mind. It sounded a lot better not to have to deal with all the everyday pain, feeling claustrophobic just being in your own skin, hating every day you spent alive. As much, though, as I hated life, I still must have feared death, because I didn’t take action on my thoughts.
The first week of August came. My friend had invited me to camp with her earlier in the year, and apprehensively, I agreed. Why had I agreed to go to a Bible camp of all places? In my fourteen years at times I had out rightly declared myself an atheist, and thought the concept of god was ridiculous. Camp did nothing for me. I spent the week pretending to care about what my counsellor was saying, pretending to worship every evening.
I went back home the same person I had left, bitter, depressed and pessimistic. The week at camp had just been a vacation from everything that hurt me . . . and the rest of my summer continued. On September 7th, 2005, I started high school–a new school. After being in the same school for nine years, this was really unnerving, especially on top of the depression. I spent exactly one day of high school the person I formerly was—and then my world shattered.
The evening of my first day of high school, my mom told me that my grandma’s cancer had returned after a seven year remission. That just was so it. I sat in my room that night knowing that if I didn’t do something, I’d end up one of two places: burned out completely—half alive—or full out dead.
Something had to give. And that something was me.
That summer, something got inside me and grew. Something injected its way into my veins, and flowed throughout my body, even though I didn’t know it was there. It entered deeper into me, into my soul. With a tearing sensation ripping through my being, that night, in my room I gave my life to God. On my second day of high school, I was not the same person as I had been on my first. If it wasn’t an instant change, it was pretty close to it. I woke up the next morning, with a huge weight lifted off of me—the weight of all that I’d done wrong, all my sin, transferred over to Christ, who died for me.
What have I gained from this? I realize now that if I had killed myself, I would have never given my life to God. And because of that, there would have been nothing for me in death. But, because I let God enter my life that night, I regained my will to live, and when the time comes, there is eternal life in death. As Philippians 1:21 says “to live is Christ and to die is gain”. I also realize that at the same time, life can be so fragile, but so strong at the same time—much as we are as people. We learn, we love, we lose. All in all, we live. Each step we take forwards is one we don’t take backwards on this journey called life.
This journey is joyful, painful and inspirational, and it will continue to be. From where I was, to where I am now, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
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