dear diary

I started starving myself at the age of twelve.
I began cutting myself a few weeks before I turned thirteen.
I became actively suicidal in late November of 2012.
The rest is still hard to talk about.
I have been free of self-harm for exactly two months now.

I was in an abusive friendship for exactly half of my life when it ended two years ago, precisely tomorrow, March 28th. For about a month, I was in deep denial, and then I started becoming depressed. I count that as the "official start" of my depression, my anxiety problems, the issues with my sleeping.

My ex best friend was emotionally and mentally manipulative. She would stop talking to me for weeks on end, and when she finally contacted me, she would make me apologize for something I didn't do. She always had to be in charge of situations, and she would often make me feel like a lesser being. It became imprinted on me at a young age that I was not worth much, and stuck with me for as long as I can remember.

Stephen Chbosky wrote, "We accept the love we think we deserve."

I take this quote as brutally true. Personally, I feel so far from any love, even when people tell me they love me. I'm distant from myself, and remember harsh words better than I can remember kind words. I don't love myself. I love others, but cannot feel the warmth of love in return.

I came out as a female-to-male transgender to a few close friends and my mother back on November twelfth, 2012. My mother had... a bad reaction, to say the least, and denied all of the feelings I had and insisted it was just "hormones" and me being insecure of my body. My friends seemed supporting, but nothing changed as for name, pronouns, etc.

I don't know how to say any of the rest without seeming like I'm reaching out for your pity. I began actively cutting again when I became suicidal, which was a week or two after coming out. My mind started racing. I went days without sleeping, and when I did sleep, I got less than three hours. On weekends, I would sleep upwards of fourteen hours. I stopped trying on my school work, which was a big deal, seeing as I maintained a 4.0. I stopped focusing on student council. I stopped trying in general.

I told nobody of how I was feeling, because I had told so many people so many times and they hadn't listened. My mum took me to a doctor for it once, but refused medicine, therapy, or anything. The doctor gave me advice, and even though I followed it, things became worse. When I told my mum of this, she refused to let me go back because she insisted I hadn't tried hard enough. I'd had two counseling appointments about a year and a few months after that, because I told her of my persisting sadness and fear. It was free, but she refused to make any more appointments.

When I talked to my friends, I would only get one-word replies like "yeah." That was if they replied at all. A number of people turned away from me, because it's so much easier to see someone as happy than self-detrimental. It hurt.

So, I told nobody of how I was feeling. My suicidal thoughts worsened, and then I gave myself an ultimatum. In an appointment with a counselor, I told her I was planning to kill myself, and that this was where something was going to change or I was going to do it. I got sent to the emergency room, then got sent to a mental hospital. I have been out for coming up on two months now.

Things are better now that I'm on medicine, and have a family who knows about the extent of my depression, anxiety and sleeping problems. The problem is, however, that I still feel everything, though not to the full extent that I was. I know that it's about learning to "manage" it, but I find it hard. There's no way to turn off what I'm feeling, and I can't hold up all four walls by myself.

I'm having a particularly bad day today. Everything has gone great, down to skipping my sixth period class, hanging out with a friend after school, getting dinner with her, and even shopping around, but, laying in my bed, I feel as though I am desolate. It's probably from the lack of having an antidepressant in my system, but that sort of reasoning doesn't dull what I am feeling.

They took me off of my wellbutrin, and I have been on prozac for a little over a week now, but I'm not feeling the effects of it yet. I've the strong urge to hurt myself. I can't anymore. I'm sitting here crying instead, because I'm sad, because my head has been racing, because I don't have a way out of this.

And maybe that's okay.
But right now it isn't.
I'm wishing I was dead.
And I'm sorry for admitting that.

Thanks for listening to me. Sorry for being a whine. Sorry for not putting pretty words in it to make it an easy read. I just felt the need to be brutally honest with someone.