The following stories contains descriptions of sexual assault, suicide, and other topics of similar nature.
“I had just entered the ninth grade when I started feeling that way. I mean, I felt it in middle school but I didn’t know what it was. I didn’t know if that was sadness or depression, I didn’t know what it meant. So when I got older and got into the 10th/11th grade I started thinking ‘Maybe I do have something like a chemical imbalance’ so I went to the doctor for it.”
“I kind of realized in the 9th grade, after my mom’s dad died. I was really close to those grandparents, and after he passed away-I mean I saw him die, with my own eyes-it really hit me hard. After that I kind of realized that I had feelings of worthlessness and that I was unhappy. I had it before he died but that’s when I realized that life isn’t everything that people make it out to be. ”
“My dad is a hunter so he has knives and guns around the house. I sat there for a second before I did it, but by doing it that was a feeling of relief to hurt myself rather than kill myself. I don’t even know how to describe it. It’s just a feeling of…I can’t even explain it. ”
“I was in a bad relationship at the time, and not to blame the person I was dating because it was solely my emotions and my feelings, but me putting my happiness and making it revolve around someone else, it’s not good. I was putting my happiness on someone else and allowing them to control what I wanted to do. I was just an emotional basket case, honestly. My emotions were all over the place. I wasn’t stable. I remember just sitting in my bed and grabbed my dad’s knife and I just started cutting my wrist. I don’t remember the specific reason, but my emotions were all over the place and I just hated myself. ”
“I hated myself because I hated the relationship, I hated the person who made me feel like this, and it was just a lot of emotions all at once and I didn’t know how to deal with it because I wasn’t going to go talk to my parents, I wasn’t going to talk to my friends, I did not want to talk about it. ”
“I feel like in middle school, whenever I was acting a little different, I felt like they noticed it but they just thought I was a teenager going through hormones and that type of thing. When I told them, I was in the 11th grade and it was literally right after I’d tried to kill myself. ”
“I woke up and I went to school that day, and when I’d gotten home from school I was just bawling. I went inside and my dad saw me and asked what wrong, but all I said was ‘Nothing, I’m just going to go for a drive.’ So I pulled out of my driveway at around 3:30 and I turn out of my neighborhood and I’m about to take a left but instead I’m just sitting there. There are one or two cars behind me and I’m not moving, I’m just sitting there thinking ‘I don’t care what’s around me, I don’t care who’s beeping at me, who’s doing what’, I just sat there for three or four minutes and finally I start to push on my gas and I can hear my transmission start going in and out, so I stop and I start to turn and my car just shuts off completely. ”
“My car is a 2001 maxima, so it’s really old, and my transmission always goes out. I was in the turning lane and I was going to pull in front of this semi truck when my car shut off. And that’s where God really came in for me. That was God’s way of showing me that I have a purpose for being here because if I didn’t, I would have died right then. I just drove home and pulled up to my house. When I went up to my parents and I flipped my wrists over and showed them my cuts...the next day they got me help. Right when I told them they knew something was wrong, they knew I was going through something that 15 or 16 year old shouldn’t be going through.”
“That was a really hard day for me because the next day I got admitted to the mental hospital. That was probably one of the worst times of my life, as well.”
“I was the oldest one there out of all the girls and guys there. So there were six year olds, and twelve year olds, thirteen year olds...it was all these young kids dealing with problems like I had and even some that were more severe. It completely blew my mind and I was thinking ‘What are these young kids doing in here?’. I saw these young kids going through this and the faculty treated us like we were insane. They treated us like we weren’t even human beings. I would try and talk to them and have a normal conversation and they treated me like I wasn’t even human. I was there about three or four days. They were giving me medicine without telling me what the medicine was, putting me on medication and anti-depressants and all kinds of stuff and they just weren’t clear about anything.”
“It wasn’t a good time for me, but I met a lot of people in there that I still keep in contact with, so I still have that support system from people who I know went through the same thing that I did...and so going through that was a good and a bad thing. I think I got a little bit of good out of it because I will always have those people and that experience and those memories. It’s not a bad thing that people go to places like that, but that facility specifically treated us like we were crazy and just super insane but all we wanted to do was just talk to people.”
“My parents didn’t know, and we didn’t talk about it. I didn’t know what they were going through so all of our emotions were kept in a box, but once I told them everyone started opening up. Now, if I have any problem with anything, I go to my parents.”
“I’ve had the same friends that I’ve had since the first or second grade, and now I’m dating the guy that’s been one of my best friends since the third grade. He’s been so supportive of me when I’m going through ‘phases’, like when I’m insecure one day and then when I’m sad and then angry. He’s dealt with it really well. We started dating about two years ago right when I started college, because that’s when everything started to settle. He knew what I was going through because he’d been my best friend all throughout high school so it helped that he knew my situation. I was so angry all the time, and I would push people away. I didn’t want anybody to touch me or talk to me, I just wanted to be alone all the time. He’s been so supportive of all the different emotions that come across me. I’ve never had this type of relationship before and it’s incredible. ”
“It’s gotten a lot better. When I was in middle school and early high school I felt like I couldn’t go and talk to her as a teenage girl should...since a lot of things have happened we’ve gotten a lot closer. Now, when I get home I’m excited to see my mom. She’s my best friend...she’s been a really big support system with me because I know what she’s gone through and that she’s gone through things that I’ve been through, maybe not to a certain extent, but she’s felt what I’ve felt and gone through what I’ve gone through and it’s comforting to have that person in my house and to know that I can go to her.”
“They’ve really helped me through a lot. Because once I told them what I was going through and what I was doing to myself, I found out that my mom was doing the same thing. When her dad died, she went downhill. She would go drive off by herself for hours and hours. I don’t know what she was doing, and maybe that was her coping time but she struggled getting jobs because she was so depressed. She would come home crying every single day. I saw that, but it never processed that ‘My mom struggles with depression’. Once I told her I found out that she was on anti-depressants, and she gave me advice on what I could do. My dad has struggled with it because he’s disabled and retired so he’s home all day. He’s dealt with feeling alone and feeling anxious. It really helped me to find out that my parents have gone through the same thing. Even my brother has had his share of issues. It’s comforting to know that I can go to my entire family with these things.”
“I was sitting in my bed and I had my dad’s knife out. I had actually stolen it because he hid all of his stuff, all of his guns and his knives, once he knew what I was going through and what I would do with them. I took it and sat it by my bed and I laid on my pillow and I sat there for probably an hour and a half just thinking. And, I ended up doing it again, and my parents saw it and after that they started checking me. It didn’t hurt my feelings to have them checking my wrists all the time. It made me feel loved because I knew that they did care and didn’t want me to do this to myself. I’ve the feeling of relapsing all the time, that’s probably going to be a never ending battle for me because when I feel certain emotions it makes me want to do that to myself.”
“I remember I would talk to people about it and they would say the same thing, ‘Oh you’ll be alright, you can get through this’. I hear that day to day...and I feel like if you mention suicide or depression then people will get squeamish and act like its a bad thing to talk about but a lot of people deal with it.”
“I feel like people think that depression is people always wearing black or people being sad. I was on homecoming court and I was that typical girl in high school, and I still dealt with it day to day. I don’t go to school with a sad face or cry, but I’ll come home and cry. People don’t know what you’re going through just because of how you look and how you dress and how you act. People just think you’re supposed to be super insane if you have depression or anxiety, and it’s not something that you can just get over in a day.”
“I am starting to get off of it. I was on Fetzima and my doctor told me that it was more of an anger management type of anti-depressant because I was so angry all the time. My parents actually bought me a punching bag because I would be so pissed off the time. So I’m weaning myself off of that but I’m also on anxiety medicine and I’m going to go back to see my therapist. I can feel it, it’s been more often then it has been in the past. I feel like it’s me going off to school that’s kind of triggering stuff so I just want to sit down with somebody and get it out. ”
“I was about 14 years old, and I started getting them and I would get them for days upon days. Now, currently, I get them probably about three or four times a week. I don’t know if you’ve ever had a migraine, but it’s probably the worst pain to me in the world. I would rather have anything else in the world than to have these migraines all the time. It makes me really depressed because I feel hopeless because the doctors can’t tell me anything. I’m on three medications that I have to take everyday and nothing helps. I go to the MedStop and they’ll give me a shot and the next day I’ll still have a migraine, so it’s a constant pain all the time and it’s really irritating. ”
“In high school I didn’t hear anyone talk about it. No one ever talked about it. I feel like-not to say that I was the first person to ever go through this-but once I put my story out there I could tell you about 20 to 30 people who came up to me and were talking to me and telling me about it. These were people that I knew that I grew up with who I never would have dealt with this. They don’t have anything, that’s why I wanted to try and reach out to people in high school who were dealing with the same thing because no one talk about it. It’s like when people start to talk about it they get squeamish, and it shouldn’t be like that because so many people deal with it. ”
“She’s actually struggled with it quite a bit, since we got married, to the point where she would have her really low times and then she had times where she was doing better. As a parent it’s hard to know what to look for. Depression doesn’t have certain symptoms. Sometimes she seemed perfectly fine and other times she’d be completely down in the dumps.”
“We raised them in a Christian family and a lot of times that comes up as a band aid. It’s like “Well Christians aren’t supposed to be depressed.” and that’s not true. Everyone goes through depression at certain times but hers was more significant so I knew something had to be going on, so that’s when we reached out to get help. To be honest with you, the first part of the help was a nightmare. As a dad, that was a time when she needed her family more.”
“I’m retired. I’m at home so I’m the principle caregiver for her and her brother, and when she came to me my first thought was to call her pediatrician. They asked if she’s thought about suicide and I mentioned that it came up and they told me to take her to the facility. When I took her up there I’m thinking that we were taking her to see a doctor, you know like you do when you’re sick, and the lady there talks to Macee without us in there, and I just assumed she was interviewing her to see which doctor to take her to. That’s when she came out and informed us that they would be keeping Macee. ”
“It’s sad, it’s really sad because there were a lot of kids there whose parents didn’t want them. I’d walk through Hell and half of China to get whatever she needed to help her. As a parent you feel helpless. When I had to leave her, it really messed with me. I was literally sick because I’m the one who thought I was helping her. I’m the one who made the call, and it scarred me.”
“They kind of blamed themselves. They didn’t want me to resent them for that. It happened for a couple of months where they would come up to me and say ‘Macee, I hope you don’t resent us for this.’”
“After that we did all we could to meet her needs. Whether it was talking to a therapist or medication or whatever she needed, me and her mom both did it.”
“I’m really nervous about it. I’m actually really horrified, honestly...I have a problem trusting people so I don’t want to go off to school and not have friends but I don’t want to go down there and let myself out and have people betray my trust. I might get a little sad down there but I’m trying to be optimistic. I’ve been with my parents for 20 years now, and having lived with them and them doing everything for me, and once I’m down there it’s going to sink in that I’m alone, even though I’m not really alone. I don’t even know how to begin to really deal with it. I have until August but I don’t even want to think about it, and that’s how I get my anxiety: I think about things in the future that I don’t need to, instead of living in the moment and I’ll start freaking myself out. ”
“It bothers me, a lot. It’s different, especially when you suffer from depression and you’ve had issues with cutting and things like that. The first thing I think of is her migraines. Is she gonna be able to handle them on her own? And it’s something me and her mom just talked about yesterday. When she has them I’m the one who waits on her and gets her what she needs. She’s gonna be there with her roommates and I’m hoping that they’re gonna be sensitive and help her with what she’s going through. I worry because there are people there that we know but, they’re not her parents. ”
“I know that her depression is real, and that’s what I’ve always told her. One of the main things is don’t become a recluse and don’t do the things that you know will pile the depression. You’ve got to reach out to your family for help and keep that line of communication open.”
“That’s what helped me a lot. One day I sat there and I was thinking ‘I’m sick of being sad everyday.’ I’m not wanting to see my friends or do anything, and I was so mean to my parents all the time. One day, finally, I was just like ‘I’m going to try and do something.’ and I started to take steps to help take care of and help myself.”
“I just wish more people would reach out, I mean reach out to somebody and get help. Don’t be ashamed of it.”
“I would just tell myself that I was worth it… that I am worth being here and being around and being alive. Back then I hated myself, I hated the way that I carried myself and the way that I dealt with things.”
“With depression it’s never going to be easy, but you have to be that person for yourself. You have to be there for yourself when no one else is. My parents were there for me, but I was there for myself as well.”
If you or someone you know is in need of emotional support or guidance, help is available:
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline :1-800-273-8255