Real Self Esteem Stories

I never really thought about my life being so great. I would walk around with no reason, or story to tell. You could almost say I was lifeless. Maybe I was just happy, because I thought that was how everyone was supposed to be. I didn't know what sadness was, until one point in my life where it all came crashing down to my feet, everything started to go wrong, and for the first time in my life I felt sadness. That day I was introduced to someone I would like to call utter depression.

When I was a child, you could say I was normal, just a carefree, happy and enthusiastic little girl. I had no real problems going on, or anything to disappoint me really. Sure my parents were divorced, but in today's society that isn't even a problem anymore. It was all good, everything was running smooth, I went to school every day, I did my work, I made friends, and I stayed out of trouble. It was almost like I was normal for a small part of my life. As elementary withered away with age, I soon was a student in middle school.

You could almost say middle school ruined my life, but you could also say that it made me see reality for the first time. Fall of 2006, I was starting 7th grade, and I'm not going to lie, I was really nervous for the first day of school to roll around. I was wearing a new outfit; my hair was clean and shiny. My mom walked me to the bus stop for the middle school bus. I didn't know why at the time, but in the back of my mind I was really scared. Not just the I hope the people like me there scared, but the what if I lose myself in this school and become a mindless clone like the teenagers I always saw around the area, type of scared. I now know why I was so scared, but it took me almost all three years there to realize it.

Grade 7 was okay, sometimes people would treat me bad, but my marks were decent, and I had a few friends here and there. Grade 8 was worse. I don't know why, but a lot of people gave me a hard time. I don't want to get into too much detail, because it's hard for me to think back to then, due to all the sadness that was coming up, grade 8 was kind of a blur. It almost feels like it didn't really happen, and it was just a nightmare I had one night.

When grade 9 hit, I knew something was up. I was a nice person, I never was rude to anyone else, I minded my business, but for some messed up reason, everyone was mean to me. People would throw garbage at me, take "secret pictures" of me, trip me in the hallway, or just plain laugh in my face. It was really awful because I couldn't concentrate on school work when everyone was giving me hell behind my back. I lost a lot of friends in the first half of grade 9. It got to the point where I only had one friend left. This friend was my heart and soul. She made me feel like I actually belonged, and she taught me how to fend for myself. School was getting worse each day, by the time it was December of grade 9 I was one of the most hated kids in my school. I really felt wrong, and that was when utter depression introduced itself to me.

I was trying to get through grade 9, but nothing would work. I couldn't just ignore those kids, it didn't help, and the teachers didn't even care about me. There was nothing out there for me, and I felt so lifeless and like garbage. Then in the middle of December, I turned into an emo kid. I thought, why not? They're sad all the time, I was depressed, I liked the style, and it would be the one thing that I could do without people calling me down. I started wearing tight skinny jeans, gory band t-shirts, and all my clothes were black. It was coming along well; I was making my transformation into an emo kid. I would straighten my hair every day, put on heavy eyeliner, I even dyed my hair black.

My iPod consisted of heavy death metal music, and sad emotional songs about death and heartbreak. I never talked to anyone except my one friend. She was everything to me, and I really wish I met her sooner than in the middle of grade 8. I was such a quiet depressed girl sitting in the back of every class with my music turned up loud so I could drown out the sound of people talking crap about me. I grew my hair to cover most of my face. I never did any school work, or homework. My academics were going straight down. The teachers hardly noticed, and everyone soon started calling me "emo". I didn't care if they called me emo. I wanted to be emo it was the only thing I actually fit into.

In January, I skipped school for the first time. My one friend taught me how to do it without getting caught. We went to the mall, I thought it was amazing. I didn't feel bad for ditching class that day. I felt free, and a little less sad than normal. I thought it wouldn't be very often that we skipped school, but we actually did it so much. We would leave during lunch, or before the first class, and go on the bus, either to the mall or the park or anywhere. We couldn't go home, because both of our parents stayed home during the day, so we always had to have somewhere to hide out. My mom would always get calls from the school at exactly 6 pm. They would be a recording of the principal saying "This is ____ School; a student in your household named ____ has missed one or more periods during the day." I would try to plan it so we wouldn't be home when this happened, so she wouldn't find out.

She would answer sometimes, and ask me why so I had to say "Ohhh? I don't know" or "I was in the bathroom during attendance." At the time, my mom had no idea. We started out just missing one or two days a week, but I got so addicted to skipping school that I convinced her to skip almost every other day. It was the only way to get out of how badly the other kids treated me. The other kids even started making fun of my friend because she hung out with me. We were both outcasts, both emo, and both quiet. In March 2009 aside from the few kids at school that did drugs, I was one of the worst kids in the school.

People were scared of me, and the teachers would have staff meetings about me. My mom was getting a little worried about me, she wanted nothing but for me to be happy, and I obviously wasn't. The only time I would smile was when I was with my friend. I was failing almost all of my classes, and all I did in class, when I actually went was draw in my note book. Art was always something for me to do. It made me forget all the crap going on around me, and I could just draw. My teachers would always take my drawings, rip them up in front of me, and say "do your work", I would just pull out another piece of paper and draw something again. I was so depressed, and misunderstood, that at the end of March, I tried to commit suicide. I didn't really have a plan, but I knew I wanted out of this life. So I took about 10 or so pain relief pills, thinking that it would kill me, and laid down.

The next week, utterly disappointed about my last suicide attempt I was going to try it again. I didn't think any of it through, no note, no real plan. I just looked in my cupboard for some chemicals. I found this bottle, it was hydrogen peroxide. At the time I had no idea what it was, but I thought it would be really poisonous, I poured half a glass of that stuff, and downed it. It made my throat feel so tight, and I almost threw up, but it obviously didn't work. I stopped wasting my time trying to kill myself, because I was so disappointed that nothing I had tried worked. I never really got into slitting my wrists, I didn't want any more pain than I was already going through.In the end of April 2009 my mom decided it was time for us to go to a therapist. I didn't agree with this idea, and during the first sessions, I would hardly talk. But when she did get me to talk about why I was so sad, I would cry so hard. There was so much sadness deep within me that I could cry at any given point, and I did.

She was helping me, but I just wanted to be set free from myself. Every Monday night at 5:30, we would go to see the therapist. She was repairing my emotional wounds with her wise words. Each week she would tell me more about myself then I ever would have known. I was becoming a better person with each session. Even though it cost quite a bit of money my mom kept taking me there, because she knew it was working. May rolled around, I was still depressed, still going through therapy, and still skipping school, but I was learning so much each Monday that I kind of forgot about the kids at school. I was learning that they are not important, and that I shouldn't even care what they said about me, because it wasn't true. The therapist asked me if I had a high school picked out, I didn't. I obviously didn't want to go to my designated school, because all the other 9th graders from the school I was at would be there too. She recommended this one special high school for me. It sounded really weird at first, the way she explained it made me feel like I was going to an asylum or something. But the place she talked about was a small self directed high school with a little over one hundred students. Everyone was sort of different like me, and they treated each other with full respect, and it was art based.

That moment, I knew where I wanted to go in life. I went for a tour of that school; my friend came along with me. I was so amazed it was everything I ever wanted in life, in one small building. The kids there didn't judge me like almost every other kid has. I soon applied for that school, and went for an interview about three weeks later. It was the end of June, and I had got accepted into that school for the beginning of fall. It was the best day of my life. And even though my friend was moving far away that summer, I was happy. I was finally getting away from those rotten kids, and going somewhere where I can be myself and actually do something with my life. The whole summer 2009 I was excited for school to start. I stopped wearing really tight clothes, I let my hair grow so it wasn't a little past my ears anymore, I didn't wear all black, I was finally turning into myself.

When school started in the beginning of September, I was myself, I was happy, I had a good handful of friends, and I felt great. Yeah my pretty much best friend was gone, but so much more was coming for me to look forward to, that it wasn't a sad thing. Right now it is the beginning of January 2010, I am still attending that high school, I stopped going to therapy in early September, and I have so many good friends, I feel happy, safe, beautiful, confident, smart, and just all around great. Thank you magical therapist. I know magic is just a figment of the mind, but you truly saved my life. You completely turned it around for me. I am just so happy I can't even express it enough. It brings tears to my eyes to talk about how much you saved me, but I'm only crying because I'm so grateful of everything you have made me see. I am not an emo anymore; I am just me, myself, happy. I don't even care that all of that happened in my past, because I'm here now, safe, warm, alive, everything. I'm just alive. Thank you. Me.

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