My story

I never thought I’d have the guts to write this, let alone put out my story where everybody can see it. Here I am, though. I thought to myself “Why not start a blog, if only one person reads this, I may have the impact to help just one person” and helping just one person is enough for me. My mom and dad left the picture at the age of three and they were very off and on throughout my life. Before I had been removed from their custody, I was known as the kid who would walk up and down the neighborhood asking why my mommy and daddy wouldn’t wake up. Once, when I was 5, my mom had visited me while I lived with my grandparents, and she had coated our bathroom with blood from where had hit a vein too hard. She couldn’t even wait until the hour of our visit was over to have heroin coursing through her veins. I begged for her to love me, and call me, however, I was always the one making the calls. A 5-year-old shouldn’t have to ask her grandparents if her mommy and daddy loved her. They soon stopped being mentioned in my life and they were only a fleeting thought in my mind now and then. The summer before 3rd grade I had been swimming in my grandmother's pool, my cousins from Maryland had come down and brought a friend with them. The friend made me pull my pants down and he went underwater to look and touch me against my will. He was 12, I was 7, I never told anybody. I’m now only realizing how much that affected my childhood. However, the past four years have been the hardest years of my life. 2020, same for most people, was the lowest point I have ever been. The year started off and on January 2, my pop-pop passed of cancer. That was one of the hardest losses I had experienced at that point. 2 weeks later my uncle committed suicide in my aunt's garage. Two deaths in one month and the year has just begun. Then the lockdown hit right before my 13 birthday. The lockdown not only changed me as a person, but it made me grow up before I should’ve. I felt alone, scared, and uncertain of my future, and where covid-19 would leave the world when or even if it passed. My home life was terrible at the time, I was being mentally abused and cursed out daily. I resorted to self-harm, I found that hurting my body took away the mental pain that I felt. It was like a drug to me, I became so addicted to the feeling of physical pain because I no longer had to feel the mental pain. As long as my skin stung, I was numb. I started journaling as a way to get my feelings out, however, my grandmother, who I lived with at the time, read it. When she found out about my self-harm, she didn’t comfort me or try to help me, she claimed it was for attention. That set me into an even deeper spiral. I then planned my first suicide attempt which resulted in having no glass or sharp objects in my room, including mirrors. She continued to ignore my ongoing mental health issues, and brushed it off as “just a phase.” I also started to eat, a lot. When my grandmother saw how much I was eating she threatened to lock the cabinets, and she and my grandfather would call me names. That didn’t help, however, because I started sneaking food at all hours of the night and would binge on extreme amounts of food when I was depressed. It resulted in weight gain, which only lowered my self-esteem and made me more depressed, I became so fixated on my weight and would weigh myself every day. In 2021 the lockdown lifted, and we were going to school 2 days out of the week. I started being bullied because of how much weight I had gained. To relieve the stress off of me I would come home and self-harm. It was a never-ending cycle, and I felt even more lost than I had been before. I wanted help but every adult I confided in and asked for help accused me of wanting attention. So I stopped asking for help and dealt with it on my own. 2022 came and I started to act out majorly in school, I was in detention almost daily, and fell into the wrong crowd of people. I decided I was going to run away one day after school. I had nothing but my backpack, and a dead cell phone. I hid in the woods for a couple of hours, not knowing what to do. it was November, and very cold, and I had no jacket. The whole neighborhood was looking for me, and finally, my lifelong best friend found me and took me home. I still never got the help I needed, and was screamed at, and punished very harshly. Then in May of 2022, someone very close to me committed suicide. The deaths never seemed to stop. Toward the end of 2022, I got diagnosed with a rare bone tumor, non-malignant, but very painful. It caused me to miss a lot of school and I fell behind on all of my work. I was soon failing almost everything and was stuck in the same helpless state I had been in 2020. The holidays felt nothing but sad and depressing for me, I spent most of those months in my room sleeping or crying. The day after Christmas I started to self-harm worse than I had ever before. I planned my second suicide attempt, at the beginning of January, which got me admitted to a hospital. I remember when I was in the ambulance, the EMT put his hand on my shoulder and said “Don’t make lifelong decisions for a short-term problem” Those words have stuck with me ever since. While I was in the hospital, I was diagnosed with extreme depression, anxiety, and a binge eating disorder. When I got released, I came home and nothing had changed. My grandparents mocked me for my triggers, and all my trauma became a joke to them. I decided I wanted to move in with my mom. However on the day of court, after she already received full legal custody she sat me down and told me that she had never planned on taking me. That was like a slap in the face. I fell right back into the cycle that I had worked so hard to get out of. I had no clue where I was going to live, or who I would live with. My dad stepped up and decided to take me in. I had a lot of built-up anger for him, for abandoning me as a child, and I’m still working on forgiving him to this very day. I met my now boyfriend during the same week of court, who helped me in more ways than a person could help. He became my lifeline in a way. I will forever be grateful for everything he and his family have helped me get through, even if they don’t realize it. I’m self-harm-free now, but to say I’m fully healed would be a big lie. I still have scars, and I get insecure when I wear clothes that show them, however, I can’t change the past. I have learned to ignore what people have to say about them, and me because I know that those people are probably hurting just as much as I once was. I have a lot of forgiving to do, and a lot of apologizing to do to anybody I may have hurt over the past four years. You may have read this and laughed or taken a screenshot. Maybe you read it and related it. However, no matter what you took from this, I just want you to know that there are millions of people in the world who have experienced some sort of pain you have felt, and trust me it does get better. It may hurt for a while, and it may take several years, but there’s always a light at the end of the tunnel. If you can’t find your happiness, then you have to become your source of happiness in this messed up world. Suicide is not the answer it not only affects you, but I have watched it destroy my whole family. I’m proud of you, and no matter what you may feel like you are never alone.

much love, Amaris