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Words

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In Their Own

tlight o
o
p
s

mental health

Teens share their stories
of dealing with mental
health challenges.

Battling With Your Brain

M

y brain is a bully. You
are ugly. You suck. You
will never be good
enough. You are a failure. You are
a disappointment. You have no
talents. You have no skill. You are
dumb. You are worthless. You will
never achieve anything in this
world. You have no purpose in
being alive. Nobody likes you.
Every day I wake up in what
seems an unexplainable dystopia
reminding myself of my non-
existent worth. I am worthless.
It is a vicious cycle of negativity.
The sun is just a lost planet, and
darkness is all I see. It chips away
at my brain. Each day that passes,
a little part of me falls off and dis-
integrates.
Countless days and nights in
agonizing pain, it feels like I’m
being stabbed in the chest by a
sharp knife. I feel completely and
utterly alone. I begin to question
what I am in this world and why
I’m alive. I am scared of myself.
The tears pour out of your
eyes. Your chest aches of anxiety;
your head pounds from hours of
crying; you are nauseous; your leg
shakes; you feel weak; your body
feels heavy as steel.
There is no word to perfectly
describe depression. The closest I
can get is horror.
It is your childhood nightmare.
It is your teenage nightmare. It is
your adult nightmare. It is your
worst nightmare. It is a night-
mare except for the fact that you

can’t wake up from it.
Through all the suffering, I am
still here today. How? When your
mind tells you that you want to
die, how can you survive?
The fury. The anger. The fuel.
This was something I didn’t learn
until one of my darkest periods.
Those months were the worst I
had ever felt in my life. After a
never-ending battle, I finally was
on the right track with the right
help. This was only because I
used the power of my words to
speak up and communicate. If I
didn’t, my life would have turned
out very differently.
Life can suck. A lot. For many
reasons. Everyone has their per-
sonal struggles, and everyone goes
through something in their life.
I used to let mental illness
define who I was. It controlled
me. Now, I learned that the hard-
est things you face in life only
make you stronger. My illness is
my drive. My fuel. It fuels me to
face it head on and not let it win.
I am tired of quitting. Tired of not
seeing the sun rise.
I matter because I know the
pain. I know it. I feel it. I experi-
ence it.
I matter because every day I
strive to let that dark hole inside
of me spark a soaring light on the
outside.
I matter because I have been
through the worst of times. If
I can make it out alive, so can
you. •

“The semicolon was chosen because in literature a semicolon is used when an author
chooses to not end a sentence. You are the author and the sentence is your life.”

— THE SEMICOLON PROJECT

continued on page 12

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April 19 • 2018

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