Over the summer of 2019 everything in my life changed. My life was turned upside down and I didn’t know what to do with it anymore. The summer started great. Everything was amazing. I played a lot with my cousins and sister. We played soccer with my cousin as the hot sand touched our feet. It was everything I could dream of when we ran into the water all sweaty after playing soccer in the hot sun. The salty water touched our skin and little crystals of salt covered our entire bodies. At dinner time we would  get a delicious pizza with hot melted cheese and greasy pepperoni. We  drank fizzy drinks and felt the bubbles go up our noses as we fell to the ground with laughter. We watched the breathtaking sunset while laying on the sand forgetting about all of our problems. 

Back then, I didn’t know what real problems were. I thought my phone being taken away, getting my pen stolen, or getting shouted at by my parents were real problems, but after that summer my  point of view changed and the problems I thought were real problems became nothing. At that moment, it was me, the sand against my body, and the salty, refreshing breeze coming from the sea. The next day, we went to the train station to pick up my mom because she had to work longer and couldn’t come earlier with us. At that point, I already knew something was wrong. She wouldn’t give me her phone to play games with and she didn’t talk with my dad that much. She was mostly on her phone. My sister and I started getting suspicious over one thing and when it became true everything changed. 

My parents were getting divorced and I was only 13, which was even harder for me because I was fully aware of what was going on and it was hell. My parents would argue every single night, and I just cried myself to sleep with full volume music on my headphones so I wouldn’t hear them arguing. The next day I would  wake up with dark circles under my eyes, my face  red from crying. One day, I lay in my bed the whole day and only left my room for dinner because it was my sister’s birthday. We went to a restaurant and pretended like everything was okay but nothing was okay anymore, nothing was the same. I walked holding in my tears so no one would know that something was wrong. I wanted to scream, I wanted to scream “why me” but my mouth was shut. It felt like someone stitched my lips together into a big smile that covered my pain. 

As soon as we entered the restaurant, I ran into the bathroom and salty tears started pouring down my cheeks. I waited for someone to run after me to hug me, ask me what happened, and tell me that everything will be okay that everything will get better, but that never happened. No one ran after me. I was just sitting on the bathroom floor sobbing. I felt my throat tighten and I couldn’t breath. I was having a panic attack. I knew it would never be the same. I came out of the bathroom like nothing happened with my fake smile on my face covering the torture I was going through. The whole night, I played hide and seek with my cousins, not even looking at my parents. Everyday it got worse and worse. They would argue even louder, my dad would leave, and I would cry into my pillow even harder. I didn’t even need to sleep at that point. I felt like I was losing emotions, yet my tears were still pouring down my cheeks and they never stopped. The next day we packed and left for home, acting like a family but we weren’t a family anymore. It’s just no one would say it to my face. Maybe I was 13 but I wasn’t stupid. I could see what was going on just like my sister. 

On the way home, I was listening to music and looking out of the window when suddenly we stopped and my mom told us to get out of the car quickly and move as far away from the car as possible. I didn’t really understand what was happening, so I got out of the car and left all my stuff behind. Without my shoes on, I started walking on the hot cement heated by the sun. As soon as I realized that our car was setting on fire my first though was “Ha that’s karma” but my second though was “Oh sh*t my phone and everything is burning inside” and I started crying. We were on the highway for 3 or more hours. It was the middle of June so it was pretty hot and without water it was even worse. It was getting dark and we were still waiting for a car to pick us up. At least the stars were beautiful that night. We were home at 1 or 2 am. My mom went and locked herself in her bedroom immediately and my dad was sleeping on the couch. I was yawning the whole time and when I threw myself on to the bed I fell asleep within seconds. 

For the next two weeks my days looked the same. My mom would leave the house at 5am and come back at almost 1am and she would lock herself in her bedroom and not talk to anyone. I would just sit in my room and cry all day listening to music blasted on my speaker. One day my dad took me and my sister on a trip to Warsaw. We didn't know the real reason why he did that, but we found out right after we came back home. We had a lot of fun in Warsaw buying clothes, candy, and going to the movies, but when we came back we found out that my dad took us to Warsaw just so we wouldn’t see my mom moving out of the house. I instantly burst into tears and ran to my room. It was one of the worst days. I locked myself in and listened to music. At about 2 am I got the worst idea. I regret to this day that I took a little swiss knife because that was the only thing I had and began self harming. I got highly addicted and did it everyday. I liked the feeling and seeing the blood. I loved it and couldn’t stop. Then I stopped sleeping and would hear voices in my head and I would hallucinate. It was pretty bad. At that point I hadn't seen my mom for over 3 months and school started. 

My friends started noticing that something is wrong with me so I told my best friend about my parents but not about what I did to myself. I tried quitting self harming but I couldn’t because the voices kept  telling me to do it more and more. I couldn’t sleep, and I cried everyday for hours. I felt trapped and like there was no way out. I really wanted to talk to my mom. I missed her very very much at that point. I haven’t seen her for almost 6-7 months including the time she would be at my house but never talked to me. It was hard but my older sister cared for me a lot and slowly became my second mom. I didn’t care about school and all my grades were failing because why should I care about school and grades when my life was falling apart? That wasn’t the worst part. The worst part was when my friend noticed the cuts on my arms and she got really worried. I told her that my cat scratched me but she didn’t believe that, so I asked her not to tell anyone. She said she wouldn’t but when she found out that I was hearing voices she texted my sister about it. My sister knew that my dad wouldn’t understand so after a year of not talking to my mom and not seeing her, which was the main reason for all of my problems, my sister called her because she felt like she had no other choice. That was the first time in 10 months I saw my mom’s name pop up on my screen. My eyes started to water as I couldn’t believe it. I heard her voice. It was the first time in 10 months. When I heard her voice it sounded worried, but I still didn’t feel like she was worried about me. I feel like she cared more about what others would think. We hung off he phone and even though I knew that she doesn’t care about me anymore I was smiling like stupid, I think that was the first time in a year that I smilied a real smile. The whole time she was gone I just saw her post things on her instagram partying with her friends as I was slowly dying.