There is nothing more unbearable, more overpowering, more tragic than an untold story. You may be able to hold it inside of you for a little while, but a story is always something that’s going to beg to be told. You may delay it, tell yourself that you haven’t found the right words, but in the end you’ll decide that those words are good enough. I have an untold story, one that I didn’t think I’d ever tell because I was too scared. I guess things change.

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     My story takes place last year. I went into my Sophomore year of high school reluctantly, but hopefully. I wanted so many things to happen and I had so much to look forward to. I was ready for a year where I got straight A’s, had a boyfriend, and went to the movies every weekend. I wasn’t ready for reality.
Depression is like a disease. It takes over your body and at first you don’t even notice it. It seeps in slowly, secretly, taking over every cell of your being until you are nothing but a home for a sickness that is killing you. It’s a sickness that only you can cure. When the depression strikes though, you can’t think about trying to cure yourself. The only thing you can think about is how godd*** sad you are. Your soul feels like it is ripping apart from all of the hate you have for yourself and then you hate yourself even more when you realize how much more hurt you want to feel. You look at happy people and feel disgusted. You think, Don’t they know that it’s not worth it? None of this is worth it. Why do they even try? I wouldn’t have admitted it then, but I’ll admit it now: I wanted to die.
     My year continued to be a pattern of highs and lows, but the lows just kept getting lower and the highs couldn’t keep up. My mind started to break. The fragile things in my head that made me, me were no longer the same. I became different. I was irritable and closed off. I hated how I felt, but I also didn’t want to feel better. I thought I deserved how I was feeling. I had a burning hatred for every single piece of my DNA and I just wanted to rip it apart and put it back together in a way that would make me perfect. I wanted to be thin and desirable. I wanted to get good grades without trying and I wanted people to look at me and know who I was. I wanted to be able to walk all over people like they walked all over me. When I think back on it now, it seems like the depression went on forever. In reality though, it was only about six months. Still, that’s a long time to have that sickness running through your veins.
     When my sister was born, it was like shock to the heart. I’m a firm believer in that, as time goes on, you love your loved ones more and more. The increase in the amount of love is steady and you almost never feel it. It’s like trying to watch someone you live with grow taller. When my sister was born though, I felt something I had never felt before. I felt pain from love. It was like looking at her caused my heart to grow twice as big in an instant. I was shaking with emotions that I had dealt with before, but never in that quantity. Once again, I felt different.
     I looked at my sister that day and knew that I needed to be there, that I needed to stay alive. I wanted to live. Not just for her though. Not just for my brother, and my mom, and my dad, and my friends, and the others that I loved. No, I also wanted to live for me. My sister reminded me of something that I had forgotten. She reminded me of what it felt like to be happy and all of a sudden, that’s what I wanted. I wanted to be happy, and healthy, and here. I’m not saying that I got better right away. I didn’t. Six months of sickness is a lot to get over and there were times when I feared I would relapse. I didn’t though and eventually I came to the realization that I wouldn’t.
     I am stronger now.