Reflective Essay: Traversing The Walk Of Life

All proverbs come with perspective, and perspective was defiantly the key to understanding this one. Traversing the walk of life, returning from depression and suicide; things are indeed their worst as they get better, a shining light and breaking free.
Starting years ago as a child, unaware of the real world, I would spend days reading, escaping the hatred of life. I assumed everyone did the same thing, either with TV, games, or wearing a figurative mask and socializing. Reading books was my way out, I got to escape the feelings of hate and sadness, while being alone as the family thought reading to be a healthy pastime, which I agree with. I kept to myself, forcing others away finding reasons to stay unassociated and unconnected with other

children in school.
Years went by and things only changed slightly, I continued reading books to escape. The first big change was getting my own PC for Christmas at 9 years old. Though the memory of dialup still haunts me, I started to spend all my time online if not kept up in room reading. The internet was vast and I continued to learn whatever I could everyday; relishing in the knowledge and isolation. This further ingrained my negative behavior of self hatred and depression, though I didn’t realize it until much later.
Again time ticks by, I still consider myself to not have true friends until high school. The few I talked to was just a better alternative to the bore of the watered down school topics and lessons. The depression only increased over the years, and started to peak in high school as I began to sink my time more and more into video games. Resulting in nights of no sleep, and literal dehydration from lack of breaks; only upon reflection did I realize my desperation to escape myself through a computer screen.
This continued throughout the first two years of high school. As a sophomore I was breezing through classes despite my addiction I was already taking classes with the juniors and seniors. This was when my perspective of myself began to change; I started getting a few actual friends and a girlfriend, who at the time made me feel much better about myself than I ever had. Time continued to go on and we both graduated, but despite what should have been happy times, I still felt dead inside most of the time; still hating myself, feeling no pride in my accomplishments, feeling dead in every aspect except my relationship.
This was the turning point for me, both of us in different schools, relationship falling apart because of distance and the lack of understanding each other. The relationship died, and after experiencing some happiness the dark emptiness I felt seemed even more profound. Everyone I once knew had moved to different places or was sparse in contact, so one at a time contact was dropped. All that was left was starting a new degree program at a new school.
Starting fresh at Forsyth Tech worked well for a while, but as my second semester began the self hatred, anxiety and depression began to swarm over again.

Everything was always bleak, I forced people away, doing group projects solo, ignoring the attempts of conversation. I knew that it was destructive, but at the same time didn’t care. Eventually, after months of anxiety induced nausea and vomiting I went to a general family doctor. This was both a good step forward and a bad choice, good in that I was finally seeking help, but bad in that I didn’t seek a proper specialist. After 15 minutes I walked out with a script feeling no better that

before.
Thus began 6 months of bouncing between random medications from my family doctor, in which I became more bipolar, depressed and consistently anxious.

Seeking self destruction I began to drink heavily and smoke, both as a torture to the body and slight numbness in my conscious mind. The mania and anxiety also led to job loss. Eventually I slipped deeper into self harm, via fasting, binging, overworking myself in the gym, and eventual cutting. At an all time low and dark pit of despair, suicide became more and more of a soothing thought. Fortunately I failed in my attempts. This was what gave me my perspective, fresh breath to have and reflect

upon.
Proper therapy, medication, and time allowed for this dark night to finally pass. New light shines as I finally feel the spectrum of healthy emotion and embrace the new friends gathered over the experience of recovery. Though the self hate is gone, anxiety fading, the depression still lingers, but everyday seems to fade more and more into memory.