My story

In elementary school, I was so happy. I loved the earth, and people and the world. I cried when my dad cut down the old maple tree in my backyard. I screamed at him “let it live! Daddy please doesn’t kill it”. When we went fishing and my dad caught one, I’d sit beside him and pour water in its mouth telling it “fishy, don’t die. It’s alright”. I was a pretty cute kid I must say. Though when I disobeyed, my dad would take me out on the front porch, throw me over his knees and hit me so hard.  He’d spank me and yell at me. Since I was only about five at the time, I never understood what I had done wrong. As I grew up I cared so much about my friends and family. If my dad or brother jokingly teased me id cry. I was so hyper sensitive. I really looked into everything anyone said top me. By grad seven, id kept one really good friend at school. Everyone else in the class thought we were really odd because we would take care of worms and moths. I was SO crazy, I loved dance and life so much, I felt great. Then something happened. this one girl in class, my old best friend, had self-harm marks all over her arm. And everyone gave her so much attention, and for some reason, I, for the first time felt jealousy. She had something unique about her. She was popular. She stood out. I wanted attention too.

          At the end of the year my mom moved me to Langley fine arts school. I didn’t know anybody at all, but I managed to make a decent group of friends. At the time, my mom and I fought a lot. I was going on 13, so I obviously my hormones were going crazy. I was quite a little bitch to my mom sometimes. I would put up a fight about almost everything. But sometimes, these fights turned into something a little worse. It started slapping, then to pushing, and finally to hitting me. I didn’t know how to handle my stress and those sharp sad feeling started to creep in. I started self-harming. Id steal pencil sharpener blades and hurt myself almost everynight.At the time, my mom’s anger was my greatest fear. I was SO scared of getting hurt. Pain was so scary too me. The worst feeling I remember, was when I tried to leave arguments. I'd start to walk and shed yell “COME BACK HERE” and I’d start to run, and she would chase me. If I could make it id hide in the bathroom and lock the door. My worst memories was coming back from school one day. We were arguing, as usual. By the time we pulled into the driving it was screaming. When I stepped out, id had enough and I swore at her for the first time. “FUCK YOU”. My mom grabbed my arms and threw me to the pavement and got on top of me and screamed and swore so close to my face I could see her breath. She hit me and hit me and I cried so hard, and that day, I think I learned my lesson. The next couple days were really awkward, until she apologized. And I loved her so much, so I forgave her right away. We never fought like that again. During all of this, my older brother Shane started experimenting with drugs. It made me very concerned, but also made me feel invisible. All the focus in the house was on him, and the only time I got attention was during those fights. He continued using, and I continued to disappear. The self-harming got worse. And my brother had pressured me to smoke weed with him… I loved it.

By now I was going into grade 9. The friends I used to hang out with started to find new groups, until I didn’t have them with me any longer. So I started to branch out but nothing was right. I started to get bullied a little by the “popular” girls. They’d laugh at me when they walked by, try to start rumors about me and threaten me. “I’m going to slit your throat if you don’t shut up Michelle”. But I pretended I was strong. ”Go for it.” Half way through the year I moved to alder grove secondary, where my best friend went. My brother had stopped doing drugs for the most part, and I had stopped self-harming. I thought I’d be better off at acss, but after a week my ‘best friend’ started to not want to hang out at school anymore. It made me really sad. The pot smoking was becoming more regular. I was starting to even buy my own. Every night I would get really stoned and just try to forget everything. It felt great. When the end of the year came, I decided to go back to fine arts school. Alder grove was sort of a shithole. Ha-ha.

So now it was grad 10. All I could think about was getting high. I hated myself and the world and I hurt do badly. I wanted everything to just leave me alone. I started hating everything. School, My friends, Dance, life…everything just altimitly sucked. I felt so weak, so I started to starve because I wanted some control of myself. The self-harming got really bad. A lot deeper than before.  I found a friend who smoked as well. Every lunch we went to her house and got high. I started getting lower grades compared to my straight A’s previously. I hated life more and more until I didn’t want to be in it anymore. Every morning I woke I would open my eyes and think “shit. Another day, I wish I didn’t ever have to wake up”. I went into the bathroom and smoked weed out the window. I skipped so many meals and I started losing weight. I started caring too much about how fat I thought I was. The number dropping was the only thing in my life where I could access that feeling of happiness. I knew it was fake emotion, but it was all I had. BY now I was high all day, every day, for three months, and was prescribed with antidepressants. I was only sober for those couple minutes in the morning before going into the bathroom. I felt stupid, and worthless, and even though I had lost a lot of weight, I was still fat and ugly. One day I went to the store and stole diet pills, and extra strength ibuprofen. When the diet pills didn’t work and I ran out of weed money, I decided it was time.

I took X amount of the ibuprofens but I still woke up the next morning. I was so pissed off. But I didn’t tell anybody. A couple days later at my brother’s hockey tournament I was smoking in the bathroom with that same “best friend”. I hadn’t eaten in days. I was weak.  When got into the hotel room everything was spinning. I was falling over from a dizzy spell and greening out at the same time. I passed out and hit my head really hard on the corner of this dresser. And I had a seizure. I remember nothing of this until I woke up. And saw my friend freaking out above me. So I decided to eat some oatmeal to stop the dizziness. That was my first time purging. The shame wasn’t worth my health. I wanted attention, and I wanted people to see how sick I was so bad. I tried overdosing again when I got home, but I don’t really want to go into those details. I was attempted to cape for a couple days to “cool down” then sent back home. This time, I thought, I would succeed. I was so close to take a lethal amount. I remember feeling the rolling around in my hands and crying. I remember thinking it was the only way. I was shaking. Then, before Id took them that bestfriend walked in. she didn’t d=see what I was doing, and told me, “I’m sleeping over!” I didn’t talk a lot that night because I was furious. LEAVE ME ALONE. I had missed my chance. When I woke up my mom told me were going to the hospital. Those 5 days in cape I looked around for the=ins the self-harm. Id breaking cds, pens.. Just to make something just sharp enough to make me bleed. I didn’t eat while I was there. It was easy, no one would make me eat, and I loved that.

On the 3rd day my dad and brother were coming over to visit me. They’d been fighting on the way over, and my brother had jumped out and ran part of the way here. We went to my room when my dad finally arrived. He started crying a lot. He t0old me to smarten up, and that I need to get my shit together. “Stop what you’re doing “he said. Then my brother stepped in and started yelling at him, and pushing started and more yelling……. I kicked them both out. Hah, what a fantastic visit.



I was now admitted to p3. My mom came and visited me a lot at the beginning. But neither she nor my dad understood what was going on, although my mom was more in tune with things. Every time she visited for the first little while id breakdown and throw things and hit my head on the wall and begged and begged to go home. But they always left without me. My dad told me how I was “putting the entire family through hell” and another ti9me said “this is ridiculous. Look at what you’re doing. You have 2 weeks to get better Michelle. You’re getting behind in school and wasting time. Two weeks. Get your shit together, it’s not THAT HARD. It definitely is that hard though. It’s really really hard. Where I go from here? How am I doing? Too be honesty I’m very confused about what I want but im definitely feeling a little more hopeful and abet more alive than I did before. I’m just praying for a miracle.