I was lying on the cold bathroom floor, holding my bloody wrist that I just had cut with a dirty razor blade. I was crying, screaming, “I want to die”. I just wanted to escape. I was told high school was going to be the best years of my life. I didn’t know that within those years, I would have almost ended my life. In Elementary school I was bullied so badly, that as little as seven years old, I wanted to kill myself. In middle school, if you did not wear designer brands, you were known as the uncool kid that no one wanted to associate with. I was considered fat and hideous in middle school.

I doubted my self-worth early on as kid, who would then come home, where her dad wouldn’t even call her beautiful. In fifth grade, I had an anxiety disorder, called, Trichotillomania. It is a condition where you have the sudden urge to pull out hair, caused by anxiety. Everyone has an addiction, and that is mine. I have struggled with my addiction for eight years now. In middle school, I began cutting my wrists, thighs, and any part of my body I thought was repulsive. I began starving myself because I was considered obese in that school. It then transitioned into ninth grade, where I would pass out in the staircase and be so weak to not even do my work. Imagine the devastation I would feel at school and then come home to your parents fighting after your dad just lost his job. Looking into your moms eyes, the person you found all your strength in and just finding fear in her eyes. I had a stable, loving home growing up, and now your world is crashing down on you. My sisters were my world, but now they’re strangers, starting new lives. I go up to my room, completely alone. Questioning my worth, I start cutting again. Sophomore year starts, New Year, fresh start, right? Until I lost my best friend, and had my first heartbreak all in one. The person I loved the most, left me, for another girl. I was completely and utterly alone.

I didn’t know how bad my depression was until I started having panic attacks every day. A panic attack feels like you’re locked up in someone else’s body, trying to escape. You try and try to make it stop, you try to breathe, but I was gasping for air. Clenching to this life that was no longer mine. People kept on asking me what was wrong, giving me hugs, telling me it was going to be okay. They didn’t realize that, was suffocating me more. How do you tell people you want to take your life away? My grades were sinking, my relationships with people started deteriorating. I started to lose all hope in myself and my so called relationship with God.  I grew up in a Christian home, went to church every Sunday, but I never really knew what it meant to have a true relationship with him. Especially now, I didn’t believe in him. Where was this big, powerful, healer? He was nowhere to be found to come save me, he never was. I asked myself every time I was hurting. I was angry with him, and even hated him. I was at the lowest point of my life where I did not care what the hell would happen to me. I started doing things, I would never do. I started taking prescription pills that weren’t mine, I smoked illegal substances, and I started to feel the urge to drink- to take the pain away. I almost slept with a guy that didn’t give a crap about me. I’m surprised I didn’t wake up in a coma from being in a drug overdose. That was my only wish though, to be dead, to not wake up from this nightmare. I was more afraid of living than dying. I wasn’t even a person anymore, I felt like I was already dead, that I would never be happy anymore, and feel alive again! The only thing that kept me going was my mom. My ultimate hero. She almost committed suicide when she was my age, knowing that she got through it, gave me strength to pull through too.

It was in the summer right before my junior year. I was sitting outside on an early, rainy morning, when I heard God speak to me. It was so vivid and clear. He simply spoke to me, and said, “I have always been there”. Memories flashed through my mind of when God was there for me. One day, when I was pushing down the razor blade deep into my skin, bleeding, I asked God, “Where are you? Give me a sign that you’re here” I opened the bible up, to any random page, and it was Isaiah 41:10. It read, “So do not fear for I am with you, and do not be dismayed for I am your God. I will strengthen you and help you, I will uphold you, with my righteous right hand. At the time, I just thought it was coincidence, but now I know he was telling me not to be afraid. He was there when I had blood streaming down my leg, thinking to myself, I’m going to die. I felt as if there was darkness surrounding me, and an evil presence pulling me down, just waiting for me to give up. When in reality, I didn’t want to die. HE was there guarding my body, protecting me from all harm. There’s a reason I’m still here. There’s a reason I’m still fighting, and alive.

On July 31st, 2016, I got saved. I realized how truly beautiful and worthy I am. Life is so much more than textbooks, breakups, hoax friendships, and school. Life is about finding who you are, finding friends who make you laugh until you cry. Life is about waking up at five in the morning and seeing the sunrise on the beach. Life is about counting down the seconds until the New Year begins. Life is about feeling the raindrop hit your face, and the fresh smell of snow. Life is about looking at your soulmates eyes glimmer and seeing the true beauty of their love for you. The meaning of life is to give YOUR life a meaning.  So do not give up.