To whoever will listen,

I’m a teenager, and as such, I’m moody and a bit aloof when it comes to my parents.  I tend to use a lot of verbal irony.  I tend to say “I’m fine,” a lot.  I tend to deny what I really feel in favor of what I’ve been told I should feel.  So, I guess this is my way of coming out to myself.

I’m not coming out of the closet sexually, because I have never had that issue.  My issue is simple, something that millions of people and teenagers just like me deal with all the time and seem not to worry about admitting it.  But right now, I want to finally admit it to myself and, I guess, anyone who will listen.
I’m depressed.
It sounds stupid, at least I think so.  I wouldn’t admit that I was for the longest time.  I guess I was afraid to say it.  It was this big cloud that I never wanted to confront and I guess it just got a bit too thick for me to handle.
I have suicidal thoughts.

Again, something I never wanted to admit, aloud or to myself.  I was so, so afraid of how my image of myself or others’ opinions of me might change if I admitted it.  I was so afraid to face it that I shoved it down, so far down that I occasionally wondered if it was just my imagination that I had them or that I was depressed.

I still remember the day I was sat in the car with my mother, looking out the window with a, now that I think about it, forced smile.  She had cleared her throat and gripped the wheel a bit tighter.  We had been in a peaceful silence before, and nothing that came to mind should have brought it up, but what she said next must have been inspired by something.  “Are you depressed?”

I had looked at her from the corner of my eye, a sinking feeling hitting me in the gut.  I brushed it off quickly with an even wider forced smile directed to her.  “Of course not,” I said, “I would know if I was.  Trust me.”
I had lied, although I lied to myself and said it was the truth.  I wasn’t depressed.  Not like my friends who came into school looking beyond exhausted.  Not like those who came in and forced their smiles and bore cuts on their bodies.  I wasn’t depressed.  I was so sure of myself, at least that’s what I made myself think.  And for a time after that, I was fine.  I thought the same things and refused to think I was afraid.

About a month later, it happened for the first time.  I had broken a picture frame.  It had fallen down the stairs from a ledge and the glass had shattered.  Like anyone would, I put shoes on and rushed to pick up the pieces.  My dad had offered to do it, but it was my fault, so I told him I would do it.

It was in that moment, the moment that I picked up the first piece and it had sliced my palm, drawing up some blood, that it hit me.  Hard.  I liked it, and I wanted more.  I suddenly had the urge to hurt myself.  I had felt that same urge before, and to be honest, it always came with the thought that maybe it wouldn’t matter if I hurt myself and didn’t survive.  I kind of wanted to try it.  And in that moment, I tried it.  In that moment I had the “courage” to take the glass and slice further into my palm.  I knew that a cut on the wrist would scar and look suspicious, so I layered the cuts across my palm where I could almost guarantee it wouldn’t scar.

I hadn’t thought anything of it.  Each piece of glass was used as a knife.  I would pick it up, drag it along my palm in a way that could look accidental, with just enough applied pressure, and revel in the pain as I watched the blood bubble to the surface.  It had taken me 20 minutes for me to finish, and by the end, I felt like a train had hit me.  I was tired, achy, and filled with some strange mix of regret and pleasure.  I had told my parents that I wasn’t thinking and grabbed at the glass, ending up with a cut up palm.  I don’t think they believed me, but I doubt they thought deeply enough to figure it out completely.

I had still refused to admit it after that, but it came to mind more often.  I would wake up tired, but not physically tired because it was this bone deep feeling of wanting life to stop.  I was tired of it all.  I would often figure out elaborate ways to kill or hurt myself, be ready to do it so that I wasn’t tired anymore, and then back out like a “coward”.  I still didn’t want to admit it, so I didn’t.

In my mind, I was what I was told I was.  I was the intelligent honors student with good friends, an average family, decent financial state, and a talent for music.  I was the happy, if not moody teenage girl who everyone thought I was because I could act the part.  Depressed was not part of that description, so I wasn’t depressed.  Suicidal thoughts weren’t there either, so I didn’t have them.  I was the good girl that my parents wanted and the teenager everyone else expected, and because that couldn’t include the two things that I refused to admit I had, I adapted.

It’s been 3 years now, and I think the time has finally come to admit it.  This isn’t really the first time I came out about these things.  The first time was with my best friend when she noticed, before my parents, that something was wrong.  Then again with my middle school guidance counselor.  And finally, my parents figured it out and I finally admitted it.

I never really thought of myself as depressed or thought that I had such thoughts, but I finally had to admit it to myself.  And this is the first time I’m really letting it sink in and the first time I’m putting it out there.
I have help now, someone to talk in and something to lighten my mood.  I’m dealing with it, and not alone.  I figured that maybe I wasn’t alone in trying to hide it, and I knew I wasn’t the only one dealing with it.  I accepted that I could be who I really was without breaking who I was without the veil of denial (if that makes any sense).  I could be the intelligent honors student with everything going okay in life and be dealing with the things I am dealing with.

And you know what, I’m happier than I ever was before.

So this is me, coming out about who I really am and what I really am.  I’m not perfect and happy all the time, but life would be boring and miserable if I was.  This is me, coming out as I am.  With problems that a lot of teenagers out there might be dealing with.  With problems that a lot of teenagers are hiding, just like I was.

And you know what I’m realizing?
I’m finally, undoubtedly, irrevocably, completely me.

-A teenager who is finally really herself