Iama Teenager who has suffered with mental health problems (Depression, chronic anxiety and Agoraphobia) all throughout their early childhood. I was only in high school for a month and I self harmed for years. AMA

Yes. When I was 11 my mother had a meltdown due to my behaviour (I.E self harming, wanting to die, crying, unable to leave the house) and began screaming and crying and hitting the floor with her feet. She then entered an almost catatonic state, and flinched when I tried to hug her and hold her. She only really reacted when I tried to call my older sister to find out what to do, and she flipped out, hung up and screamed at me not to tell anybody. I was terrified, she eventually snapped out of it but she still couldn't really cope, we both didn't leave the house much for months on end.

Perhaps the absolute worst one, my father was murdered when I was 12. I never had trust issues or fears over authority, but my father's death caused so much stuff to get worse. Nightmares became very very frequent and violent, including dreams of him being alive. It was not easy to wake up and realise it was a dream, and my father would never be back.

I watched how the press handled the case, how the detectives handled the case, how my fathers girlfriend handled things, his step children and the boy he helped raise all his life. I was never able to trust anybody, I saw people backstab each other for something worth barely anything, and then have things stolen just to spite me, I was hated by my father's girlfriend so she stole things just because of that, things that were worth nothing but were important to me. Some people didn't know what to say. The police never gave a damn about the case, never bothered due to my father having a criminal record, and the case was closed just after 3 years.

Until I was moved I spend all my time alone. My mother and I sometimes didn't speak, so I was alone. I rarely left my room. I never had access to the internet at this age, so I wrote. I wanted to badly to 'break' and enter these worlds, I didn't want to be alive. I had notes and notes and notes of things, pages and pages of ideas for stories. I read (luckily I loved to read, why I can actually spell, never learned any real English at all).

But I was moved, hated it at first the place I was moved. A couple hours per day, a taxi came to pick me up, take me there, and pick me up and take me home afterwards. Eventually my days were increased, and I made a friend.

I can't pin point anything in my very young childhood that affected me. I know I witnessed violence between my parents as a baby (like 18 months and younger) quite a few times apparently, but I was too young to remember. I was also told as a child I'd die in hospital through a feeding tube, so I've never really liked hospitals (but then again not many people do). I already had problems, I just think they grew worse, and my father's death affected the way I viewed things, because in my eyes I lost the only stable, normal thing in my life. I was alone completely now.

/r/casualiama Thread