At one point, during senior year I lost a really close friend. My entire senior class either knew each other from kindergarten, or high school, so it had an impact on everyone. To this day, we still don't know the cause of his death. His parents only released the fact that it was an accident. For me, the depression hit me when my parents were about to separate; they didn't. They are still together to this day, but my dad's the type to put everyone else down. At one point, I just believed everything he told me. Thought it was true at some point. Like, how I'll never do anything to make my parents proud of their daughter. That he never loved me. And, in the midst of the chaos that surrounded me at home, one of my best friends passed away. That finally did it. I was a complete mess, I thought it was my fault that my parents were so unhappy with each other, and I blamed myself for his death. I honestly just wanted a distraction, and honestly, to me, that's still the dumbest decision I've made. I was stupid, I honestly avoided dealing with his death, which means I didn't. I threw myself into studying. Whenever I tried to sleep, I couldn't. I kept overthinking, I was devasted. In the middle of the night I finally got up, grabbed the nearest thing I can find, I went into town on my arm. I had dug my own grave. If I knew just how addictive it was, I never would have picked up the thumb tack. If you didn't cut deep enough, the scars healed, even if your heart remained shattered, at least there was that.

I'm a sophomore in community college now, I'm about to transfer to UC Berkeley/UC Davis, I'm still not sure. But, even now, I still think about it. Whenever I'm stressed and unhappy, my fingers twitch, and I'll be reminded of how it felt to self harm. But I realized how toxic my behavior was. It was completely unnecessary, I understand. It was wrong. I guess I just thought about how my family and friends would feel if they saw me like that, if they saw my wrists. It was gut wrenching, to say the least.

I still have the urge to self harm, and I did relapse freshman year. Now, my future significant other will be the unlucky one that has to see what I did to myself. That at one point, I really did think that I deserved self mutilation. I guess, that was also a factor.

I'm still learning to love myself, we all are. And at some low points, I really don't. I actually run and exercise, going to the gym is what distracted me.