Mental health can be a rollercoaster, especially for young teens. I’m 18 years old and about to turn 19. Things are looking good for me now, but it wasn’t always like that. When I was only a 6th grader in middle school, I had lost my mom to a surgery gone wrong. Not only that, but in the process of grieving over her death I was slowly but surely separated from my little brother by my step dad at the time. I moved in with my grandmother by the time I was freshly in 7th grade, and it wasn’t easy. My grandmother isn’t anything like my mother, and it was very hard to adapt to her since she was very controlling. This was also due to her holding old and outdated beliefs and ideas about how things should be in the house. When I would go to see psychiatrists, she would tell me what to say beforehand instead of letting me speak from the heart. This eventually led to me getting prescription pills for my ADHD, and not once did those drugs ever help me. I started to develop a drug addiction and it wasn’t getting any better. This along with self-harm, lasted for a few years until I met my current girlfriend in junior year of high school. She helped me sober up and slow down on self-harming. At the time I was mostly doing it for her, but as time went on I did it more for myself. I thought about the serious consequences that could come about if I continued walking on the edge of an overdose, and how it could not only stop me from experiencing life to its fullest extent, but also how it would hurt others around me that really care for me, like my little brother. Once I found myself taking care of my own health and well-being, it was smooth sailing through the rest of high school. Life has very much thrown a lot of curve balls my way, especially recently, but I always remind myself that although things may be bad now, it will never stay that way and will sooner or later get a whole lot better. If I were to end my life, I would never be able to experience my come up and all the great things that could happen. Never give up, life always fluctuates up and down and it will never stay in one place, neither bad or good.
