avoid the topics

High school is supposed to be one of the best times of your life, right..? I didn’t go to school in year 10. My anxiety just appeared out of nowhere and I was stuck at home. I saw 4 friends in the 9 months that I didn’t go to school. I started at NETschool and made amazing friends there, but I don’t talk to any of them now! I talk to one girl from NETschool. A girl I wasn’t even friends with when I went there, because I was too scared to because she was so beautiful I thought she would hate me. She is now one of my best/only friends. Then in year 11, I went back to CCB. Mainstream schooling. I basically got forced in to a new group of friends, because 3 of my only friends were in that group. I honestly didn’t like anyone in that group other than those 3. But then I began to become friends with a few of them. I started slowly sitting further away from that group, and a couple of the people moved over with me. Eventually we transformed in to two groups. I became friends with a boy from another group and clique at my school. We were so close, he was one of my best friends. I asked him to be my deb partner, and he said yes. We got closer. I got a crush on him. He had a crush on my best friend. His crush ended. I told him I had a crush on him, he said sorry he didn’t like me like that but it wouldn’t change anything. That was a lie, though. He basically stopped talking to me. Deb practices and the deb itself were awkward. I started talking to his girlfriend on myspace, then I was positive that he tried to get her to stay away from me so I gave up. In year 12, he and her broke up, and her and I started talking. She is now my best friend. At the moment, she is my only real friend, to be honest. Throughout year 12, I became friends with people in a few other cliques and groups. But because my best friend was still with “the girls” who I felt didn’t like me, I stayed there. The girls forced my friend out of the group, because they judged her boyfriend and decided that she wasn’t spending enough time with them (which I wouldn’t either, if every time I sat with them they ignored me and my boyfriend. I was literally the only one who would talk to them). I would sit there at recess and lunch saying no more than two words. Every time I said something, they would try to shut me down, and tell me I was wrong. I was too afraid to say anything. I became closer with the people in the original group from year 11, but “the girls” (that’s what they call themselves) didn’t like them, so I rarely got to talk to them. I started talking to a boy from our year online, then we started talking and hanging out in real life, then we started dating. We had our graduation mass, and he and I were going so well. He was my boyfriend, as well as my best friend. Then, after 3 weeks my anxiety was really bad again and he was moving to Melbourne and felt he couldn’t deal with only being able to see me once a week, so he broke up with me. I didn’t go to school for the last 3 weeks of school because I got a cold and because my anxiety got so bad again. I missed out on the last week of school. I missed out on Muck Up Day. I missed out on Mystery Bus. I went to graduation dinner, and the only time I saw my ex there, despite him telling me we would chill together, was toward the end when he was incredibly drunk. A few weeks later my crush I had on a boy in the year below me came back. He and I started dating. Everything was perfect, but my anxiety got bad gain. My “best friend” came down from Sydney so we could meet for the first time. She fucked my life up, turned everything upside down, and ruined me even more. A couple of months later, my boyfriend broke up with me. Then my anxiety got worse yet again. And my depression started kicking in. Then, after a few months, I started talking to a boy on tumblr. We realized that my mum used to babysit him when he was little. We started talking more, and he broke up with his girlfriend (which to this day I still feel terrible about, because she is lovely. We are friends now) and told me he liked me. I liked him too, so we started a “thing”. We weren’t official or anything. He told me he had never felt like that before. He told me he was in love with me, and wanted to marry me. He was perfect. He told me he was going to ask me out on our 3 month anniversary of being friends. The day before, my ex came over (because we were still really close) and my best friend came over, and they both ended up staying the night. Then the next day was our 3 month anniversary. My anxiety was incredibly bad, so I couldn’t go to his house like we had planned. My ex ended up staying over another night, and that’s just the way it went. No word from the boy about anything. The next day, he texted me saying he knew what we needed to do. I said “date?”, he said “actually no” and told me he didn’t want to be with me anymore. Then 2 days later, he started dating one of my best friends at the time. He didn’t even try to talk to me. People started abusing them both on tumblr, without me even knowing about it. Then he abused me, saying that it was my fault that they were getting abused, and that my “tumblr army” needed to back off. He then proceeded to tell me that I need to get over my anxiety, and that the world doesn’t revolve around the internet. He knows about my anxiety, he knows about my severe lack of self confidence, he knows about my depression, he knows how scared I get around people and talking to people online is the only real way that I can talk to people, but he used that against me. He knew what the only things that can hurt me are, and he used them to push me lower than I already was. I apologized, and he didn’t really seem to care.

In the last 4 and a half years, I have gone through so much. And people still don’t understand why I’m the way I am. They don’t understand why I hurt so much. They don’t understand why I don’t trust people.

This is only the last 4 and a half years. Time that I’m supposed to be out living my life. Time that I’m supposed to be on top of the world. Time where nothing is supposed to bring me down.

Now imagine the other 15 years of my life!

There is a reason I am like this. And I wish I could change it all, but I can’t.

People tell me that I don’t know what loss is. People tell me that I don’t know what sadness is. People tell me that I don’t know what depression is. People tell me that I don’t know what anxiety is. People tell me that I don’t know what love is.

Those people don’t know me. They don’t know my story. And they never, ever will.  They have no idea of the things I’ve gone through. They don’t understand how well I understand things. They don’t know how I perceive the world, and how much I take notice of everything. They have no idea how strong the emotions I feel are. 

Before you judge someone you don’t know, I ask you to remember me. I ask you to remember that you have no idea of the things they’ve been through. I ask you to remember that you don’t know their story. You don’t know their feelings. You don’t know their emotions. You don’t know them, and you probably never truly will.

So think before you act. Think before you speak. The things you do have a huge impact on someone else’s life, whether you know it or not.