Growing up, something about my life had always been off.

I started stressing myself out, losing sleep, slowly driving myself insane at such a young age because no matter how hard I tried, I could not shut my brain off.

There were nights I cried to my mom, telling her every single detail about my day because I was so scared I did something she would think was bad and if I did, I wanted her to know so I didn’t have to carry that guilt.

In third grade, I started therapy and was diagnosed with OCD. As a result, I was put on medication to help level out my symptoms and hopefully help me relax.

We named the voice inside my head “Bad Mouth”.

Bad Mouth stuck around until about the end of my sixth-grade year when my OCD then starting forming into severe depression and eventually an eating disorder.

Depression isn’t cute crying and sadness over a failed test.

Depression is sleepless nights wondering why you don’t fit in.

Depression is the constant worry and fear of never being enough or living up to the standards given to you.

Depression is skipping meals because you feel so sick with yourself that the idea of eating makes you vomit.

Depression is hospitalization at the age of 13 because you truly can not fucking imagine yourself living to get to high school.

Depression is slitting your wrists with anything you saw because you had so much pain filling your mind and body it seemed like the only way to get rid of it.

Depression is being 79 pounds and not being happy with that because you feel truly disgusting with every ounce of yourself, that you physically can’t eat.

As I grew up, I changed medications and saw a few different therapists. All of them telling me the same exact things.

As I got older though, I noticed how popular the idea of having depression, anxiety and eating disorders became. And that to me was scary.

No one was ever going to look at my feelings seriously anymore. I mean, I’m a teenage girl going through hormone changes, just like any other girl- and there were so many times that my illness wasn’t taken seriously for that reason alone.

People have glorified the idea of being mentally sick to the point where no one knows what the hell to believe.

My mental illnesses held me back from so many things.

My mental illness brought me so many feelings and so many thoughts of hopelessness that I truly did not think I was going to live to see high school and experience that.

But I owe my mental illness a huge thank you.

Because it taught me to trust myself, to trust my feelings. To learn everything I could about myself so when I felt myself getting bad again I could do something about it and not have to rely on the help of other people.

My mental illness taught me how to survive. It taught me about love and family. And it taught me that I can make it through so many things if I just hang in there.

Mental illnesses aren’t pretty. And they are really fucking hard to deal with. Because they don’t get easier.

But after the literal blood, sweat, and tears- you become a person you never thought possible.

Bad Mouth will never go away, and neither will my fight and strength.