I've suffered from depression since I was a teenager. It all came to be because of problems I cannot speak about (yet, one day I'll do it,) and I admit that doing it now may help, but I'm just not sure.

School didn't help. I tried going to a psychologist, but for various reasons I couldn't keep going. Imagine how I felt: alone, like no one cared about me, no one wanted to give me a hand. Too many emotions that a teenage boy should have to deal with, mostly because almost all of them were the result of internal struggles I couldn't share with my family (and I still can't.)

I started to cut, torture myself in many ways and my nail-biting, a lifetime habit I cannot stop, got worse. The hole I was being buried in was becoming deeper and deeper, my voice felt weaker and my dreams became nightmares...

Even suicide came to my thoughts as an exit, so I wrote a letter, made my plans and one day when I felt I couldn't take it anymore, took some deep breaths and prepared to do it: jump from one of my school's buildings so I could kill myself and end it all. One, two, three, four seconds, and suddenly, in the fifth, something clicked in my mind.

Was I really that weak? Was I really going to give up, as easy as that? Was I going to lose all my dreams? Oh hell no! I was fighting back my demons. Thanks to my friends and my headphones, music became an exit, a way to distract my mind, and drawing and writing became another one for my nightmares to get out of my head once and for all; so I stood up, looked for one, anyone, of my friends, and almost ran to her, cried the hell out of me and let her know every single thing.

The next day I was feeling worse than ever, so just put on my headphones, turned the volume up, went to school and faced everyone who knew what happened the day before, all my classmates that had seen the cuts, the dark circles under my eyes, read the Poe-like poems I wrote and acted as if it was just another one of my stories.

Art, in any form, can help you, it's just a matter of finding the one you like. You don't need to be good at it, just to like it and feel great while and after using it as your escape. Theater, writing, music, poems, sculpture, reading, whatever you think it may help, don't stop doing it, ever.

Also try and talk. It gets worse if you don't. They win if you give up and swallow all of those feelings, and deep inside, there's a little part of you screaming "HELL NO!" Listen to it, as I did back then and still do, because there are moments when I want to give up and cut again, but that's just going to help for a couple of seconds. The wounds become another problem later, and we already have enough.

Greetings.

Alan D.D.

A Moodscope member.