The cloud that took the form

Since September is suicide prevention awareness month, I've seen quite a lot of talk about circumstances that often lead to such ends. 

I wanted to spend the rest of the month highlighting a few issues that I'm personally intimate with that have high suicide statistic rates. I believe that the more open we are about this, the more people we can reach. 

I was diagnosed with clinical depression as a young teen. I assumed that after a few months popping these pills the psychiatrist gave me would clear things up and I would feel better. 

I did feel better for a time. 

But like most teenage girls, I began to withdraw from family. While most girls spend long hours locked in their rooms listening to music and talking on the phone, I spent them blaring heavy metal from my stereo to muffle the choking sobs. Eventually I began punishing myself physically for my emotional weakness. 

Weeks later I would still be wearing long sleeves and jackets in all kinds of weather to hide the red, jagged cuts up and down my arms. 

Later, I would concentrate my punishment to my chest or legs when my arms were discovered. 

There were nights when I would lie awake and wonder if dying would end my struggle. I felt that I was in too deep to recover from. I never intended to do it, but the thought of finally stopping the pain was comforting. 

Many people describe depression as "fighting your demons" and that, for me, was partly very true. My life seemed to be a pendulum that swung from forcing myself to concentrate with the screams from Hell inside my head, to periods of complete numbness. Some days the numbness was more unbearable that the war. But I could always count on the pendulum to swing back. One of my demons was flesh and blood and always stood above me. 

It was many years later that a therapist told me that I was not just suffering from depression, but also that of PTSD. Up until then the thought had never occurred to me. 

Almost 1.5 million high school students nationwide experience abuse from a dating partner in the period of one year. That makes one in three. Nearly half of these victims admit to attempting suicide. 

Unfortunately, emotional and verbal abuse statistics are hard to directly pinpoint because so many are so crushed and broken that they do not dare step forward. 

Today I step forward. 

To be continued...