An invisible illness

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I was at school. I remember being sad that day. I always feel sad. So that would be a good place to start. I'm not the full-blown I-will-lay-in-bed-and-eat-a-tub-of-ice-cream-sad. It's the I-was-sad-yesterday-it's-the-same-today-and-it'll-most-likely-be-the-same-tomorrow type of sad. I know it's not intense, not a big deal. Everyone is sad right?

I think I realized it wasn't normal the day my friends asked me why I was so depressed all the time. Why couldn't I just be positive like everyone else?

I don't want to think about it I don't know

Back home after school, I sat at the foot of my bed and stayed there. I played with my shoelaces, they had started to become very worn out.

You should Think positive. Shut up I think.

Think positive. I need to get my brain to shut up.

Think Positive. How do you get your brain to shut up? At this point I was just annoying myself.

I wanted to sleep. I couldn't. It was always hard for me to get sleep. Everything was hard. It was hard for me to make the smallest of decisions.

"If you can't do anything about the problem, you shouldn't worry."

"Today is a gift."

"Silver linings."

"Look for the light at the end of the tunnel."

I want the light at the end of the tunnel to kill me because I am sick and tired of being me and trying to think positive is exhausting. In my opinion, its always the end of the world or nothing. But I don't want to die. I'm scared of it. I feel like I'm here but I don't really feel like it.

Mara tried to calm herself. She felt her heart pounding, she found it difficult to breathe. She felt like she was choking. She was unsteady. Was she going crazy?

I got caught harming myself . Cutting myself actually. My mom made an appointment at a psychological assessment center, not some regular doctor. She looked at me with this pained expression, mixed with her 'I'm all business' expression but she couldn't look at me. She'd been like this since she realized I hurt myself. She couldn't even bear to look me in the eye. She looked at me like I failed.

That first appointment, it was my mom, a therapist and I. It was in a stuffy room, where the therapist asked me questions that I didn't want to answer in front of my mother, but did. My heart was beating very fast. It became difficult for me to breathe and my mouth dried up, making it difficult to swallow. No one noticed. The therapist gave my mother a questionnaire to fill out- her observations about me. A questionnaire was handed to me too to give to any one of my teachers at school. There was no official diagnosis.

I tried to avoid school for the next few weeks. My mom let me. She treated me like I was made of glass, like I was going to shatter any second. I never gave in the questionnaire.

I don't know how long I stayed out of school but it felt like it was forever. I didn't miss being at school but I was anxious all the time. I was worried about missing the work and not being able to catch up. I lay in bed all day. I felt if I stood up I'd fall right back down like a puppet with its strings being cut off.

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Snip Every day I missed school it made me feel like I dodged a bullet. But when I wasn't in school, I wasn't able to do much either. I couldn't concentrate, I felt hopeless. I just couldn't do anything.