Just when I thought things were getting better, it all came crashing down. My dad started acting strange and distant towards me. He had a new girlfriend who I wasn’t very fond of, I felt like she was pushing us apart. I got fed up with it and decided he shouldn’t be in my life anymore so I cut all ties shortly after. I found out that he was on drugs and got locked up again. I haven’t heard from him since.

After that, my mom noticed a dramatic change in how I
was behaving. I was moody. 
I didn’t want to go to school.
 I got in trouble more often.
 I slept all weekend and ate
 all day. I was some kind of lethargic, hog monster! My 
mom said she had noticed
 signs of depression because
 she’s battled depression
 herself and was familiar with
 the symptoms. She wanted me 
to go to a doctor so that they
 could fully diagnose me and I could start on medication. 
Just like I was reluctant to go
 to counseling, starting medication made my nerves even worse but
 I started to look past it because I knew I wasn’t going to get any better without some kind of treatment. The doctor had prescribed me a light dosage of anti-depressants to see how I reacted. I noticed that after about two weeks of taking the medication everyday, I was happier and more energetic. I had the en- durance to do stuff and walk down the street with my hair done. I felt good and taking the meds everyday weren’t as big of a challenge as I thought.

[pullquote_right]I decided to stop taking my medication. I didn’t tell my mom, I just said yes every time she asked me if I had dosed. I wasn’t aware that I had to keep taking them even after I felt better. I just knew that I felt better.[/pullquote_right]

After a couple of months, I felt happy again. It was like the sun was always shining down on me, I just felt good. I began to think that my problem was solved. I believed I was cured from the darkness that hovered over me for so long.I decided to stop taking my medication. I didn’t tell my mom, I just said yes every time she asked me if I had dosed. I wasn’t aware that I had to keep taking them even after I felt better. I just knew that I felt better. I stopped taking them and in the weeks that followed I started to notice the sunshine start to fade away.

Now it was partly cloudy. I could feel myself becoming lazy and uninterested. I wasn’t like I was before, I felt like a different person but it didn’t bother me as much at first. My mom and I drifted apart because she was so focused on a custody battle over my little brother. With my mom being distracted, there was no one to notice how I was starting to change. I morphed into another person. I was going down a dark path full of lust and drugs. I was
a dark person and it was not just my demons and I. From the end of my eight-grade year to sophomore year, I was a walking human shell. It wasn’t until the end of my sophomore that I realized how big of a hole I had dug myself into. I had no idea how to get back up to the surface.

Tags: depression, spotlight