My illness

My very personal story dealing with depression and anxiety.

SPREADING AWARENESS ❤️
Before you continue reading, this is the most nerve wracking thing I’ve ever done, and I’ve done allot of questionable things in my time. I would just like to let you know this is my story, my very personal story. If you do not wish to know it then continue scrolling through your news feed. I’m not looking for attention, I’m not looking for your pitty, this is something I’m doing to help myself and to potentially help someone else too, because I for one know how it feels to feel so alone. It all started when I was a kid, in primary school I was bullied. I was the ‘fat’ kid, the ‘weird’ kid, they used to call me “hippy the hippo”, I look back and laugh now because it was so silly all of it, but at the time it wasn’t funny. I was already dealing with my own demons in my home life, I couldn’t handle that. I was forced through countless counciling sessions that made me feel even more like that ‘weird kid’ that everyone thought I was. It broke me on the inside. My first suicide attempt was when I was 9 years old, i only knew about suicide and how that was an option for the sole fact that before I tried hanging myself in a toilet cubicle at my primary school I’d just been to my aunties funeral, and yes she in fact to committed suicide. I had no idea what I was doing mind you, I was 9 years old, but a friend found me and she told my teacher, they then rung both of my parents who then had to somehow wrap around there minds that there 9 year old daughter just attempted to kill herself. The bullying stopped when I hit about grade 7 to 8, it’s amazing that the people that bullied you would turn around and attempt to date you after you lost a bit of weight. Funny that. When I was 13 I discovered that I infact liked both genders, I met a girl who turned out to be my first love. I was one of of the first people in my high school to ‘come out’. Particular people in my family who shall remain nameless, (and no not my parents) stuck me in serious therapy sessions after that because “it was disgusting and I was disgusting”, I wasn’t aloud to date the girl who I loved. So yeah the bullying left school and ended up being in my home. I was called terrible things, i was so deeply broken by that, I couldn’t even speak to the one person who I loved because it was “disgusting”. Then I discovered alchohol, and mixing alcohol with a depressed teenager isn’t exactly a perfect concoction.. and yes you guessed right, my second suicide attempt at age 13. I cut my arms open. You know who saved me? The girl who I was not aloud to love. She called the ambulance. When I woke up in hospital, she tried coming to see me. The family member who shall remain nameless refused her visitation, thought it was absolutely f*****g wrong that the girl who I loved and clearly loved me called the ambulance, and I was an attention seeker. I was 13 and I wanted to die. But apparently that’s an “attention seeker”. I was picked up from the hospital and I was being abused left right and centre over it. “How bad is it going to look Estelle, it reflects on me” I then broke down in tears, and as we were crossing the bridge I distinctively remember saying I may aswell jump out of the car and hurdle myself over the bridge.. the response? “Do it then”. May I just add, I love this family member there views on it has changed dramatically as I’ve gotten older and they’re not a terrible person, we all make mistakes. For 3 years of my life I had to hide in secrecy of seeing my first love until one day I couldn’t take it anymore. Not only did the fact that it was forbidden, caused conflict between us, but I couldn’t take the pressure anymore. It was hard. I left her. Then.. I got extremely depressed. I was in agony every day of my life. I quit school, And I was hiding the fact that I was drinking not only just everyday but the first thing when I’d wake up to when I’d fall asleep, this went on for about 6 to 8 months. Until one day the police came around the house questioning why I left school, they raided my cupboards in my room and discovered numerous empty liquor bottles and cans. My family had no idea. So when I was 15 years old I was hospitalised for alcoholism, yeah.. imagine the face I pulled when I was oblivious to the fact that being an alchoholic was actually a diagnosis. Well it was definetley suprised. I was in hospital for a week while they monitored by body for detox and serious changes to my body. When I got home I got drunk again, with not one person knowing. And I decided that day i was going to be the day I ended my suffering. So I got extremely blind drunk so I had enough courage to cut open my arms. And didn’t I just. I split them to shreds. To the point I had flesh hanging out. And somehow I still managed to miss my veins. I then laid outside on the back patio, because I decided the last thing I wanted to see was the sky. My sister came home from school and she found me in a pool of blood. As much as I was extremely drunk, I will never wipe the image of how much pain was on her face when she found me that way. I’ve never heard someone scream so hard in my life. She saved me that time and numerous times again, because see the cutting started to become a habit. After that I faced a tribunal with a board of proffessionals to see wether or not I should be in a mental ward for a year.. yeah a whole entire year, but luckily for my family they saved me from being in there. I hit 16 years old and I fell in love with a boy. I moved states with him, 2 weeks into it I received a call that would change my life forever and I didn’t even see it coming. My first love committed suicide, to this day it still haunts me and it is the most excruciating pain I’ve ever expieranced. Imagine receiving these calls and knowing you’re not even able to go to the funeral because you a literally 2 states away. It destroyed me. Literally. My depression came back even harder than ever before and I left that boy, that state and i grabbed my stuff and got out of there, because I knew what I was about to go through nobody needed to see that. So yeah the first love of my life killed themselves and I never got the opportunity to save her like she once apon a time saved me. When I came back home to Mackay, I touched a drug I swore I never would. Crystal meth. You guessed it. I became addicted to it the second I touched it, I didn’t want to feel, I didn’t want to exist, I didn’t want to face reality. So I faced defeat to a drug.. alone, as I wished. I lost friends. I lost people who only ever cared about me because I changed. I honestly did, and when I looked in the mirror I had no idea who I was anymore and that terrified me, but it didn’t stop me. I’ve o’deed twice before, it’s honestly a very serious and scary thing to ever go through, you lose total control over your body and you lay there as your heart is literally giving way. My best friend was pregnant, and I was never there for her. That broke my heart everyday and it still does, that I could ever abandon someone who loves me that much in a time of there lives like that. I couldn’t believe what I’d become, but she never judged me, she was one of the only 2 friends I had left and my two friends have literally been family to me since I was 9 years old, so they’ve seen all of the things I went through, they held me while I cried, they held me when I was at my worst, and I abandoned not only both of them but my best friend, who was s**t scared mind you and I was never there. When I was coming down she’d always invite me over for dinner, and she’d sit there and take care of me while it was her who should’ve been taken care of. The reason I stopped which was definetley one of my biggest journeys in life, was because the people I loved were in pain watching me destroy myself and when you see people you love in pain, you do everything in your power to make sure that they’re not hurting anymore. So I stopped and it took me months and months to even become a smidge of the person I actually am again. I never thought I’d return. A couple years later, and my depression and anxiety still sits with me.. not even over a particular thing, the years of loss to the lives of people I love over suicide (multiple) deaths over drugs to the people I love, living in a town like this one.. fighting my own personal demons on the daily.. well you know it just eats away at you and I feel like everyone would be so much better off sometimes.. I’ve been called beautiful and kind and amazing and those words have walked straight through my ear and out the other one, see the thing is when you’re that self loathing you don’t see what other people see. But I had enough of that. I decided that i was done pittying myself, I was done working in hospitality and only being able to afford my rent and food for that week, I was done being sorry for myself. So I got up one day and decided I was going out to the mines. Honestly at that point I really didn’t have any goals for apprenticeships I just wanted to be doing anything that was going to allow me to save, and to create a better life for myself. After I did my inductions, my “trainer” offered me a job in hospitality again, but it was under a trust fund where I would be the supervisor of a store, a coworker for another and a teacher aid in surface and extractions in mining. So I jumped at it, it was firstly agreed I’d do a week to two weeks work expierance and then I’d start being paid. Let me just tell you something, I worked for almost 2 months doing up to 40 hour weeks in hospitality in multiple different jobs, training paid staff and I did not receive pay until I threatened with fair work, oh but it doesn’t stop there with the abusing of my generosity, my trainer who turned into being my boss, had feelings for me and wished to be with me. She threatened my job on numerous occasions because I didn’t want to be with her, she abused the living s**t out of me. She would lock me in the store at the end of the day when nobody was around until I was curled up in a ball crying my absolute heart out, out of fear. I look back and I have no idea what I was thinking I was scared to leave a job that didn’t pay me, with a boss that would jump at trying to rape me every chance they got. So yeah it destroyed me, I was so scared I could never sleep, I was always in tears, shaking to the point where I was spewing everyday and never eating because I was so highly anxious. Until one day I quit, mind you this is after countless attempts of asking kindly for her to leave me alone. But you know there’s no such thing as nice when it comes to delusional psychotic people like that. The second I quit I had adrenaline running through me like a hurricane, I have never been so scared. I called a co worker who is also a close friend of mine, in panic mode and she told me to get to her house immediately. So I did the second I quit.. the very second I called a taxie, to get out of my empty house where no other person but me was there. I didn’t receive a text message from this women until the very second I arrived to my friends house, the text message was “I’m out the front of your house”, so yeah I was totally right to be freaking out and to of left my house. This women then drove around andergrove for hours trying to hunt me down, at the same time messaging my friends asking for my whereabouts. I called the police because she kept stalking me and I could never be left by myself because she was literally stalking me.. to the point where I was at a friends house, somewhere she’s never been, in a place where she wouldn’t even know of she just so happened so be circling the streets trying to find me for days and as I was walking down the stairs to go home, my friend called out my name and as I looked behind me and then I looked out to front again, here’s my stalker right in front of me in her Ute, staring at me. So the police put a DVO on her, and so Forth. But the bullying part didn’t stop there. My cousin took her course so she too could go to the mines, and once she figured out that was my cousin she started implying certain things and making threats telling her if I didn’t drop the court case, well pretty much she wouldn’t get her certificate. and although I could’ve taken it way further, I didn’t I was done with the drama. So I went ahead and I dropped a DVO on an absolutey psychotic maniac. Just like that, someone like that walks away Scott free. I have to live with that for the rest of my life. I didn’t let it knock me down though, I lifted my head up, I got up again, I dusted the bullshit off and I went out to the mines. I was so excited, I was my genuine bubbly self, so f*****g excited to be apart of that world to take in that opportunity, I felt amazing. Then all of a sudden something so good turned out to bite me square in the a*s. They abused me with fatigue management. I would literally finish a 3 week shut down, mind you working 12-14 hour days having a single day off in those 3 weeks but still out at work, and then send me to to a different site who is a different contractor who have no idea of how many hours I’ve worked within the past month and that I was severely over fatigue management. I was never home, I had no life, and I built my life around that, I was able to get the best of what I wanted so I did that, and for me to have those luxuries in my life required for me to always be working and I was fine with that at first until they became my golden chains. Until I was so tired all I wanted to do was cry every second of every day and I wished away my life, I wished away the time I wished away all of it. To the point where I was actually afraid of what I was going to do to myself, I didn’t even have a fake smile left in me. I thought I was going to take my life and the crazy part is I didn’t even want to that time, but I was so afraid of myself. I called the company who I was working for and for the first time in my life, I told someone. I told someone how it was getting to me, how I couldn’t continue on, how if I didn’t leave that day I was afraid of what I was going to do to myself. You know what they did? blew smoke up my a*s telling me I was a valued team member, mind you so I could continue to finish a 3 week shutdown on night shift and on champix of all things. But I felt better after speaking because I genuinely thought they meant what they said with there heart honestly. But the next day came and it’s not like you can just click your fingers and depression is gone. No. For the first time ever I took care of myself I walked out of that shutdown and I sent a huge warm hearted message to them as I was so thankful for the kind words they said to me the day before and that I was so sorry but I had to look after myself because I was genuinely afraid of what I was going to do, so I left that job and the response I got? Was a single sentence stating that I need be in the office tommorow, in an incredibley rude manor. So my first time speaking out letting someone know I was upset and them being there for me was all just a show, I needed someone who actually cared at that time and for a moment I felt like I was okay and it turned out to be just words to keep me out there. I struggled with bills after countless months. I started with a different company as a casual being a trades assistant and by far one of the best companies I’ve ever worked for they were the kindest people known to man kind and I was genuinely happy but unfortunately I wasn’t getting enough work to cover my bills, which is fair enough it was leading towards the end of the year and that’s just what happens, so to keep my head afloat I went back to my old job as I couldn’t find any other companies that were hiring at the time. That right there absolutely destroyed me. It was one of the most incredibley disheartening things I’ve put myself through, but I did it to keep everyone happy and to keep my bills in check. Remember what I said before about golden chains? Well that’s the definition. I decided that I was done hurting, I was done trying to be happy in a world that I thought was out to get me, so I decided that one of these days I was going to just do it, just leave this world for good this time. So a month ago on my way out to work, on a 6 hour drive I planned to get drunk, the second I got into that vehicle, so by the time I arrived to the camp site I was far away from Mackay, nobody could save me and I had enough liquid courage to put myself out of my misery. I arrived to the camp grounds, where I wrote a status saying my goodbyes. I messaged each one of my family members, my friends. and I told them my goodbyes aswell, I had money put away for some of my friends and family so that they didn’t have to struggle the way I did. I walked into my donga, blind drunk. And I opened up my toiletry bag that was filled with packets and packets of medication. I took them all. Sheets of pills. And I laid in bed, crying my absolute heart out, and as I was doing that, I was on the phone to my sister, telling her how sorry I was.. because I was. I was sorry, I knew exactly what it felt like to lose someone you love to suicide and I was so sorry that I was about to put my loved ones through that. I was insanely sorry for that, but I wasn’t sorry for wanting to end my life. Not one bit. I don’t remember much after that point. But I woke up in hospital the next day on a drip. Turns out regardless of how far away you can get, regardless of where you are, that’s never going to stop the love someone has for you in there heart. I had 3 people call the ambulance, and being an hour way from a hospital I thought I was in the clear and I was destined to meet my maker that day. But no, the paramedics busted the door open, stuck me in a vehicle and rushed me to hospital, where I was then shoved in an ambulance to reach another hospital just to save my life. I woke up, and the only thing I regretted was not doing it sooner, but it turns out they got to me at the absolute exact second that I needed for them to be, to be alive today. My eyes were rolling into the back of my head. I was almost completely dead and I still wanted to be gone the next day I woke up. Pain can do an incredible amount to a persons heart. It makes you do things that aren’t humane. It makes you do things like that. My boss was kind enough to come and pick me up from a hospital that was 4 hours away from Mackay, I couldn’t believe how many people cared when I was actually almost gone. I couldn’t believe how many peoples lives I would have actually affected, and that’s a hard reality, when you realise there is a selfishness to it. Days after, I went into work and they asked me why I didn’t say anything, why did I not tell anyone? My response? “Because I didn’t think anybody gave one s**t and I’m sorry for that”, the last time I spoke out nobody seemed to actually care that much now did they? But you know what.. they did. They cared. I just took everything the wrong way back then, that’s what I mean pain can do an incredible amount to a persons heart, and it blindfolds your mind from thinking clearly. Since then I’ve been attending my councillong sessions, taking my medication and just getting by day to day. But see this is the thing that I wanted to share, I still have my days, even after all of that I still have my days, society somehow thinks that once you’re okay, you are automatically going to be okay for the rest of your life. Well no not the case, we all have our days, and I know there are multiple people out there that have had it way tougher than I ever have I know there are people reading this that struggle with depression and anxiety and can probably relate to every word I’ve written today. But I just want you to know you’re not alone, I for the second time in my life today told someone that I didn’t want to be here anymore, and they listened to me and they were there for me. And that meant everything. It gets better, as dark as the night sky is, the sun is always bound to rise again. And I just forgot, we all just forget sometimes that’s it’s okay to not be okay. Everyone’s perception on me has always been that I’m so happy, and I smile so bright, and I’m so calm and I’m just one big ol gypsy lady thats smile could never crack, that I have a high appreciation for everything and I’m too kind and I need to be nastier, and I musnt have been touched by life very much because I’m ‘too nice’, but you know what when you’ve felt pain like that you tend to be, because with understanding comes a whole knew sense of compassion. Being nasty will never solve a thing, if someone’s being nasty you rise above it and just know it’s on them and they could actually potentially be dealing with something of there own and expressing it in a different way, we are all different and we all deserve a shoulder to cry on. but here you go. There’s a story behind me, there’s a story behind the scars on my skin and the tattoos that hide them. My smile faded when I was alone and nobody could see me, I wanted people to feel so happy all the time because I knew how incredibley difficult it actually was for me to be. So there you have it, proof that you never know truly what’s going on. So be kind to people while you have the chance, you really never know who’s life you could be saving. Just so you know I’m okay now, I have my days like everyone does but I’m okay, it passes, I move on and I let it go now. I wanted to share my story, not only for me but for the people that fight these demons aswell. You are not alone, nor am I. If you are ever having these thoughts, seriously if you know me or not please message me, I know how hard it can be, I’ll be there for you, when nobody is and I promise you that ❤️ I am thankful for my beautiful family and my beautiful friends who have been nothing but the kindest of people to me! Also to some beautiful families I’ve met along my journey that welcomed me with loving arms! I love you all so much. You all will always be very appreciated and held tightly in my heart ❤️ Just know it gets better, it honestly does. Sending nothing but blessings and love into your home tonight, mwah 😘xoxoxox

Author's Note

Ignore grammar problems.

Reviews

[Onlyme]

Estelle Felicia, It takes a stronger person. To speak out and talk about themselves to the whole world. Like you have just done. I admire your honesty, heartfelt sincerity and truth be told. I can understand and relate to a strong degree. As a fellow sufferer of depression and anxiety attacks. I do hope this makes you feel better and even stronger for you alone. Hugs. Dee

[Estelle Felicia]

Thank you so much, I appreciate this a huge amount ❤️