Erin's story

On October 21st, 2007, I got a phone call telling me that my best friend had killed himself.
Before this day, we were just normal 14 year olds starting grade 9 and I thought everything was perfect. I had my best friend in all of my classes, and we were trying out for all the sports teams. We had a huge friend group and everyone was really close. I was with my best friend every day and I never knew he was unhappy. I felt like it was my fault and that I could’ve done something to prevent him from feeling so alone. Little did I know, he was being bullied because he was gay.

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That day was a long time ago but I still feel guilty to this day. Every time I think back to memories from high school I feel like I should’ve noticed how he was feeling, but he never gave any clues.  I felt abandoned and worthless for him leaving me, even though I knew that was selfish. I struggled with coming to terms with why he would feel so alone that he would need to commit suicide. I began to push everyone away, and became extremely anxious being around anyone. I started to stay at home by myself more often and even when my friends would ask me to come out I would say no. After a while of doing that, I lost a lot of my friends and the friends I still had barely asked me to come out. At the same time, I would feel really anxious about missing out on what all of my friends were doing. I was being pulled in both directions so when I would decide to go out with my friends I would get extremely anxious and think that they were judging me. I would be really quiet in my group of friends and I got excluded even more. After losing my best friend, I was really starting to feel alone now that the rest of my friends were excluding me.
 
I still had one really good guy friend left and we started dating two years after my anxiety hit. He was always there for me and supported me through my panic attacks about losing my friends. I knew he really cared for me and he was really the only person I felt comfortable around. Things were going well and dating someone gave me a confidence boost. With him in my life I felt better. We dated for about a year, then in grade 12 he broke up with me. That triggered all of my feelings about my best friend committing suicide. I felt abandoned again. But it all came crashing down on me. I felt abandoned by my best friend, my boyfriend, and all my other friends at the same time. That night I felt like I should just give up. My anxiety broke me and I felt like nothing would ever work out for me. I couldn’t keep my friends around, or a boyfriend, and my family had no clue what was going on.
 
I felt like I finally understood why my best friend committed suicide and I thought about suicide too. That night, I settled for self-harm. I told myself that if I was the one hurting myself, no one else could ever hurt me. From then on, everything snowballed and became unbearable. I resigned myself from every aspect of my life. I barely talked to anyone, I didn’t eat anything, my marks were going down the drain which made me even more anxious about messing up my future, and I gave up on any hope of meeting someone who would want to spend time with me. I hit rock bottom.
 
A few weeks after that point, I couldn’t take it anymore. My anxiety kept making me think about how I could never get into university, and how no one would ever want to marry me, and how I would end up living a miserable life. I was blinded by anxiety and I couldn’t see a future for myself. I was performing self-harm for weeks at this point and I decided I needed something stronger. I started taking drugs to numb the feeling of hopelessness and one night I took one too many and ended up in the hospital.
 
I woke up after two days to see my entire family and all of my friends surrounding me. I have never felt so loved in my life. I immediately thought back to my best friend in grade 9, and how much it hurt when he never woke up. And I couldn’t believe that I almost did that to my family. I realized that no matter how alone I felt, there would always be someone there for me. And even on those really bad days when you feel too anxious to even tackle the day, know that you have people behind you rooting for you every day. I hope no one else has to hit rock bottom before realizing that truth. And if telling this story gives even one person hope it is worth it.
 
I’m not going to finish this saying that after that I got better, because I didn’t. To this day I still struggle with anxiety and depression, it’s a never ending battle. But I did realize that you always have people that love you. You can always talk to those people because they will listen. But the biggest lesson I learned from hitting rock bottom is that you need to learn to love yourself first.  It is the most daunting task a person will ever face, but you are worth it.