The thoughts and the ideas of being alone in the world started haunting me fiercely. My fears came to me in visions every night, and they showed no mercy. It was strange, when was the last time I had felt like that?

I felt like I was trapped in my body, but things weren't as bad on the outside. I still had my friends around me, we all got along well; then what was this feeling?

The only person who could understand me was probably Alex, so I ran to him.

"Let me tell you something, and let's keep it here between us..." he said, "I feel a little bit the same."

I was slightly surprised by his answer, he was always so cheerful and positive. "In what sense do you feel it?" I asked.

"I feel incredibly happy," he initiated his explanation, "really content. But at the end of the day, something is off" he's face communicated discomfort. "Something is missing."

"Well, mine is different. I don't feel happy at any moment, let's start there" I chuckled tiredly, "and then, I feel like everybody has someone but me. Like, after the party, everyone has somewhere to go; I don't."

"Why don't you start something?" he suggested, "A job, a sport, the gym. Singing, maybe? Something you have to go to" he emphasized. "Like Darcy, for example," he remembered, "she was a mess during summer, she wasn't sleeping or anything, and when she started taking her nephew to school, it was like her head and her schedules fixed themselves."

His ideas seemed just a little too simplistic, but I knew his intentions were honest. He spend the last few days worrying to death I was too depressed to function, and I knew he knew it was eating me alive.

Honestly, not even I knew what was happening to me; was it about Luke? I don't think so. Oliver, maybe? No, it wasn't that serious. Was it about me being the only single? I had been okay with that before. What was it?

The thing is, when you suffer from depression, things hardly ever make sense. I was okay yesterday, why can't I get out of bed today? Why don't I want to shower, or eat? Or why do I want to eat so much? I was laughing with my friends five minutes ago, why am I in the bathroom crying now? No question seems to have an answer, no action a reason why.

"I think you need to go out more," he continued, worried, "find something to do, like I told you, and force yourself to do it. It'll be uncomfortable at first, yes, but you'll get used to it. Trust me."

"Yes," I sighed, "I guess you're right. I'll see what I can do" I replied, not completely convinced.

"No, don't see what you can do. Do something" he emphasized strongly, "otherwise everything will stay the same."

This year we had a drama class, where the final project was hosting a Talent Show and our task was creating some sort of presentation, like a dance or a sketch. I submitted myself as a writer and asked Leela to do it with me, because I was embarrassed to go alone. Last minute, surprising all of us, Luke said he wanted to write too, so now it was the three of us. If I hadn't asked Leela, would it have been just the two of us? Did he really want to work with me? Shocking.

We chose to do something a little more extravagant and we ended up writing a play, - more specifically, a musical - and brainstorming, creating characters, imagining scenarios and thinking of the possible dances or songs we could use, made me feel a little more alive. For the first time in two months I was excited for something, and it was thrilling to finally feel something positive. My days had been so dark lately, but focusing on what I could create with this play, and also writing this book, gave me an escape from all that angst I had been experiencing.

I had some days that were better than others, but I was mostly just sad. My depression was working full time that month and it was hard for me to keep up with it. I am no professional opinion on the matter, or any other matter at all, but I can speak of my experience, so, this is what depression looks and feels like to me:

When the darkness finally corners me, I literally feel that I'm going to die. I get anxiety attacks that can be triggered by even just a thought, I start struggling to breathe and my chest feels as if it was sinking in the middle. It physically aches.

I sit there, choking and hyperventilating while desperately seeking comfort in holding my own chest, until I finally get to cry. When I cry, it can last hours. I have even fallen asleep while crying.

That's what the anxiety attacks look like but, on any other days wrestling with depression, is a little bit the opposite: I get so numb that it looks like as if I don't feel anything, no thrill for anything. The most I get to feel is anger and sadness, those are the biggest expressions of emotion I get to feel on those days, I'm usually irritable. It's hard for me to do simple tasks like taking a shower, going outside, studying or reading; anything that isn't laying down. When I listen to music or watch movies, I hardly pay attention, and I don't get to enjoy it.

The only common factor in these two situations, is death. I'm always chased and haunted by the idea that death is the only fate. Can you imagine, feeling like the only thing left for you to do, is die? The idea that I don't have a future, that I'm only wasting space on Earth, and that my destiny is to leave quietly for no one to remember me, is what has accompanied me throughout my whole life.

I'm not going to get fixed suddenly, I'm not going to change my life.

I'm going to end up dead.

Those are my thoughts.

I know it is something strong to read, even more to write, but it's my attempt to keep this as honest and raw as possible.

My experience with depression and anxiety is something I was made aware of at nineteen, but I had always struggled with it without knowing what it was. When I was a child, going through my parents' divorce and moving to a new city, I used to breakdown crying at any minor inconvenience and I always ended up saying I missed my dad, it's hilarious to think about it but, now that I know better, those were probably my first signs of anxiety. When I was a teenager things only got worse; I developed an eating disorder and started to self-harm. When I was sixteen, I drank a shit ton of pills that I knew wouldn't kill me but would do something to me. I simply wanted to be hurt.

In the present day, there wasn't much improvement, even though I was being treated, doing therapy and taking meds. Looking at myself in the mirror, I could recognize the signs. I started fantasizing about falling down the stairs from my bedroom or getting hit by a car on the way to college. When sitting at the table having dinner with my friends, I would think 'these people don't even care I'm here, they wouldn't care if I'm gone'. It was an exhausting feeling, thinking that everything was aligned and fated for me to be gone forever. I was challenging the universe simply by being alive when I shouldn't but, at the same time, I could never be that important.

I recognized the signs, because I had seen them before; being alive started to hurt. It was incredibly hard for me to carry on with the task of existing. The simple idea of waking up another day made me feel pain, it was dreadful at best. I was worried because I was hoping my friends wouldn't get to see this side of me.

One night I walked home from school, blank-faced and silent. When I finally got to my room, I put on my headphones and played sad music in order to provoke some emotion on me. The thoughts finally made their great appearance.

You're alone, and everyone know you're alone. It's embarrassing.

Aren't you ashamed of being so pathetic?

You're here loving people who don't even care about you and won't remember you when you're gone. You're not part of anyone's life.

You think you'll even get to leave town and do something? You'll die here.

You're only meant to die.

Your only way out is death, nothing else. You won't be able to take the pain any longer.

You will die and ruin your mother's life.

You will die.

My chest started sinking. Ah yes, that familiar feeling. I struggled to breathe as I helplessly gasped with my hand on my heart. I continued gasping until a cry finally came out, and I cried out loud, desperately. I was terrified, my thoughts frightened me to the core, especially the idea of the voice in my head being right. What if it was right?

What if I had to die?

I decided to make a smart decision and called my mother, minutes later she appeared. I was compulsively eating when she broke into my room.

"Come sleep with me at home tonight, okay? I don't want you to be alone" she said.

I grabbed some stuff and I went with her, when we arrived I went straight to bed. No words on the matter were spoken. "When's your next appointment with the doctor?" she asked.

"Tomorrow" I said as I quickly fell asleep.

The next day I felt a little more normal, the intrusive thoughts weren't in my head and I was just tired, so I had breakfast as usual with my mom, we talked about things and then I left for my appointment with the psychiatrist.

"How was this last month?" she asked. There was no point in lying or sugarcoating things, plus, I really wanted to get better, so I was honest.

"I've been feeling very lonely lately," I started, "like everyone has somewhere they belong but me. I feel like I'm no one's first choice and my friends all have people they'd rather be with than me."

She wrote something on the paper and looked at me, "have you had desire to self-harm?"

I took a deep breath. "Yes" I answered. I had been saying no for almost two years.

As I further explained my feeling at the time, a lump in my throat started to form. There was again the sinking feeling in my chest and the difficulty to breathe, and it only got worse as the doctor spoke.

"I need you to stay with your mom for some days because you're not okay, Ava, and I'm worried. I'm going to call your mom now to tell her, but I need you to be cooperative. Go home to fetch some stuff you may need then go back straight to your mom's house. You can't be alone."

The tears were falling down but I still couldn't breathe properly. I felt ashamed of what I had provoked.

"I'm going to give you one more medication that will moderate the effects of the one you were previously taking, but your mom will be in charge of giving them to you now. Don't take this the wrong way, I don't want you to feel like I don't trust you, I just want to avoid any possibility of accidents. I don't want you to hurt yourself" she finished.

I walked home crying, embarrassed and afraid. I knew my mom was going to panic after speaking to the doctor and she was going to treat me as if I was insane. I wasn't. Or was I?

On the whole way home, the only thing I could think was 'look at what you have caused'.

When I got there, I didn't say anything to my grandma, she was going to find out anyway. I noticed when, because after being in my room for a while, she came upstairs to ask if I was okay. That's how I knew my mother called her.

I ended up falling asleep, I was exhausted after so much crying and anxiety. After some hours, my grandparent drove me to my mother's house with a bag of clothes and other personal stuff I needed.

"If you need anything, call" my grandma said.

"I will."

"And, Ava," my grandpa talked this time, I looked over to him, "whenever you want to come back home, you can."

Some tears threatened to leave my eyes. "Okay" I simply said.

I got out of the car and walked inside the house. We had lunch normally, I watched TV, listened to music, watched social media. Of course, I talked to my friends. I told Darcy and Leela everything that happened, and they advised me to not go to class that day, but I didn't want to stay at home and feel like a sick person. I needed to feel normal.

That afternoon I only had two classes, so I didn't have to stay for more than two hours. I clearly looked like a zombie, I hadn't done my makeup like I always do, I'm pretty sure I had the seven rings of hell under my eyes, and my hair was just a bun. Even after so many hours, you could tell how much I had cried. Darcy and Leela were after me the whole time, making sure I was never alone.

I must have been too quiet because everyone kept staring at me as if there was something seriously wrong with me, but no one dared to ask what it was.

We were standing in the halls during the break, the boys were fetching water for the coffee, everyone tried to act as normal as possible. They joked and laughed, I tried to laugh, and I didn't speak much.

I guess I got lost at some moment, I was standing there next to Darcy, staring at nothing. I didn't notice Oliver standing in front of me, not until he placed a hand on my shoulder and he roughly pulled me close to his body. His arms wrapped around me for a tight hug, and he held me in place firmly while rubbing his nose on my head. That simple gesture almost made me cry again right there, but I held it back.

My hands crawled up his back and I tightly pulled at his clothes as I was containing my emotions, I just closed my eyes and breathed him in. He didn't have to say anything, he just held me tight, not letting me move, and breathed in my hair.

"Let's put her in rice" Darcy joked about me not functioning. Oli and I laughed as we were pulled out of our moment. He looked down to me one last time before we broke our hug.

"She's not working today" he said to Darcy.

The day went by pretty normally, that little moment singlehandedly brought me back to life and I was able to function for the rest of the hour.

Every day after that day was a different battle. I tried everything I could to feel alive, to feel like myself. Sometimes I wonder if that Ava, the sad and defeated one, or the normal one is the real Ava. I wanted nothing more than to be normal.

I felt like a burden more than ever. Everyone had to take care of me, make sure I wasn't alone and not thinking of killing myself any minute. I wasn't sure if people's concern was genuine or if they just didn't want the guilt of not avoiding my suicide, if it were to happen.

The doctor said the first few days with the new meds would be difficult, I was going to be more irritable and erratic than usual; it was going to mix my emotions up even more before it balanced them. I started to notice these effects on that week's Friday, I hid from my friends at school for an hour or so. I could hear Darcy looking for me when she walked into the bathroom I was hiding in, but didn't respond. I saw their texts too. That day I grabbed some cigars I had in the bottom of my backpack and went outside to smote again, in an urge to control my anxiety. At one point Oliver found me, he asked if I was okay and left after I angrily said yes. He really didn't know what was happening to me, I hadn't explained it to him, neither did the girls nor Alex since it wasn't really their business to talk about, so he really didn't know what to do or how to deal with me, how to be there for me. I wasn't in my senses that day to reach out for him, I just wanted to disappear.

I tried several times that day to act normal, I randomly joined the conversation after spacing out for minutes; I guess they all just played along.

During class, Alex left, so I took the chance and went after him.

"I'm sorry for being so weird today," I said when I found him, "it's the meds. The doctor said they would make me unstable. I'm really trying to be cool about it, though."

"It's okay, I understand. We all do" he walked up to me. I sat on top of a table, "how are you feeling?"

I almost cried before answering, but I held it back. "I don't know" I gave him a weak smile that he corresponded, "I don't know anything. I feel so weird."

Now he gave me a weak smile and I knew something was going on. "What happens?" I asked him.

He looked up to me and made a face that was the answer. I already knew. I sighed and said, "Bro, please" before he spoke.

We were both defeated.

After taking a deep breath, he spoke. "It's her," he said, "it's always her."