Author's Note: I wrote this while I was very upset about multiple things happening in my life. Since then, things have been sorted out and I feel much better. Let me encourage you to ask someone for help if you feel as I did when I wrote this. No matter who you are or what you've done, you deserve to have a happy life.
I'm not sure how much longer I can do this.
When I was little, I was happy. I loved my parents, I had all the Barbie dolls a girl could ever want, and I was as popular as a little kid could get. Life was good.
Now I'm growing up. I hate it. I don't want to get older, to be an adult. I want to stay that kid forever. But if you chase your childhood as you get older, you get called a fool. They tell you to just grow up when all you want to do is curl up in a ball and sob your eyes out. They tell you you have to make something of your life when all you want is to be nothing.
I am nothing. I'm not popular. No one here knows anything about me except that I have pink hair and I play the bass. I stand in corners and watch as the world passes me by.
I am nothing. When I tell people what I can do, what I want to do, they shake their heads and tell me what they want from me. They want me in the background. They want me to do what I always do. They will never let me shine, even though that is all I want.
I am nothing, until they want to make fun of me. They tease me about my hair, my quietness, and my personality. They never stop, no matter how many times I say "stop". They're mean but everyone thinks it's funny. They laugh while I stand in my corner and try not to cry.
I used to want to be happy. When this all started, back when I still remembered how to be happy, I wanted to feel good again. I figured the depression was just a stage, just hormones playing a cruel trick on me. But it hasn't gone away. I will not be happy.
The straw that broke the camels back, so to speak, was when my father was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. What breaks me the most each day is watching him deteriorate. My father, the doctor, the man who could do anything and everything. When they first found the tumor, he couldn't use his left hand and he had trouble talking. That got better after the first surgery and for a few months he was almost like normal. Sometimes he was a bit tired or a bit snappy, but he was still my daddy. Then came the second surgery. He was in the ICU for a week after that, in the hospital for a total of three weeks. When he came home, he couldn't walk. It's been three months and he still needs a walker to get anywhere, and even with that he falls a lot. I can tell his brain is going too. He used to be brilliant. Now he's no smarter than the average middle school graduate. His personality has taken a turn for the worse, as well. I hear him and my mom arguing all the time.
I do my best to ignore it all. It makes me horrible, I know, but it breaks me too much to watch. If I watched, I'd start crying and I'd never stop. If I just stay in my room for the rest of eternity, maybe it will all go away. I'm only fourteen and the doctors have said my father will probably be dead before my next birthday. What sort of child can truly handle that?
I don't know what to do anymore. Every night, I wish I was dead. Death seems like it would finally solve all my problems. They say death is a permanent solution to a temporary problem, but I've known people who go through like for years feeling this way. I can't do that.
But then I think about it. Life seems so full, there are so many things I haven't done. Maybe I don't want to be dead. Maybe I just don't want to feel. Maybe I just want to be numb. Please, someone, show me how to be numb.
I'm not sure how much longer I can do this.
