Hey there everyone, I am not posting a lot on Smogon Forums due to various reasons (mostly homework), but I am so glad there is a topic about depression, because I myself had some terrible experiences, in separate years.
NOTE: I am actually free from this demon, but I still feel the need to tell my story to people.
Enough, let's go.
First incident: 4 years ago, 2015
I had just entered middle school, when I was 13 years old. I was just a simple and quiet nerdy kid, just ignored by many people and being a very good studend (I was called a wonderkid by my teachers in elementary), until some bullies started to pick on me, because of one major reason: I was emotionally sensitive and reacted poorly to insults. This started once as simple taunting, but then people started spawning false rumours about me, such as being gay (chants like "Peter is gay" were rampant even though I am not gay) or, even worse, autistic and retarded, insults that still haunt me to the present day. (there is nothing wrong with autistic people, I personally know some who are very good and friendly people). The worst part of this experience was when I was invited to a party for one main reason: to be the punching bag, as I suffered terrible abuse at the hands of all the douchebags that were my classmates.
What made it worse was the fact that some teachers were against me as well, one of them outright saying that I must be transferred to a special needs school due to my somewhat spastic reactions I had at the time. In fact, that teacher deliberately dropped my grade just to make me look like a total fool. I still feel angry about this particular person, but I don't express it out loud. Besides, she was not mean to me the following years.
In general, teachers would not believe me about the bullying, because when you see a kid that is considered a retard crying, who is the culprit according to them?
I had virtually no friends back then, forcing me to stay inside home for a long time, which concerned my parents a lot. They did not know anything about it, so they were desperate to learn, but I refused to do so. This led to depression, which culminated in the development of another demon I faced for 4 years ever since starting, internet and gaming addiction, very severe at the starting point as I was literally sitting 12-14 hours at the computer, at one point even until 3-4 AM. These were horrible times.
Luckily, I made a friend who helped me endure this, as at that point I had developed suicidal thoughts (I told him even once "I AM GONNA KILL MYSELF".). After a day I was beaten up by a jock and embarrased in front of the entire school (I was the laughing stock of the school), he called my parents to inform everything going on. Then, I admitted everything was going on, prompting my father to contact a teacher who was a family friend and highly supportive of me to end this hell. The results of this was punishments for all the bullies, especially the main one, who was leading the pack, and a slow return to my normal life, after putting myself and my family into emotional turmoil.
My life would go back to normal, especially after overcoming internet addiction in late 2017.
However, this is not the end. Separate incident indeed, but what I am gonna say still haunts me in an even worse way.
Second incident: Late 2018-Early to Mid 2019
Remember when teachers called me a wonderkid and a top student? Well, in High School, these days faded away. As a result of internet addiction, I neglected my schoolwork in 10th grade, causing my grades to slip. At that point, I realised that I wanted to leave my current focus in schoolwork (I was a physics student, but I decided to go to economics in order to become a programmer), which caused me to shift entirely my focus. However, in the beginnings of 11th grade, I was forced to go to the physics class due to lack of an economics class for 11th graders, as the physics clash would split into two in 12th grade, physics and economics (I am currently in the latter).
I had told to myself that this would be the year that I would improve and stop the bullshit of the previous years. However, the opposite would happen due to my mental health literally collapsing. I will tell what would exactly happen during my worst ever school year, in all factors.
As I told before, I am quite a geek who loves non-mainstream stuff, am friends with pretty much every geek of my school community and would like to see a geeky girl show up. So, when I saw one particular girl that I had actually forgotten her existence in the previous years but would remember her later as one who would much my type, -surprise, surprise-, I fell in love with her at literally first sight.
My feelings at first were euphoric, and I was ecstatic, hoping that I would finally start a real relationship (I was obviously single, and still am, because which girl in a mainstream and conforming community like mine whould want the school geek?). However, they started to get too distracting, as I literally wasted lots of time thinking about her instead of doing important stuff, like schoolwork, which set off a terrible decline that I will explain right now.
Well, lemme tell you guys that I had to keep that crush a secret from everyone, except for a few trusted friends of mine. I have my reasons about this.
First, it is in my family. You see, that girl is originally from Albania, and this certain country is hated to most people of my country Greece, due to some stereotypes about crime existing. My parents are no exception to this, as they say that they are all evil backstabbers. The backlash I would recieve from my own family to liking someone from a "dreaded" country is obvious, so I kept my mouth shut when they asked me if I was crushing on anyone. They still don't know about my past feelings, and they will never learn.
Second, it is in my school in general. The class she is a part of has VERY close bonds, to the point they are like a fucking brotherhood or cult, and they are highly critical of students from the other classes. (same grade, but split evenly into 4 classes, all students there) Which meant that I was denied access to her class and try to approach her. Add my reputation as a highly controversial person, and this increased the difficulty of the situation. Also, it is worth mentioning that if something about love leaks around them, they WILL spread it everywhere.
Lastly, it was inside me. I am personally a very socially awkward and shy person, ESPECIALLY around girls, I simply did not possess the guts to speak to them out of fear of humilitation and failure. This is perhaps the biggest factor, since this forced me to keep it a secret all along from the school. Every time I attempted to speak to a girl, I would start stuttering and fail to even say a word. This happened every time she would be near me. Often my friends would speak so I would avoid slipping up and potentially ruining everything. A pain in the ass indeed, but was enough to not allow her to suspect anything about my odd and somewhat erratic behavior. (I would often sweat and get a hypertention everytime I made eye contact).
This emotional turmoil combined with my inability to adapt into schoolwork again started to take its toll on my mental health, which was starting to become more and more fragile every day.
My schoolwork problem in fact caused me to write some extremely awful grades, including failing a physics test and even being at risk of failing to even get past the lesson in first place. This caused me to have some really awful arguments with my parents, which led to me yelling at them and feeling like a total piece of junk that would fail in his life. Suicidal thoughts momentarily came back, but I stopped them. But this was not the real problem.
I had in general a real anger problem caused by my shitty mental state, which led me lashing out very violently, such as smashing stuff (I broke my keys and a shelf during these breakdowns), yelling very vulgar profanities and even threatening to beat up the world and such. I was not myself at that point, I was a monster. I would ruin my relationships with my family, treat my friends like scum, ignore everything in life and all the bad things you would expect from a person in this situation.
Then, a few months later, my already fragile mentality would collapse entirely...
After months of contemplating to tell my crush about my feelings in order to end this hell (I had frequent dreams about her, in one case 4 dreams in 4 successive days), I decided to finally admit it. A decision that I still regret.
I would step inside her class (with some help from my best friend due to being on the verge of getting a stress attack), ignore her toxic classmates, approach her (with help from one of her classmates that actually was a friend of mine), take her outside and finally say it.
And then, the inevitable happened: She rejected me, causing my inner word to collapse...
As for the consequenses, imagine how I would lash out, but far worse...
My sadness had hit a breaking point, until one day I finally snapped. One day that my sister pissed me off, I went ultra psychotic, starting to throw stuff everywhere, cursing in a horrible manner (even blasphemous insults that I heavily regret saying) and moving spastically while threatening to attack everyone. In the end, I started to cry loudly, screaming for this hell to end and asking for help. When my mother asked me what was bothering me, I would not answer why. In fact, I did not know why I was screaming for help. Only recently I realized that I snapped due to my inability to come to terms with the rejection as well as my personal anger for virtually ruining my life.
After this incident, I spoke to my friends about the severity of my situation and gave them a heart-felt apology for my past mistakes and behavior. They would help me come to terms with my situation and my feelings and allow me to remove depression for good.
The month after the end of the school year, I was finally free from this demon and started to restore everything I had runed during my depression stint, from interacting better with my family to improving my schoolwork and the such.
During holidays, I had some nasty flashbacks about all of this, along with dreams about my now former crush, but I overcame them after realizing that it is pointless to fight against them.
Present day: I am currently very happy, as my life is going forward to better stuff. I am a better student, a good friend and a good and cooperative family member. About that certain girl as well as my bullying experience, everything is just a distant memory of the past.
For all of those with similar stories with me, you are not and will never be alone. Always find someone to be at your side because this will guide you to freedom. I hope all you guys on this topic will understand me, even though it is not the most severe depression case you will see.
NOTE: I am actually free from this demon, but I still feel the need to tell my story to people.
Enough, let's go.
First incident: 4 years ago, 2015
I had just entered middle school, when I was 13 years old. I was just a simple and quiet nerdy kid, just ignored by many people and being a very good studend (I was called a wonderkid by my teachers in elementary), until some bullies started to pick on me, because of one major reason: I was emotionally sensitive and reacted poorly to insults. This started once as simple taunting, but then people started spawning false rumours about me, such as being gay (chants like "Peter is gay" were rampant even though I am not gay) or, even worse, autistic and retarded, insults that still haunt me to the present day. (there is nothing wrong with autistic people, I personally know some who are very good and friendly people). The worst part of this experience was when I was invited to a party for one main reason: to be the punching bag, as I suffered terrible abuse at the hands of all the douchebags that were my classmates.
What made it worse was the fact that some teachers were against me as well, one of them outright saying that I must be transferred to a special needs school due to my somewhat spastic reactions I had at the time. In fact, that teacher deliberately dropped my grade just to make me look like a total fool. I still feel angry about this particular person, but I don't express it out loud. Besides, she was not mean to me the following years.
In general, teachers would not believe me about the bullying, because when you see a kid that is considered a retard crying, who is the culprit according to them?
I had virtually no friends back then, forcing me to stay inside home for a long time, which concerned my parents a lot. They did not know anything about it, so they were desperate to learn, but I refused to do so. This led to depression, which culminated in the development of another demon I faced for 4 years ever since starting, internet and gaming addiction, very severe at the starting point as I was literally sitting 12-14 hours at the computer, at one point even until 3-4 AM. These were horrible times.
Luckily, I made a friend who helped me endure this, as at that point I had developed suicidal thoughts (I told him even once "I AM GONNA KILL MYSELF".). After a day I was beaten up by a jock and embarrased in front of the entire school (I was the laughing stock of the school), he called my parents to inform everything going on. Then, I admitted everything was going on, prompting my father to contact a teacher who was a family friend and highly supportive of me to end this hell. The results of this was punishments for all the bullies, especially the main one, who was leading the pack, and a slow return to my normal life, after putting myself and my family into emotional turmoil.
My life would go back to normal, especially after overcoming internet addiction in late 2017.
However, this is not the end. Separate incident indeed, but what I am gonna say still haunts me in an even worse way.
Second incident: Late 2018-Early to Mid 2019
Remember when teachers called me a wonderkid and a top student? Well, in High School, these days faded away. As a result of internet addiction, I neglected my schoolwork in 10th grade, causing my grades to slip. At that point, I realised that I wanted to leave my current focus in schoolwork (I was a physics student, but I decided to go to economics in order to become a programmer), which caused me to shift entirely my focus. However, in the beginnings of 11th grade, I was forced to go to the physics class due to lack of an economics class for 11th graders, as the physics clash would split into two in 12th grade, physics and economics (I am currently in the latter).
I had told to myself that this would be the year that I would improve and stop the bullshit of the previous years. However, the opposite would happen due to my mental health literally collapsing. I will tell what would exactly happen during my worst ever school year, in all factors.
As I told before, I am quite a geek who loves non-mainstream stuff, am friends with pretty much every geek of my school community and would like to see a geeky girl show up. So, when I saw one particular girl that I had actually forgotten her existence in the previous years but would remember her later as one who would much my type, -surprise, surprise-, I fell in love with her at literally first sight.
My feelings at first were euphoric, and I was ecstatic, hoping that I would finally start a real relationship (I was obviously single, and still am, because which girl in a mainstream and conforming community like mine whould want the school geek?). However, they started to get too distracting, as I literally wasted lots of time thinking about her instead of doing important stuff, like schoolwork, which set off a terrible decline that I will explain right now.
Well, lemme tell you guys that I had to keep that crush a secret from everyone, except for a few trusted friends of mine. I have my reasons about this.
First, it is in my family. You see, that girl is originally from Albania, and this certain country is hated to most people of my country Greece, due to some stereotypes about crime existing. My parents are no exception to this, as they say that they are all evil backstabbers. The backlash I would recieve from my own family to liking someone from a "dreaded" country is obvious, so I kept my mouth shut when they asked me if I was crushing on anyone. They still don't know about my past feelings, and they will never learn.
Second, it is in my school in general. The class she is a part of has VERY close bonds, to the point they are like a fucking brotherhood or cult, and they are highly critical of students from the other classes. (same grade, but split evenly into 4 classes, all students there) Which meant that I was denied access to her class and try to approach her. Add my reputation as a highly controversial person, and this increased the difficulty of the situation. Also, it is worth mentioning that if something about love leaks around them, they WILL spread it everywhere.
Lastly, it was inside me. I am personally a very socially awkward and shy person, ESPECIALLY around girls, I simply did not possess the guts to speak to them out of fear of humilitation and failure. This is perhaps the biggest factor, since this forced me to keep it a secret all along from the school. Every time I attempted to speak to a girl, I would start stuttering and fail to even say a word. This happened every time she would be near me. Often my friends would speak so I would avoid slipping up and potentially ruining everything. A pain in the ass indeed, but was enough to not allow her to suspect anything about my odd and somewhat erratic behavior. (I would often sweat and get a hypertention everytime I made eye contact).
This emotional turmoil combined with my inability to adapt into schoolwork again started to take its toll on my mental health, which was starting to become more and more fragile every day.
My schoolwork problem in fact caused me to write some extremely awful grades, including failing a physics test and even being at risk of failing to even get past the lesson in first place. This caused me to have some really awful arguments with my parents, which led to me yelling at them and feeling like a total piece of junk that would fail in his life. Suicidal thoughts momentarily came back, but I stopped them. But this was not the real problem.
I had in general a real anger problem caused by my shitty mental state, which led me lashing out very violently, such as smashing stuff (I broke my keys and a shelf during these breakdowns), yelling very vulgar profanities and even threatening to beat up the world and such. I was not myself at that point, I was a monster. I would ruin my relationships with my family, treat my friends like scum, ignore everything in life and all the bad things you would expect from a person in this situation.
Then, a few months later, my already fragile mentality would collapse entirely...
After months of contemplating to tell my crush about my feelings in order to end this hell (I had frequent dreams about her, in one case 4 dreams in 4 successive days), I decided to finally admit it. A decision that I still regret.
I would step inside her class (with some help from my best friend due to being on the verge of getting a stress attack), ignore her toxic classmates, approach her (with help from one of her classmates that actually was a friend of mine), take her outside and finally say it.
And then, the inevitable happened: She rejected me, causing my inner word to collapse...
As for the consequenses, imagine how I would lash out, but far worse...
My sadness had hit a breaking point, until one day I finally snapped. One day that my sister pissed me off, I went ultra psychotic, starting to throw stuff everywhere, cursing in a horrible manner (even blasphemous insults that I heavily regret saying) and moving spastically while threatening to attack everyone. In the end, I started to cry loudly, screaming for this hell to end and asking for help. When my mother asked me what was bothering me, I would not answer why. In fact, I did not know why I was screaming for help. Only recently I realized that I snapped due to my inability to come to terms with the rejection as well as my personal anger for virtually ruining my life.
After this incident, I spoke to my friends about the severity of my situation and gave them a heart-felt apology for my past mistakes and behavior. They would help me come to terms with my situation and my feelings and allow me to remove depression for good.
The month after the end of the school year, I was finally free from this demon and started to restore everything I had runed during my depression stint, from interacting better with my family to improving my schoolwork and the such.
During holidays, I had some nasty flashbacks about all of this, along with dreams about my now former crush, but I overcame them after realizing that it is pointless to fight against them.
Present day: I am currently very happy, as my life is going forward to better stuff. I am a better student, a good friend and a good and cooperative family member. About that certain girl as well as my bullying experience, everything is just a distant memory of the past.
For all of those with similar stories with me, you are not and will never be alone. Always find someone to be at your side because this will guide you to freedom. I hope all you guys on this topic will understand me, even though it is not the most severe depression case you will see.
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