Part 10 - Everything Falls Apart

"Skylines and Turnstiles" - My Chemical Romance

I had already started drinking by this point, and now it got worse. A lot worse. I wasn’t drunk all the time or anything, but I’d binge-drink most weekends. This didn’t help my depression, and only exacerbated the symptoms. My self-harming got worse too, and it was becoming harder and harder to hide it.

I was around 15 years old by this time, and that’s when September 11 occurred. It wasn’t a major factor in my worsening mental health, but I should mention it, as it was a huge moment in the history of the world. One that I’m still quite sensitive about now. I was just on the cusp of becoming an adult, and the whole world stopped for one afternoon (or for one morning, in America). The pictures I saw terrified me, and just reinforced my belief, that the world was a horrible place to be.

Just when everything seemed to be failing, I met a boy. I’d been at school with him since I was eleven, but we didn’t really know each other. But once we started spending more time together, through mutual friends, we formed a relationship. This was my first major boyfriend, and we were together for approximately a year and a half, on and off. We were careful to begin with. He knew what had happened, as he was one of the first few people I told. I thought my life was finally looking up, and have that relationship gave me hope for my future. I’d taken my GCSE’s by this point , and got pretty good grades, so I was on the path to university, with a new boy friend, a relatively health social life, and no one knew my secret. I could finally leave cutting behind, and escape the pull of depression.

We took our relationship to "the next level" after a couple of months, and through his help and understanding, and a few girly chats with my best friend (not Emma), I had my first sexual relationship. He’s the only person I’ve had sex with, whilst sober, to this day.

I mentioned my best friend. We’d met just before the start of "big school". When my Dad left the forces, we moved, and therefore I had to change primary schools. Half-way through my last term of year six (the finally primary school year). So I met her there, and we were pretty much inseparable from the off. Little did I know that she had her own problems to contend with, and despite all the weekends that I practically lived at her house, I never once suspected something was amiss. We were really close, but she was always a lot less extroverted than I was. For all my problems, I managed to keep the majority of the people in my life on the periphery of my illness. I was often seen as the bubbly girl with the extraordinarily quite friend. She was also rather manipulative, and due to all the insecurities I carried, I never once stood up to her, so often ended up on the rough end of the mood swings.

I think I put all the insecurities, and anguish, I had into my relationship with my boyfriend. Our partnership was volatile at best, and violent at worst, with me playing the role of the aggressor. Alcohol was making my dark moments even worse, so I stopped for a short while, and became a teetotaller, but in the end, I couldn’t calm the monster inside, and my relationships, with both my boyfriend, and my best friend (at near enough the same time), broke down. And that’s when everything really started to go to hell.