(edited)
Hello. I'm Angel Elizabeth Matthews. You may remember me as Lizz Matthews.
I understand many of you probably did not have the chance to meet me. Today I have prepared this to tell you all who I really am.
I attended Southern Alamance Middle School from the beginning of 6th grade to February of 8th. During my few years at that school I developed severe Depression, Insomnia, Anxiety, and Suicidal thoughts. During my 6th grade year, I decided it was time to discover who I really was. I had been hiding who I really was for so long that I had forgotten who Angel Matthews was. We all dealt with the struggles of finding your true self. For me, I figured out I was an outcast. For years before this I had been bullied. I thought going to a school with people from other schools I had never met would help me and that I wouldn't deal with these people forcing me to believe I wasn't worth living. This was a terrible thought. I expected to be cared about again, but it just. got. worse.
Sixth Grade,
I approached sixth grade in my favorite outfit: A grunge inspired plaid jacket with a shirt that read "punk" and "rebel" and all types of cool stuff. This was who I thought I was. I expected there to be more people like me. Now listen, I didn't keep a diary, so you may be thinking "How does she remember this?" Well, I'll tell you... I started writing. It was something I'd wanted to do for a while. So much crazy stuff had happened in my life and I was thinking it would make for a killer plot line, ya know? This book describes my first day at the middle school very well. I was sorted into my room (jeez what is this, Harry Potter?) and I noticed I was in the same class as my best friend. She was the ONLY PERSON I KNEW! I also saw a group of what looked like popular kids that had lots of money and were all good friends and bleeeeh. It turns out that in the first week of school, one of those popular girls became like my best friend in my classes. We shared all of the same classes and I had a group of friends to sit with at lunch.. IT WAS FREAKING AWESOME. Anyway, so it turns out she was the popular girls weird friend. You know how in the movies the popular girl with money has that one weird friend that isn't actually that spoiled, in fact, doesn't have much money? There isn't that in the movies?! Well there was one here. I loved her to death. She was awesome. I was the weird best friends weird best friend and I was loving it. I thought I was finally being cared about after being bullied so much in Elementary school, but I wasn't. That group of popular boys I saw on my first day of school were most definitely the most popular boys. This may sound surprising to other generations but these days you have to 1) Disobey and disrespect all authority 2) Have money 3) Be good looking and funny 4) Be a total douchebag and 5) Treat girls as your little objects and toys to play around with to be popular. EVEN IN SIXTH GRADE THESE BOYS KNEW THE RULES. Can we take a look at #4 please. "4) Be a total douchebag" it's true. These boys literally made people feel terrible about themselves day by day. As the usual bullying story goes there is always one person known as the biggest target, and in my school I was one of the biggest targets. How do you know if you are the biggest target? Endless threats are thrown at you every day ("If you don't buy a brush to fix your ugly hair, I'll buy one for you." etc.), Endless physical bullying every day (punching, kicking, hitting, etc.), Endless verbal bullying every few minutes ("Eww what is that? Oh It's just Lizz" etc.), and whenever there is a plan to harm someone it always seems to be you. That was me. The bullies came at me every single day nonstop. I remember the school player tried to trick me into things. It was difficult. And to think they were doing this all for attention.
Seventh Grade,
This year WAS AND ALWAYS WILL BE REMEMBERED as the worst year of my life. This year was the year I developed many mental disorders such as depression and anxiety. I actually started the year pretty well. By pretty well I mean not being bullied as much as I'd expected. Of course that was probably because I went through a 1D phase which we shall not speak of that many girls understood. Everything was off to a normal start. I was feeling okay. I was feeling more confident in myself. I don't remember what it is that made me start developing depression, but I believe the bullying started once again. It just kept getting worse. One day I actually ended up having a nervous breakdown one day after coming home from school. I do not remember the details of that but I do believe that is the first time I ever self-harmed. It started becoming regular. I cut at home, I cut in the bathrooms at school, I even cut lightly during classes. I remember developing feelings for a geek in my class. He didn't really help much or make a difference but I knew he cared about me so I guess that helped. Even though he helped a bit I ended up telling him I was moving on. I couldn't really handle another person. That wasn't necessarily true but here's where we get really sad, depressing, and personal. I had liked a friend of my brothers for over 3 years. I started talking to him over a secret facebook account I started because my friends at school forced me to make one. I ended up telling him how I felt and things got a bit too far. I was almost pressured into losing my virginity to him. He kept trying to pressure me into things I didn't want to do by simply making it seem like he loved me as much as I loved him. After my parents and brother found out I was left alone. My friends all left me because I had told them I didn't need them. My brother hated me for betraying him. My parents thought I did something I really didn't and I didn't tell them about what actually happened. A short while later I discovered on my own that he had been using me, or at least trying to. One of my friends had been hinting at this, although I was so crazy about him that I didn't notice he didn't actually care about me. My depression got worse and the user became my biggest trigger for cutting and depression. I started thinking about running away, and the only thing keeping me from doing that was my friend who I talked to online. I had no friends in school. I would cry to myself during assignments and no one noticed or happened to ask what was wrong, just like in 2nd grade when I used to cry underneath my desk while sitting upon the cold floor of Edwin Michael Holt Elementary school. I wrote little depressing notes in my binders. Planning when to run away, when to commit suicide, everything. A few months ago I found these notes and covered them in paint, then throwing them into the trash so no one would know about my depression. I ended up getting worse with my teachers. I had a nervous breakdown in the middle of science class once... that wasn't pretty. Everything kept falling apart for me. I remember the night I ended up blurting out to my mother that in sixth grade my teacher assaulted me. I brought this to the assistant principal. He asked to name other people in my class. Like I said earlier, I never knew these people. I only knew my bullies and my best friend. My bullies of course said they didn't see it happen only to get me in trouble for lying. My best friend was no longer my best friend due to me pushing her away, and she has memory loss. I still don't know which reason it was that she said she didn't recall it ever happening. The year kept getting worse. I stood up to my teacher against her favoritism and she actually got my friends to hate me again after they soon started to like me after the user incident. My best friend became a girl that was so obsessed with me she would touch me inappropriately. I didn't like spending time with her because well, it's obvious. At the end of the year still nothing was resolved and my depression worsened.
Eighth Grade,
In eighth grade I noticed I had a problem. I had nervous breakdowns all the time, I cut 24/7, I was still planning my suicide, and I still had trouble sleeping. I decided it was the year I needed to fix things. I spent most of my time worrying about what might happen to me and those around me. I began studying depression and helping those who are experiencing the same problem over the internet. Although no one knew about this, I still focused more on depression than anything. My best friend also had depression and I began helping others by helping her. I dealt with my depression by helping others, theatre, and listening to the whole Collide With The Shy album on repeat. I lived eighth grade in fear. My anxiety worsened. I stopped talking to people on the internet because I feared if someone figured out it would have a bad reaction like the user incident. I was still bullied, although not as much because I alerted those around me I had a problem. My scars became visible, and so did my tears. I faked sickness all the time to be at home and away from a place where I saw everyone around me as triggers for my depression. I started having flashbacks of everything thats ever happened to me. Flashbacks of when I was pulling spitballs out of my hair, looking into the blue eyes of my bully as he told me lies to try and trick me into spilling my embarrassing secrets to him, and the flashbacks of a guy telling me "Come on, It'll be fun." I started having re-occuring dreams of EVERYONE I knew ganging up to kill me and then celebrating afterwards. I still wrote depressing notes to myself and I remember what caused all of this to be possible. All of this. A great man who happened to be my Language Arts teacher caught me writing "Kill Yourself" on a paper of other little depressing things. He told me to throw it away. I'm pretty sure he thought I was writing it to someone else. Although, knowing my depression was obvious I just saw it as he knew I was talking to myself. Since my whole family still didn't know about my depression I wrote him a letter while everyone else focused on reading The Outsiders. The note said something along the lines of do not tell my mum, etc., etc., I have depression, etc., etc., I have suicidal thoughts and I'm pretty sure sooner or later I'm going to kill myself, etc., etc. He asked me after reading it if I wanted to go to the guidance counselor. I hadn't talked to the guidance counselor since my old best friend told her about my thoughts of suicide but I told her that I didn't have thoughts of suicide and my friend was overreacting. I ended up saying yes to the offer of talking to the guidance counselor, and I ran out of class in tears. Of course my class stared and wondered what was wrong, but they all knew. They had all seen my pictures. I ended up talking to the guidance counselor for two hours and I wasn't even done talking to her by the end, but school was over. I saw her every day and I spent most of my day in her office. Whenever she told me I was in there for too long I would just go sit in the bathroom forever and cry instead of going to class. I told my brother about this but not the other members of my family. He always gave me little pep talks in his special Jace way. Like saying "Razors or Doughnuts? Puppies or Suicide?" It was funny and sweet all at the same time. I remember fighting my mum to go to school in the morning and I told her about my depression in the counselors office one morning. She took me home from my short few hours at school to just get some rest. I ended up having to not only talk to the counselor every day but the assistant principal every morning. Like everything, even through all of this comfort there had to be a breaking point. One day we started studying depression and self-harm in health class. After everyone in the class kept asking me for the answers to the questions because they knew I was "emo" as they called it, I called it the breaking point. One self-harmer at my school actually admitted to getting up and leaving during the humiliating and triggering class. I would not go to school. Soon every teacher and student knew what was happening to me and why I was skipping classes and school days every day. One of my teachers said to the counselor she noticed my depression and scars early on and started complimenting me on something different everyday, no matter if she hated it or not. It was already too late though. I planned on transfer. I ended up being homeschooled. Now that my homeschooling is over, I plan on going to Hawbridge next year depression-free. Because for now, I'm defeating the depression with love and a whole bunch of anti-depressants.
I stand in front of you reading this today
showing how much Southern made a messed up impact
on my somewhat depressing life
that I am proud to have fought.
Love,
Lizz.
