It’s all relative

I remember when I was about fourteen years old, I had this book. It had weird shiny paper and a really glittery front cover with a picture of a bird or a fish or something like that… It wasn’t really my style, and I don’t know where I got it from but I used it as a place to write my innermost thoughts and deepest feelings because I believed it was the least likely place my mother would look if she wanted to read my diary and find out what was going on in my life.

My first mistake was thinking that my mother would invade my privacy like that. She never thought twice about what I’d be writing about before bed each night. She trusted that I was a happy-go-lucky young woman who would come to her first if I ever had any issues or worries in life.

My second mistake was regretting the things I’d written for fear of being judged, ripping out the pages with all those words I wrote, and throwing them in the bin without considering if she’d notice them or not. I figured that once they were in the trash, they’d be forgotten about. But that’s not quite what happened.

It was a weekday afternoon, I was in my room getting changed out of my school uniform and into my comfy, laze-about-the-house clothes. Mum came in and was holding a wad of paper in her hand… Weird, shiny paper, covered in blue handwritten words. My stomach dropped, my face flushed red; I knew exactly what she had found, and I was absolutely terrified of what she was about to say. 

“I want to talk to you about this. I didn’t read it on purpose, but I saw it lying in the rubbish bin under the sink and I saw the words ‘I just want to die’. I wouldn’t be doing my job as a mother if I didn’t ask you why you wrote these things, and if somethings troubling you”.

She had tears in her eyes and her beautiful, loving face had drained to a ghost white. I knew she was scared too.

And so it began, my mum and I sat on my bed talking about the things I wrote, why I wrote them, and whether or not I was really okay. At school I had become friends with a girl who was in conflict with another girl I was friends with. She would invite me over, we’d go and do things, we’d talk about people who annoyed us and people who we got along with, and I’ll admit, I was prompted to say and agree with some pretty nasty things about one of our ‘friends’ that she didn’t get along with.  I was pretty naïve back then. I just wanted to fit in, I wanted to look like all the other pretty girls, I wanted to be cool. And when someone chose to spend their time with me, and compliment me on the clothes I wore and the house I lived in, I was pretty over-the-moon and a little bit too trusting. To cut a long story short, this friend revealed everything I had ever said (and framed me for everything she ever said), and turned a whole group of my classmates against me. For a few weeks at school I was pretty lonely. I was stared at, pointed at, whispered about… all that typical high-school behaviour. And although I look back now and think I should’ve just brushed it off and held my head high… I couldn’t.  In an environment where all we want to do is fit in and be accepted, I was pushed to the outer. I was the loser. And I hated every minute of it, so much so that I would have preferred to just disappear so I wouldn’t have to face it all. I had to spend 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, surrounded by these teenagers who appeared to loath my existence, and I really, really struggled.

So I took to writing.

I’d spend about an hour each night listening to sad songs and scribing my feelings. It was my outlet; one place I could be truly honest. I wrote things like ‘I’m depressed’, ‘maybe I should just kill myself’, ‘life would be better if I wasn’t here’, ‘who’s gonna miss me?’

It’s no wonder my mother was devastated to find out that these thoughts were swimming round in my head.

After some time, and following some pretty intense conversations with my parents, things started to improve. The girls who had criminalised me for so long (two weeks felt like forever in those days) apologised and we all moved on. I began to spend my time with a different group of friends, and I became a little wiser when it came to the behaviour and ulterior motives of hormonal teenage girls. I was more open to discussing these sorts of issues with my parents, instead of drowning in my own negative thoughts. Talking about it, made all the difference.

I look back now and those issues seem so small, I wonder why it bothered me at all? But then I remember, it’s all relative. And that’s the moral of my story.

The problems we face at different ages and stages of life are relative to the situations and circumstances we’re in. What mattered then, may not matter now, but at the time, I was a vulnerable young woman on the brink of a breakdown. Had I not decided to rip out those pages and try to pick myself up… had my mother not sat me down, gave me one of her magic hugs, and talked it all through.. who knows what would have happened?

What is a mountain for one, might be a mole-hill for someone else, but regardless; we all need a little help at times.

It became clear to me as I grew older that despite being strong in most difficult situations, I was more than capable of being overcome by depressive thoughts. To this day, I still cocoon myself up in bed at night and log my innermost thoughts and feelings in my favourite journal. If I’m struggling with something; writing remains my biggest outlet. However, I now know how important it is to share your problems should they become too big or too much to deal with. Life is too short to be drowning in our own thoughts, thinking that we’re all alone. But that’s what Depression can feel like.

You never know what someone else is going through. So let this be a reminder to keep your eyes and ears out. No matter what age and stage of life you are in, remember that what may be minor to you, may be major to someone else.

Never judge. Never belittle. Never shrug it off.

Ask questions. Give comfort. Talk about things. Listen. And listen to hear, not to respond. At the very least, just be around.

It might make all the difference to someone’s outlook on just how salvageable their situation is.

– Elyse Jones