People I love are in pain and it hurts me in a way I have never felt before. I was always the one in pain and I was always the one that needed help. I was the one of the group who was depressed, who cried at everything, who demanded attention. I was the one people put up with, I was the one nobody understood. And I didn't understand myself either, until my entire being was smashed into a million pieces and I was forced to pick up each piece of myself individually, give it a close examination, drug it and talk it over to death, and then put it back in place the best way I knew how. Now I have friends who want to kill themselves, and friends who are self-injuring. I have friends with problems beyond their control, cancers and abusive parents or boyfriends. I have friends who barely have enough money to pay their rent each month, who deal drugs, who struggle through college hoping to transfer to university, but as hard as they try they cannot make the grades. I have friends who push me away, because I don't know what it is like to be them. I don't count, because my pain was caused by a boy. It isn't the same to have your entire world fall apart when it is because of a boy. This is why I tell no one the real reason I left SFU. I resorted quite a while ago to telling people it was because of "family problems". It is a much more widely accepted excuse. Society understands when you have a problematic home life that you are bound to be depressed. A boyfriend dumping you is not a good enough excuse, for anything. People tell you to suck it up, get over it already, Krista, it's been over a year, what's wrong with you? He's moved on, why can't you? Maybe it's time you got over it, don't you think? It's a boy...one boy, out of how many on this earth?
I have been to Hell and back, and still I am not good enough. In the eyes of others, it was never the real thing. I was accused by my own friends for months that my depression wasn't real, that it was only for attention, that I was making it all up. I lost a lot of so-called "friends" over that.
And now, I'm not good enough to help other people. Nobody takes me seriously, because I'm not a real mental case. I'm just that weak girl who thought the world was over because her high school relationship broke up. I'm just that girl who made a big deal out of nothing. I'm the one who frets over things like whether or not I should call him when I miss him, or if I should get him a Christmas present. I'm a sucker more than anything.
I feel ashamed all the time, because all I hear around me is that I'm stupid for keeping this up so long, and I'm stupid if I still love him and think of him everyday. I'm stupid if I don't know how to let go, if I'm bothered to overhear things about him that I didn't know, or if I cry because I am jealous.
I wish I could help my friends. I wish I could help them to see that I really do know what it feels like to want to die. I know what it feels like to lose your faith in God, I know what it feels like to feel so alone and so unloved. I know the addiction of self-injury, I know how badly it hurts to cut and feel the blood trickling down your arms, and I know how good it feels later to run your finger over your scars and realize you're not thinking about what's hurting you inside, you're only thinking about the physical pain on the surface. I understand feeling like you wish you could bleed out your disease and everything else wrong with you.
I'm not used to this, to feeling as if I'm a person's only hope. I've never been someone's last resort, I've always looked to others as my own last resort. I've never needed to be needed, and now that I am, I don't know where to begin.
All I can say to my friends who are in pain is that I love them and I understand, and I am here if they need me. Somehow, it isn't enough. It's not enough when you're looked down upon as the shallow-minded girl who can't differenciate between real world problems and high school fairy-tale delusions.
I just pray that everything I try to do will make a difference in the end. Because I'm not as stupid as some people think.
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