It's not a joke to be mentally ill; in fact, I've been so since I was eight-years-old, meaning that I don't have a lot of memories before the symptoms took ahold of me. It was always there—like a race or sexuality—I just didn't understand it until I was placed into a different environment so early in my life. Said environment was a new elementary school, due to my mother's remarriage and our move into a different school zone. I was determined to make the best of it; I was the older in my sibling group, and I figured if I attempted to do well then things would get better. It went from bad to worse.

It was probably listed somewhere in my permanent record that I'd been diagnosed between the ages of four and five as oppositionally defiant. I'm pretty sure my third-grade teacher got that information somehow and ran with it. She was a horrible woman, which made my anxiety fluctuate out of control, and seemed to get off on informing my parents of my wrong-doings within the classroom, which were, according to her, a constant. I had hand-me-down coats from cousins of mine during that point, and I remember one coat just wasn't cutting it. It was in the middle of winter, and I figured I could go inside and use the bathroom to get warm. I remember my teacher seeming to wait at the door for me, her face suddenly appearing in the pane of glass, and shaking her head at me, forbidding me from coming into the warmth of the school. I just remember trudging back to the playground, so disheartened.

There always seemed to be an unspoken rule between the students of every class I had while in my second elementary school, that I was bad news, due to my, shall we say bizarre behavioral issues that I had no idea how to deal with. Lines were drawn, and only a couple of people crossed those lines to befriend me. Each group of students—boys and girls—had a representative among them whenever a new student came to school and was assigned to our class. The guy and the girl would surround the student of their sex and tell them that I was a freakshow and not to be friends with. Every new student listened, and it was another person for their pack to tear me down another day.

Things continued to go from bad to worse as my mandatory education continued, and I could easily count my true friends on one hand. By the tail end of high school, I had had enough of everyone's deception, so I wrote an essay for my senior project about my experiences within the school environment about their treatment of me. Thinking that they had been black-balled, I was then ordered to issue an apology to these student pets, yet I stuck to my guns and refused. It was a half-assed acknowledgement of their unhappiness, but I don't think their brief bitterness could even begin to match the devastation I felt within those walls of high school.

Binge drinking took up much of my time during those years, in an ill-advisedattempt to dull the experience of pain around me. As time went on, I became anexpert at hiding it, and nobody seemed to suspect at the time what was reallyhappening to me. Two suicide attempts—the first in June/July 2009 and February2010—affected my high school years, and a suspension for taking someone's prescriptiondrugs senior year forever blemished my seemingly perfect school record, otherthan a plethora of unexcused absences, due to my missing class. The inner chaoswas never-ending, and even now, when I'm in a black mood close to tears, I feellike I'm sixteen-years-old again, when the drinking stopped, and when I thoughtI'd found someone to love me, but it too went up in smoke.