`There is something wrong with me. Now, before I begin, a preface is due.

This isn’t going to be my usual cheery (and probably boring) article. I apologize for that.

I was a relatively happy and normal child. Or so I thought. I didn’t have a lot of friends, but that didn’t seem as important me as trying to have fun. I wasn’t abused. I wasn’t spoiled either. Sometimes people are just born this way.

I don’t know a thing about the science behind it. All I know is that is most like hereditary, like my bad eyesight.

I really began to suffer the symptoms of depression by the seventh grade. This is the year of school that I can’t really remember. It must have been that bad, that my poor brain worked hard on repressing the worst of the worst. That was the second year I got in a fight at school.

I need to justify the fight in sixth grade. I didn’t start it. I was merely under the attention of a girl. I could be meanwhile describing her, but I refuse to stoop that low. Anyways, she was trying to “impress” this older girl who had actually been held back a year or so.

In short, she claimed I cut in front of them in a line in Gym Class. I did no such thing. They were hanging back between the boys and girls lines, refusing to do anything “physical”. I tried to ignore her. She didn’t take well to this and punched me in the socket of my eye. I punched her in the chest. The gym teacher pulled me back and her friend pulled her back. I think she got in school suspension.

This fight in seventh grade was a bit different. It’s both shameful to me and how I met a good friend. These events take place in the gym, again. We eventually realized that some popular girls had been spreading nasty rumors, claiming that we had been the one to tell them horrible lies about the other. It came to a head during a game of Kickball. I was on one team and she was on the other. We kept trading words, our taunts getting plain nasty. Finally, she had enough. I can’t even remember what I said, but it was far from true. I had my back to her, going to the locker room to change. She shoved me from behind.

Now, interlude, I had been taking Taekwondo for about a year by this point. I took it for about seven years. One of the few rules in my dojo was that we could never use our training to hurt others. I abided by this rule.

I spun around. There was nothing against using my sharpened reflexes, as far as I was aware. I shoved her back. I probably asked her what she was thinking. We began combination shoving/ slapping match because it was all we knew about how to fight from TV. It was over as fast as it began. Our friends pulled us apart. This was when I got my first in school suspension. This meant I spent three days, locked in a small room with a retired teacher while I did work assigned by my teachers.

I never received official diagnoses because I never really told anyone. I didn’t trust my school’s counselor. I still think she shared stuff she shouldn’t with the school. I never felt, nor will I ever feel, comfortable sharing stuff like that with my parents. I can’t explain why.

It all came to a head in eighth grade. The girl I considered to be my best friend, betrayed me. She started hanging out with a bunch of characters who I considered were up to no good (and who often bullied me). She started telling them stuff that I told her in a confidant. I was in a bad place when my temper boiled over. It started when we were supposed to head to homeroom. They were all gathered in the second language room and I was trailing her. We had been talking until she walked in and suddenly I wasn’t there. I asked her if she’d walk up with me and she kept asking me to go away. I snapped. I quickly considered my options versus their fallout and went with a hard kick to the shin. I then insulted her and stormed off my blood roaring. It was akin to a temper tantrum. She and her new friends followed me. We started trading words. My temper was shot and I was still in the mood to be mean. This ended with us screaming in front of our homeroom teachers.

We were hauled off to the front office. My day wasn’t looking up. We were shuttled into the vice principal's office. She had never liked either of us. Or so I thought. It turned out that my friend was going to her church. She immediately thought my friend was an angel free of sin. Our VP was supposed to be judgment free. She was supposed to hear both sides. She did none of this. She only let my ex-bestie talk and she painted herself like the angel our VP saw her as. I waited patiently until she was done and then asked if I could tell my side. I still remember what she said.

“I’ve heard enough,” I am pretty sure I briefly saw red. I interjected and was quickly cut off. She let Benedict Judas Arnold walk. I was facing out of school suspension. Instead, I got a day or two in school suspension and school-ordered anger management sessions with a therapist just down the street.

He helped, some. I didn’t really want to be there. I was missing science class, the one class I wasn’t doing so hot in. He taught me to try and remove myself from the situation. I actually used his advice before the year was up.

I had to present a project in Social Studies. Our teacher was out that day and, for reasons I can’t comprehend, put in the lesson plans that we should still present our group projects. I was stuck with a gaggle of idiots (which was most of my class). Things did not go well. The Class Clown decided to annoy me and blame everything on me. Things began to take on a crimson filter. I actually imagined hurting him. I will admit to that. The sub was no help whatsoever. I knew I had to leave because my fists were clenched and he was just within reach. I told the sub I had to go to the bathroom, grabbed the pass, and nearly flew down the stairs.

I found the tech teacher, who I had become friends with over the semester. She walked with me, because I was sort of out of bounds, and let me vent. By the time we got to the office, I was actually calm. The counselor was out, so she walked me back to class. I spent the rest of class in the hall bathroom because I was afraid I’d lose everything I’d worked for if I went back in there.

In summary, middle school was a living nightmare.

Anger and Whatever This Might Be, turned into stress as I entered high school. Ninth Grade was a breeze because I got lucky. A senior boy, in the popular class, took me under his wings shadow. I am still not sure what his feelings for me were. If there were troublesome upperclassmen, I didn’t know because knowing Ray kept them away from me. The senior class that year, and the juniors below them were a handful. We heard war stories from our teachers in middle school. They quickly stamped out the troublemakers in my class. Suddenly the popular girls wanted to be friends and I was distrustful.

Tenth grade blurs with the year before. My English teacher had mental issues, that was clear as day. Why some people become teachers when they hate children is beyond me. She was my biggest source of stress that year. She hated me because of my friend (we reunited in ninth grade because she realized her friends were not nice people). I actually tried to become a Doctor Who fan to get on her good side, because that was her favorite show.

By eleventh grade it was affecting my health. I had frequent headaches and often visited the nurse. The counselor took matters into her own hands, after confiding with the nurse and via my permission. She got me on the list to see a counselor who visited the high school once a week. I think she really helped me, though I’m not entirely sure I was doing this right. What I knew about councilors was from TV. It felt good to vent to her. She’d hand out suggestions about how to work on particular issues.

This was all free, for me, until senior year. Suddenly my Mom’s insurance changed and we were supposed to pay. I do not remember being made aware of this. We had no idea until a bill came in and I was sick to my stomach. I skipped a scheduled meeting, hid in the bathroom, and cried.

We tried. My Mom took me to her headquarters, an office not far from home. Unfortunately, this was a burning disaster. I liked who I liked. I was out of my comfort zone. I knew that my Mom was paying for this out of pocket, so I felt like I was a burden. They set me up with a teleconference with a doctor somewhere else. I wasn’t very comfortable with it. He asked a lot of personal questions (they said they had to). We set the next meeting in the air and we never went back.

It was in college that I realized I very well might have depression. There were points that I felt very down. It’s too expensive at my school. To talk to a therapist, I mean. I voiced my anxieties on Facebook. It was like writing in a public journal, and I am sorry for being a burden on everyone.

I just took the first steps yesterday. I called the same office, the only one I really know. I’m going to try again. I want to know what’s wrong with me. I want to avoid medication if at all possible. I am trying to do the right thing here.