Jess

mare.bowe

My name is Jessica, and I suffer from major SED (Severe Emotional Disturbance). Sometimes I wonder if most people go through life with blindfolds over their eyes and fingers in their ears.

I’m not too sure when it started or why, but it did.  The next thing I knew I was falling into an emotional pit of “Why me?”  It’s not as if I woke up one day and said,  “I’m going to be depressed!” It wasn’t a choice, just like how sexuality or race isn’t a choice.

My life at home was great; I was never abused or neglected like most would think. I just wasn’t happy and couldn’t ever get happy, no matter how hard I tried. Of course, I thought it was normal, nothing I could do about it. Not saying there wasn’t a time when I had big eyes and long hair caked with dirt from making mud pies, because there was. Those days are just long-gone and impossible for me to conjure up into memory. Growing up, I remember feelings, not pictures of laughter and painted nails, like most girls my age remember of their childhood.

Eventually my depression would go away for a time but then hit me randomly, like a giant wave coming at you in the ocean. I’d be super happy but then, all of a sudden, I just did not want to do anything. I didn’t want to get out of bed.  I didn’t want to eat or even wash my hair. All I could do was think and think and think and think. Sometimes the words would form themselves in a steady rhythm. That’s when poetry became my new addiction. If I didn’t write, it would eat at me.  And if it would eat at me, I’d be back in the depression so deep that I wouldn’t be able to get out. Of course, sometimes I just couldn’t even bring myself to write. That was the first time I tried to kill myself.

Killing myself wasn’t something I planned out every day of my life. I would think of it, yes, and think it was the only way out, so I tried it. It was simple, really.  But it didn’t work. Why it didn’t still baffles me to this day Trying to kill myself wasn’t the only thing I did to harm myself. I did cut, almost every night, for the longest time. It made me feel alive, free, not so pathetic.  It made me feel in the light, instead of suffocating in the cave I made for myself over the years. But I quit and have been clean for two years now.

Many people have seen me, my pictures, heard my name, have read my poetry, but not one of them really knows me. I’ve started writing again, and I am smiling more often. I have friends who care about me and some who are faker than Barbie. Writing comes easy to me. Just give me time. Laughing, I do it all the time. Dreaming is my specialty. Changing my hair is how I let go.

My name is Jessica, but you can call me Jess. Sometimes I wonder why I am who I am, but I love it anyway.

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