Why are you depressed?

2 sport, 3-year varsity athlete. Student Council. National Honors Society. Two parents that are married and love me. Two older brothers who are my greatest protectors. A wonderful girlfriend. The greatest group of friends I could ever ask for. This all sounds like the perfect high school life, doesn't it? So the same question you might have for me, that my mom also had is, why are you depressed? This was the most frustrating question for me to receive because I had no clue why I was constantly upset; why I always had the thought of suicide on my mind. My sophomore year of high school, January 16, 2013, I ran my car 40 mph head first into a tree. I was on my way to basketball practice, had just left my girlfriend's house, and I just lost it. I couldn't breathe I was crying so hard. I was going in and out of blacking out and as I was driving I deleted all of my texts except to my girlfriend. The last text I had sent was "Goodbye, I love you" to her. It was snowy and icy so I figured they could think that it was an accident. The spot it happened was a place I often went to calm myself down when I felt a breakdown coming. I don’t remember much of what was on my mind leading up to hitting the tree, but I do remember wanting to end it all. After I hit the tree and the airbag deployed, I was out for only a few minutes. When I came to, my car was filled with smoke from the airbag popping and I could barely breathe. I couldn't feel my legs because of how small the car was and how long my legs were. I fell into the snow and felt blood on my hands and face. I found my phone in my coat pocket and called my mom right away and told her I was in an accident. I ended up with a concussion and a sprained wrist and just more physical pain to add to the mental pain I was feeling. Both of my parents knew, without having to tell them, that it wasn't an accident. My mom finally believed me that I wasn't okay and we found someone who has changed my life, my therapist. She has helped me through countless of bad breakdowns and has given me so many new perspectives of life. After getting help with a therapist, along with help from different medications, I still had bad days, but the thoughts of suicide had gone down and I truly thought I was getting better.

That is, until last October. Over the summer, I had lived down at my dream school, Purdue. I was taking classes, working, and started to develop a habit of working out and eating healthier. Along with starting a habit of getting “fit” I also developed a nasty habit in drinking alcohol. I was alone, no friends of mine were at school, the people I lived with were drug dealers who were constantly in and out of the house with their music blaring, I had no one. What I had was a bottle of bourbon and myself. The habit quickly developed into a problem that I couldn’t control. Soon it was every single night that I was drinking. I wouldn’t drink because it tasted good, I’d drink to get drunk. Over the summer I had lost 35 pounds and got nothing but praise for my hard work and dedication to getting fit. Little did everyone know, I was slowly slipping into alcoholism. As my friends came back in August, things were starting to look better. My friends were always at my house; I wasn’t alone anymore. But I still felt that need for the alcohol. School started to slip away from me, I started missing more classes, staying in bed all day. My friends would come over at around 10 at night and I sometimes would still be in my bed from the morning. I was slowly slipping back into the darkness that I hoped I’d never see again and I had no control of it. One night, after going to dinner with my friends, I came back into my house and wanted nothing more than to sleep. Then the thought of never waking up again. I decided to take a sleeping pill, then another, then another, until the whole bottle was empty. After about 20 minutes, I still wasn’t asleep, and I grabbed my bottle of bourbon and started to drink. I don’t recall much of what happened after drinking. I know I wrote a suicide note. I know I called Phil and asked him to help me. I don’t remember the drive to the hospital. I don’t remember being in the hospital or getting transferred to the mental rehab facility. I remember crying a lot on my first day there. Crying not because I was scared and didn’t know where I was, but because the suicide attempt didn’t work. After a week of talking to different therapists and being shut off from the outside world, I was taken home by my mom. Home home. My parents and I decided that what was best was for me to move back home. It was very frustrating to look at my life and see what I had done with it. I often am still angry at myself. Seeing where I was to where I am now; a college dropout. However, as of a week ago, I applied to go back to school here at IUSB and hopefully start back on the right direction to getting a degree and my life back on track. I have been working nonstop lately and it has been good for me to stay busy. Every day is still a struggle to wake up and do life, but I have the strongest support system in the world to lift me up every single day and remind me why I keep fighting.