Introspection.

[butterfly]

I can't point to any one turning point in my life. I can't say, "Okay, this is what made me start down this path."

My road to depression was gradual, containing thousands of small moments and small choices that brought me to this point in my life.

There are, of course, 'events' in my life that made me sad or that were a bit rougher than most things.

When I started 7th grade at Portland Lutheran, I was still a relatively happy kid. I soon made friends at the school and joined the choir. I was enthusiastic in class and tended to get As and Bs. I was chatty, overweight, and a big reader but no one made fun of me for any of it.

I was generally well-liked. I was happy. I spent some time in the library, but I also ate with friends and did things with people. I was fairly balanced.

In 8th grade, I started to drift away from the friends that I had made the year before. Or rather, they started to drift away from me. It was a slow process but by the end of that year, I could only claim three real friends from school.

In High School, everything just got worse. I joined the volleyball team, mostly to try to make friends.

I joined the musical group, Genesis, at our church and made some friends there.

My confidence in myself was falling rapidly as the fights between my parents escalated in volume and frequency. I suffered a huge blow when a guy that I'd thought of as a nice guy, anonymously wrote some horrible things about me and spread it around school.

When they found out who'd done it, he was kicked out of school for the rest of the year.

The next year, he was back in school and everyone acted like he'd never done anything. At that point, I had quit volleyball.

My aunt died the day after Christmas of my sophomore year. My mom started planning to divorce my dad. I transferred to the public school in the area.

Junior year, I started skipping class to go and cry in the bathroom. I almost failed my classes, only passing them because of parental and teacher action. That was the year that I started cutting.

Senior year, I went to Centennial Learning Center, the school for kids who couldn't handle going to the main school. That year, I also stopped doing Genesis.