First Part of sharing my life and experiences I have made before my depression and during depressionsteemCreated with Sketch.

in #depression4 years ago

Hello everyone,

first of all, I would like to apologize, I have recently moved and had alot to do. I am not finished yet, but I don’t want to let my blog die out, so here I am again. Thank you for your patience and interest!

Intro
At the Beginning of my blog, I already announced that I will share my life to help people understand a few things:

  • How does the life look like of a person who developed depression
  • Who I am and how do I even know what I am talking about, what are my experiences?
  • How did my depression come to be and how did it develope over time, which symptoms arised and how did it affect my life

Part one

The first memories I have, are when I lived in germany in a town in frankonia. We were renting an apartment and my parents got us a cat. We came into the living room (which my parents were sleeping in at that time) and my dad told us to look around for something. When I looked under the bed I saw a pair of beautiful yellow-green eyes staring at me and it was love at first sight.

At that time I was about 5 years old, my brother was already in first grade and I was still too young for school, so I was at home with my mom. I spent every day with that cat, that for some reason was afraid of getting touched. But I still spent time with her intensly. Once I took her on my lap, I was wearing shorts and she dug her claws into my legs because she was scared, but I just stayed calm, clenched my teeth and contiously pet her.

Maybe what I did back then was not the right thing to do to a cat that is afraid, I forced her to face her fears and to understand that the hand is nothing bad. I did that for about 2 hours until she started to relax. She pulled her claws out of my legs and started to lick the wounds she had inflicted on me.

After that happened, that cat followed me everywhere, I had never seen a cat that I could do so much with. I could push her around in the stroller I had for my dolls, I could pick her up like a baby on her back, she always ran to me when she was scared, which mostly happened on new years with fireworks or when a thunderstorm was really loud.
This cat was everything for me. I also had a great relationship with my brother, we played alot, he even played with my barbies with me and I played with him with his cars. He was a very loving and caring brother to me, yes occasionally we had arguments, but which siblings don’t.

When my brother was in first grade, he came home with marks around his neck. My brother had been strangled at school by classmates because he couldn’t speak german…. We had just moved to germany from the US not too long ago. When I saw that I was devastated, I felt so helpless, angry and sad… My mother talked to the principal at school, but that guy was useless… He asked my mother what should be done…

I do remember that my brother started defending himself with chair after it happened a few times. The end of that story was, that the school pressured my mother to go to a doctor and have them perscribe ritalin… I hated to see my brother on that stuff… It changed him completely… It was definetly not the right thing to do, but we didnt have much choice back then… Thankfully my brother decided one day, to refuse to take those pills again.

By the time I was old enough for school and got into first grade, I made my first friend, she became one of my best friends up until today. After I got used to school a bit, I started looking for the kids who had hurt my brother multiple times and when I found them I beat them up… I know today that wasn’t right, but I was 6 years old and I felt like I had to teach them a lesson, so they will never treat anyone that badly again. Another reason was I wanted to get revenge for my brother, who could not really defend himself.

My parents had arguments, which is normal, but we knew they argued about us the most, we started feeling bad… We felt like it was our fault they were arguing so often…

End of part 1

Sorry everyone that this one is shorter, but I will have to take this step for step, some memories are still very clear and I remember the emotions of those situations…. I will try to make the next part longer. I hope you understand.

Take care everyone! 😊