Katie, 18, Australia

“I’m eighteen now and myself at the ages of twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen and seventeen was never convinced that I would still be alive to be this age.

My mental illnesses have affected my life for almost 10 years. I have juggled with social anxiety, depression and disordered eating/thoughts. A large part of these illnesses came from excessive physical and emotion bullying during my earlier teen years. I remember my dad yelling at me telling me we needed to leave for school one day, because I had already had about 5 days of every week off of school for several months/went home sick.

I remember feeling so physically ill from my anxiety that I barred my door up with my bed, hiding myself in my own closet. I was not yet even fourteen. I remember crying on Christmas day, in front of the camera my dad was recording us with, because I was astonished that I was still on this Earth. I hadn’t expected to make it to my fifteenth Christmas alive.

I used to cry everyday in class because of how badly my depression made me feel like I didn’t want to be there. I didn’t want to be anywhere. I didn’t want to be anything. My bed became my home, my home became foreign. I would cry myself to sleep every single night for two years, praying to a God I don’t believe in to cease my existence. ”Just give me an illness”, ‘just take me away during the night”, ”please just let me go”. I was only fifteen .

I remember stopping myself from breathing on countless occasions during class, because my social anxiety told me that my classmates would think that my breathing was odd and that they would make fun of me for it. These are just small fragments of what mental illness does to you. It is not imaginary. It impairs you so greatly that you can barely function at times. It is an illness.