This is me, and this is my story.

I just want to start my story off by saying, I am deaf. I have a hearing aid, so I can hear well, but it isn't perfect. So, all my life I knew I wasn't like other kids. I always played by myself at recess, no one talked to me at lunch. However, I didn't really understand at that age how much people were cruel to me until 5th grade.

My family didn't really have a ton of money or time, so we never really had birthday parties outside of my family. I was so excited to finally have my 12th birthday party at the local bowling alley. I invited about 20 of the girls in my grade, no one showed up except for my neighbor. That is when I realized that people aren't the best. Then I "graduated" elementary school, and went to middle school. 6th grade wasn't too bad, honor roll student, very involved, but by the end of the year, I lost two of my good friends. Then 7th grade rolled around. That year still to this day was the worst year of my life. I had lost the only friend I really had, I kept good grades but I felt like I was invisible, that no one cared.

My middle school had about 150-200 kids per grade, I felt like I was lost at sea; I felt like I was worthless. I had used to be eager to go to school, but then I started to beg my mom to drop me off at exactly 7:55 so I didn't have to feel those eyes on me, so I I didn't have to feel isolated from the rest of my world.

Then I started begging not go to school. I never begged on the outside, I didn't want my mom to worry. But on the inside, that builds and builds and it gets too much. I also had one teacher who was also my volleyball coach, who was just awful to me. She just targeted me. I'll give you one example, one time in choir class she yelled at me for not looking at the sheet music but she was talking and I need to watch the interpreter and my teacher said: "I don't care, it's not my fault you can't hear." She is one of the key components of why I have anxiety today.

I was just plumbing downhill, I started thinking it would be better if I just died, no one would notice. Now, though I did not tell my mom about much, she could see that I was struggling at the public school. So after my 7th-grade year, she pulled me out and brought me to visit the state school for the deaf, and it was amazing. Seeing all those people who were just like me. All the students were deaf and they all could sign and the teachers were not all deaf, but could sign fluently. There were only 100 students from ages 3-21 there, and everyone was so kind to me! I loved it and transferred there the same fall. What I thought would be an easy solution turned out it wasn't really I was tormented there being the new girl. I was called so many things that were simply awful. Most of it didn't happen in the school itself, but in the dorm halls where no one else saw, so I was very much on my own in this new world with no one to turn to. That really hurt me. I cut for the first time on my thigh in the beginning of November of 2014. I was 14 years old. It felt like all my problems were gone for a while. The feeling was overwhelming. As the year when on, my self-esteem when way more south than it already was. I felt like the weight as the world was on my shoulders. My freshman year was better than before, but I couldn’t take notice of that because I was so caught up in how terrible I felt about myself. I just wanted to just die. I cut again.

The first time I attempted suicide, December of 2015. No one suspected a thing, no one really knew. They just thought I was sick with a cold and brushed it off. That is what really hurt the most. I kept it a secret again. I attempted a second time, but again, it didn’t work. Jump a year ahead to October 2016.

I cut the worst I have ever cut before to escape everything. It was a rough night. Before I went to bed, I went to the bathroom, and my mom burst in because she needed something, and she saw my cuts and she was so upset. We had a long discussion about it, and I promised to her never to do it again, and over one year later, 4 months into my junior year of high school, I am clean, and I have never been happier in my life. I haven’t had panic attacks in 3 months, and my mental state has improved everyday since then. I am optimistic about the future, and I want to become a teacher for the deaf. My goal is to help each and every person I can. Thank you so much.