I don't remember the details. I've always been depressed; I never could find that 'bright side' everyone was constantly talking about. I didn't see the point in any of it. I'd tried to kill myself four times by the time I graduated from elementary school, just before my thirteenth birthday. Grade six was the worst year I've had so far. I was attending school with my cousin at the time, and he has this way about him. This strange ability to throw subtle barbs that you don't even notice except on a subconscious level that make you doubt everything you know and feel about yourself. My self-esteem, already teetering on a dangerous edge, plummeted.

Perhaps I should give you a little more background. When I was two years old, my mother put me on Ritalin. I didn't react to it the way most do. Instead, I lost all free will. If someone told me to do something, I did it, no questions asked. I had no choice. My body complied without my mind's consent. When I was three, I got a new stepfather (my parents separated and divorced approximately three months before the Ritalin began - and she wonders why I was acting depressed for a baby). His name was... well, let's call him Monster. It's sort of fitting, and it's what I always called him in my mind. You can tell already that this is going to be bad, hmm? Well, Monster figured out exactly what was going on. And let me tell you, he was one sick puppy. It didn't start until I was a little older - six, to be exact. Three years he bided his time. Then he began to order me to do things. To myself while he watched. To him. To let him do things to me. I can't go into too much detail. He was drunk most of the time. I have post-traumatic stress disorder now; the smell of cheap beer makes me freak right the hell out.

Through all of this, I was getting horribly teased at school. Various people, boys, popular girls... they were all chipping away at my self esteem, my self worth, my self image, until there was very little of it left. I turned nine and finally, my mother split up with Monster and took me off Ritalin. I owe my father for that one; he never stopped researching the drug until he had enough evidence of potential negative effects to give her a wakeup call. I told him then about everything that had been happening at school. Not about Monster, of course, I was too ashamed of that. He still knows nothing of Monster's activities, nor does my mom, or my sister. Or even Monster's two kids. My dad decided that I should switch schools.

That's when I spent the year with my cousin. That was grade five. In grade six, I couldn't take it anymore. That year, I made my first suicide attempt. Of course, being but ten years old, I had no clue how to go about it. I did no more than knock myself unconscious when I jumped off the fire exit at school (in the middle of the day, I might add). The second time that year, I took a handful of Tylenol. Woke up three hours later with a terrible headache. I attempted to slit my wrists just before the end of the year, but the pain was too much... and yet not. I couldn't cut deep enough to kill myself, I couldn't handle the pain. However, the little I'd done seemed to make the desire to die a little less. I realized quickly that I'd get odd looks for cuts on my wrists, so I switched to my thighs.

Grade seven wasn't nearly so bad, and I almost stopped cutting myself. I met my current best friend then. Unfortunately, that summer, I'd realized that I was a lesbian. A little young for it, perhaps, but that assertion hasn't changed in six years. I began to fall in love with... I'll call her Angel. She deserves that name. I began to fall for her, hard. But, of course, Angel is straight.

It went on like that for a couple of years. Me pining after Angel, she oblivious. Of course, when I realized that a stupid, worthless bitch like myself couldn't ever possibly earn the love of a girl like her (regardless of the fact that she did and does love me, if only as a friend), the cutting got worse. In grade eight, I attempted to slit my wrists again, but me, being in a panicked frenzy and not really paying attention to what I was doing, cut across my wrist instead of along the vein. It was pretty bad until the end of grade ten.

That's when I met Sexy. I'm giving her that name, because she is, regardless of whether she believes it or not. Sexy and I met online, over a site called Quizilla. Her name was InnocentAbandoned, mine was AthenaDarkheart. She PM'd me about the quiz I'd made about the band Evanescence, whom I listened to a lot then. Still do. It was the start of something. Despite only knowing each other online, we began to fall in love. I even got over Angel, to some extent, I was so smitten with Sexy. We finally said something about it earlier this year. November 20th here, 21st there, because of the time difference - she lives in Europe. Four months later, we broke up. Sexy's self esteem issues are worse than mine, and she would go off on these sort of rants, where she would ask me why I was with her. Sometimes she'd accuse me of cheating on her while she was drunk, other times she'd just cry, and cry, and cry, and go on about how worthless she was. She didn't remember most of the incidents. But every time she did that, it was like a knife in my gut. I ended the relationship, because it hurt too damn much.

Now I'm back to pining over Angel - and Sexy. I hurt for her, because I know she's going to have a rough time of it, and I'm afraid I might have made it worse. I'm about to start my final year in high school. My ambition is to be a writer for television shows, and bring several issues, key ones being lesbianism and self injury, to the attention of as many people as I can. My goal is to have stopped cutting for four months by the time I reach University. I don't know if I'll succeed, but I'll sure as hell try.

My life is very difficult. I have a lot of painful memories, some of which are half repressed because I can't dwell on them without driving myself around the bend. My family is homophobic and incredibly unsupportive, with the notable exception of my father, who is simply naive. At the end of the year, I'm moving out of my city and into a town in California called Berkeley, right near San Francisco. I hope to use the new start to turn my life around, rebuild some of my sense of self, and find a little of the happiness the intellectual part of me knows I deserve and the emotional part of me denies I'll ever have. Wish me luck?