Personal Narrative: My Experience With Chronic Depression

When I was in seventh grade, about to enter eighth, I was diagnosed with Chronic Depression (which is also called Dysthymia). I had been feeling sadness for almost a year before I was diagnosed, and my parents only sent me to a psychiatrist when it started to become a noticeable problem. Not only did it have a severe effect on my grades, but it also wrecked my relationship with my family and friends.

When I began to sink into this depression, I didn’t really consider it a big deal at first, which is why I never bothered to tell anyone about it. I didn’t consider it a real problem, and I thought that it was selfish of me to admit to being sad when people with real problems could handle it on their own. I began to distance myself from others, I couldn’t sleep, and I began eating a lot less. I always felt tired and unwilling to do things that I had considered fun at one point. I began to get tired of smiling and laughing, but I did because I knew that it was what everyone expected me to do. The sadness got the better of me, and I began to contemplate suicide. I stopped caring about school, and this is when my parents began to notice my strange behavior. They sent me to a psychologist named Chris, and he always had a golden retriever named Rufus with him. I was a bit hesitant to talk about my problems, but when I did, Chris ended up helping me a lot. I began to be more open about talking to people about my problems,
It took a lot of energy out of me, and I had lost about 20 pounds. My grades were also down the drain, so it took a lot of work to get them up again by the end of the year, which put a lot of pressure on me. By the end of the school year, I was completely exhausted. But I was also the happiest I had been in a long time, because I had accomplished something in such a short amount of time. My parents and friends were proud of me for overcoming it, and that also made me very