Depression in Teens: Not Just Another Fad

When I was in eighth , I was just becoming aware of things such as fashion, trends, and fads. Though I had always considered myself a nerd, and I had my own clique of friends who classified themselves as such (actually, we proudly called ourselves freaks), I was still interested in possibly submersing myself into one of these trends; we had preps, goths, punks, the stoners, and…the emos?

Emo is a fad that still hasn't died…even during my senior year, younger kids were dressing with chains, belts, and rips on their clothes, gelled-up, fun-colored hair, and even cutting designs into themselves to show their loyalty to their cause. What was their cause? Apparently, wallowing in self-pity and self-hate, while hoping others will notice and ask about it.

It came as a slight surprise when one of my two best friends, Veronica*, decided that she was going to "become emo." I couldn't understand exactly why at the time…it wasn't very popular then, and I thought the whole idea of middle school was to get people to like you, so that when you enter high school, you'll be okay…right? Nonetheless, she started writing poems about more morbid things than she normally did, as well as depicting weird things with her amazing drawing talent. She wore the baggy Hot Topic pants that only came in black, with bright stitching, long gloves, and black crosses. At first, I thought it was kind of cool that I was hanging out with a goth/emo kid, looking as innocent and preppy as I did. But I didn't know what was behind this story until a bit later, and it took a long time before I really understood it.

This is where the story gets a little less middle school. I knew of only two big things that had happened this early in Veronica's life. One, a boy that she really liked had pretended to like her, but found someone that she thought was more interesting, more rebellious, and more his style. The other was that her parents were just going through a divorce. At thirteen years old and never having experienced either, it was a little hard to sympathize. So I laughed it off, and it seemed like she did too. Her, our friend Emily, and I, always had a lot of fun together no matter what. We'd seen her dark drawings, read her cry-for-help poems…but we weren't old enough to really know what to do.

What started out as just a middle school trend starting looking like actual depression. During our freshman year, we all had English together, which would have normally made someone very happy, but she was always mopey and distant; eventually she wouldn't even laugh at my jokes. The biggest red flag came up when she showed us the cuts on her wrist, and was even so bold as to try adding one to the collection one day during class with a pocketknife. Now I wasn't sure what was happening; was it part of the trend, and she was doing this for attention, or was she really trying to commit suicide? One day I told Emily that if she really wanted to kill herself, she would have made the cut vertically down her wrist, instead of horizontal. Wow.

The one thing I'll never forget, and always feel stupid for keeping to myself, was a time when we were all sitting at lunch in one of the special booths on the side, and while everyone at the crowded table was laughing and having a good time, I noticed that Veronica had a piece of glass that she'd found on the ground and kept, and she was using it to cut herself once again. I'm not sure if anyone else noticed or not, but I did, and I really should have said something. But if any of you reading this know a suicidal or depressed friend, you know that it's not only difficult to get the nerve to talk about the subject, but it's very difficult to even know what to say.

A couple weeks later, Veronica's mother had found her pocketknife, which she hid under her mattress, and confiscated it. With it, she also found a note; it was half suicide note, half depressing poem. Regardless of what it said, her mother decided to take action. One day at school, Veronica said that she was being taken to a mental institute for a trial testing, to see how bad she really was. She didn't seem the least bit upset about it: in fact, she had been laughing a couple days before, saying that she could probably be sent off if she felt like it.