No One Understands

By Tara Nolan


Caroline could feel her heart beat with every step that she took as she entered the doors of her high school for the first time. She was anxious and excited to meet new friends at Westford Academy in Massachusetts.
She would try out for the soccer team. She would earn good grades. She would make lots of friends. Then the months passed. Caroline started locking herself in the bathroom and she fought with her mom. She was confused and suffering from depression.
Princeton defines depression as a mental state characterized by a pessimistic sense of inadequacy and a despondent lack of activity. Caroline has her own definition:
“Depression is not a phase, a feeling, a bad day, or a ploy or attention. It is an illness.”
It was one thing she couldn’t explain.
“People would ask me why I’m depressed. I had no reason to be. Although certain events can spark depression, depression can arise for no reason at all.”
Caroline’s mother Sue never considered depression even through the fighting with her daughter.
Then things changed. It was August 2004. It was hot and Caroline was at her high school’s soccer tryouts. She wanted to play that fall during her sophomore year but, as she walked onto the field that day, she got anxious. She had her first panic attack.
“It is all-consuming. It takes over my whole body and affects everything I do and it is all I can think about. It just feels like your heart is sinking to the bottom of your stomach.”
Caroline’s mother, Sue, was extremely worried about her and decided that it was time for Caroline to talk to someone. Caroline went through many counselors. At first she refused to speak to them. During her first visit was with an older woman Caroline sat in silence. She was angry, frustrated and sad.
“At the beginning, the concept of counseling was strange and uncomfortable. I had to find who I was most comfortable with.”
Through counseling Caroline felt that she wasn’t being judged and realized that counseling doesn’t make you a weak person. Neither does medication. She began to realize that she had an illness and could not go through it alone. It had to be treated.
After her first visit to the counselor Caroline was put on Lexapro. It is a medicine that is shown to lessen the symptoms of depression in adults and adolescents ages 12 to 17. Although it was showing signs that it was working, finding the right medication is often a long and tedious process because many of them have negative side effects such as nausea, fatigue, and weight gain.
Caroline became extremely irritable. She began to resent others. She was overwhelmed with sadness. It was a struggle for her to get out of bed and go to school. She just wanted to sleep. In the winter of her sophomore year, about four months after beginning to take Lexapro, Caroline overdosed for the first time.
She walked into the bathroom. Her head hung over the sink. Her body trembled but, at the same time, all she felt was numbness. Her pants stuck to the back of her legs, sweaty. She felt beads of perspiration slowly dripping down her spine. She looked in the mirror. She couldn’t recognize the girl staring back at her. Her face was hollow, her eyes sunken and gaunt. Her cheeks were stained, blotchy and red from tears. Her jet black hair was matted back against her head. She was lost. She had never felt so empty and vulnerable. With each racing breath she grew weaker.
“When I overdosed it was as helpless as I’ve ever felt. I just didn’t want to be here anymore.”
Then she was angry. She slammed her sweaty palms onthe counter and screamed. She grabbed the bottle of Lexapro, and one by one forced nine down her throat. She turned the faucet and ran her hands under the cold water. The water ran. It was January 12, 2005. Caroline had given up.
Caroline’s 13-year-old brother Conor was the only person home at the time. He found Caroline in the bathroom unconscious.
“I just remember looking at his face. I never want him to have to go through that again. He’s my little shnooks and I would not be here today if it weren’t for him.”
He called 911 and Caroline was rushed to the hospital. She was hospitalized for a week and then put into group therapies and outpatient programs. Her medication was changed to Wellbutrin and Prozac.
By her junior year of high school, she was feeling good. She wasn’t as irritable and for the first time in a long time she was enjoying life. She didn’t want to keep taking her medicine and pleaded with her mom to let her. Her mother gave in. It was a near fatal mistake. Within a few months, Caroline, now 16 began cutting herself.
“It’s all you think about and you can’t just stop.”
The first time Caroline went into her room and shut the door and sat on her bed. She began to feel clammy and anxious. She looked around her room for something sharp. She would go on to use razors, knives, tweezers, pieces of broken glass, pocket knives, keys , and even the sharp edge on a tape dispenser to cut herself in the future. She saw scissors sitting on her desk. She lifted up her shirt and pulled her pants slightly down. Wincing at the pain she made small cuts into her hips then pushed a little bit harder. The pain was a relief. She calmed down. She finally found something to make her forget the pain that she was feeling on the inside.
Cutting has been something that Caroline struggles with. She hasn’t been able to go four months without doing it at least once. It wasn’t suicide. It was a relief to her. According to Discoveryhealth.com, 72 percent of young people injure themselves by cutting and the majority of them are female. Experts believe that the majority of cutters are female because they tend to internalize anger while males are taught to repress emotion. Whether these facts apply to everyone or not, for Caroline cutting provided relief. In order to stop herself from cutting, she will hold a pen, ice, an orange, or go to someone who will tell her not to do it, like her best friend Lauren.
“Do something for yourself. Figure out what makes you laugh. You need the strength to transform your mind and turn it into something else,” says Caroline.
Caroline still struggles with cutting but, she feels that it is important to find an outlet or a niche that you can turn to in order to help you slowly stop cutting. For her it is her brother, Conor.
By her senior year at Westford Academy, Caroline was still taking Wellbutrin and Prozac. Although she continued to cut she was feeling happy most of the time. Her teachers and guidance counselor were also very accommodating and caring which helped make thing easier for her. However in the spring of 2007, close to her high school graduation, Caroline had her second and worst overdose when she took an entire bottle of Wellbutrin pills. That day is a blur in her mind and she tries to avoid thinking about it at all. Her doctors and family came to the realization that the medicine that Caroline was on was not working. She switched to Seroquel and Prozac and went to therapy more often.
Family and friends are also an important support system for Caroline. Her parents Ken and Sue are amazing advocates for her.
“Just knowing that they’re there to listen and that they don’t pressure me to talk is enough because, eventually I will.”
Following her overdose senior year, things got very bad and Caroline began having panic attacks often. She had been accepted to Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts. In her freshman year, however, she was taken out of school for cutting and had to join an out-patient program before she was allowed to return. The school allowed Caroline to come back her sophomore year after she showed progress.
There was a day her freshman year that Caroline had a bad episode cutting. She was sitting on her bed in her dorm room with her keys in hand making slight cuts in her upper arm when one of her friends at the time walked in on her. To this day she has never heard from that person again. Caroline came to realize that true friends are the ones that stick around through hard times and although she has lost a few along the way, she knows that the ones that matter are still here.
“The worst thing that a person could say to me is, ‘I know how you feel.’ If I could give one piece of advice on what to say to someone struggling it would be, ‘I don’t know how you feel, I don’t know what’s going through your head but, I do know that it sucks and I am always here for you to talk to. I will always just be here to listen.’”
Caroline is now a junior in college. She studied abroad in Australia in the fall of 2009 and wants to be a teacher. Depression and cutting will always be an issue for her, she has come to terms with it. She will likely be on medicine for the rest of her life. It has saved her.
In the past year, she spoke at schools and other places across the state of Massachusetts. She hopes that her story will give others strength. After she spoke at a middle school in her hometown of Westford, Massachusetts, Caroline has receieved dozens of letters and emails thanking her and calling her an inspiration for other struggling with depression.
“There are times when I’m so happy and I honestly think I’ve beaten it but, then one day I’ll wake up and feel that pain again. I just have to remind myself that I’ve gotten through it many times before, and I can do it again.”