My diagnosis sat in my hand, a thin paper sheet covered in words that meant nothing to me but broken. The piece of paper made my pain, my struggle, it made it real. It wasn’t all in my head.

Or rather it was.

My diagnosis meant yellow and white pills. It meant leaving school early to go to the doctors. It meant that pretending to be normal would become a lot harder.

I knew that if the girls in school found out that I wasn’t right, no one would want to be friends with me. I needed friends. I desperately wanted to be a normal thirteen-year-old girl.

I needed to be a swan.

A swan floats serenely along the river, poised and calm, all the while paddling furiously beneath the water. I had to look like I was floating seamlessly through life. It didn’t matter that I was struggling below the water if I appeared normal.

I thought it would be easy, but the girls weren’t like me.

They wore makeup to school. I couldn’t because my antidepressants made me fatigued so I didn’t have the energy to wake up early and put makeup on. They lived in a world I couldn’t see, one of school romances and celebrity crushes. I lived in a world that was too adult for an adult.

Crimson streaks. Raised white scars. Lined wrists.

The warmth of blood trickling down my wrists alongside sleeping pills was the lullaby that rocked me to sleep. The idea that death would come soon soothed me when my broken skin burned like a smoking ember. My hands wrapped around my throat and squeezed, and I hoped by doing so I would wring the evil that lived inside of me, out. My ability to think rationally was eradicated by the sickness that almost killed me. I was left alone, to fend for myself.

Bloodied sheets, but my period is yet to come.

The girls wear cropped tops, I wear jumpers, the one piece of clothing that comfortably covers my arms. Tired eyes, numbed by pills; the skin on my wrists grows redder, angrier. Mom asks where the rolls of bandage from the first aid cupboard have gone, her tired eyes meet mine. Living with a dying child, the colour seeps from her face and the doctor visits double.

I’m a horrible swan. My struggles can be seen above the water.

The paper holding my diagnosis grows. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Depression. Anxiety. Emetophobia. Agoraphobia. Panic Disorder. The words make my dad sigh and my mom cry.

If I pretend better will the words disappear?

Instead of using a knife to protect myself from the demons I fought, I turned the knife and pressed it against my heart. The doctors called me a danger. The girls didn’t visit me in the hospital. They had their first kisses at a disco I missed, because instead of being a swan floating serenely, I was a drowning upside-down swan, kicking ducks and water all over the pond.

Trying to suffer in silence didn’t make my diagnosis disappear.

It made me scream louder and the damage larger.

Niamh O’Brien is a recreational writer from Ireland. She enjoys long walks on the beach and sunset photography. She enjoys writing fiction and poetry. She aspires to publish a novel about the power of perseverance sometime in the future. Her aim for her writing is to inspire hope..