I didn’t expect to live to 24. I often desired to disappear and cease to exist.

At 7, I wondered if I existed or not

I was socially awkward, generally anxious, and had panic attacks during tuition lessons. I never felt a sense of belonging no matter where I went, or who I was with. Once, in a shopping mall with my parents I suddenly felt as if I was floating. I dissociated, detached from my body, watching from above. It was then that I first wondered, ‘Am I real?’

At 15, I longed to escape life

I simply wanted to disappear. I wanted time to stop and everything to freeze. I shut everyone out, and stopped attending school regularly. My friends, classmates were all puzzled about why I had disappeared from classes. But I was drowning. I felt as if I couldn’t breathe when I was in school. Every time my parents attempted to send me there, my desire to escape was sky-high. Whenever I was inside my parents’ car and we were nearing the school, I had the strongest urge to open the car door and throw myself out.

I leaned into avoidance. It was the easiest option. Running away from life seemed to me to be the best option. I was overwhelmed with academic pressure, peer pressure, and family life. Yet in the end, I couldn’t outrun reality.

I saw a psychiatrist, and was diagnosed with Depression, Generalised Anxiety Disorder, and Social Anxiety Disorder. I was immediately put on medications and I cycled through many different kinds of them to find which suited me best. I started attending therapy, although I didn’t find it to be very helpful. Looking back, I wonder if I was going because my doctor had referred me, not because I really wanted to get better.

Thankfully, I also had supportive teachers who didn’t give up on me despite my poor school attendance. I had spent my ‘O’ Level year mostly at home. I completed my exams for 2 ‘O’ Level subjects but chickened out for the rest of the subjects. I don’t know how I managed to graduate, but I somehow did.

At 17, I clung to hope

Yet slowly but surely, I saw more slivers of hope. I found things, people, and places that I could anchor myself to. I’d found it difficult to find community in the new international school my parents had moved me to for a change of environment. Now I started going to church, where I found a community and sense of belonging.

In church, I found a second family. We were constantly spending time with each other, having fun while also challenging each other to grow. I got sucked in deep, and my entire life and personality became all about church. I thought I would spend the rest of my life being dedicated to church and God.

At 21, I hit rock bottom

I had thoroughly enjoyed my time at church with all of my friends up to the point I decided to take a break from them. I was burnt out from my studies, overcommitting too many extracurriculars in university and church. I took leave of absence from university, and then decided I needed a break from church, too.

Yet I realised the only people who contacted me during my break from church were my leaders. None of my so-called friends, people who I thought I would grow up and grow old together with, contacted me. I decided to completely cut them out of my life and never went back to church.

I had no friends, was self-isolating at home and my health was poor. My desire to disappear came back. I wanted everything to stop, because it was getting all too much. I cried every day. When I wasn’t crying, I was simply numb. I felt dead inside, as if something within my soul had withered.

 I eventually decided I needed to go to the emergency department and seek help for my increasing suicidal thoughts. I needed help, desperately. I saw a doctor there and she didn’t admit me, but encouraged me to set a daily routine, to get in some exercise because it would boost my mood, and check back with my usual psychiatrist.

My psychiatrist continued to add more medications each time I went to consult him, and the side effects of the medications were beginning to impair my health. I’d now been seeing him for six years, and I decided to look for a second opinion. The new psychiatrist took me off the cocktail of five medications I’d been taking and the side-effects vanished. She referred me to therapy with a new psychologist. I dropped out of university to focus on recovering, and I tried to exercise more frequently. And all these changes made a difference. I now found therapy to be helpful. In the past, I had gone to therapy to rant about my problems. This time, therapy helped me to work on myself. I was determined to get to the root of my depression. Why, I asked myself, hadn’t I got better after six years on psychiatric medications?

I found out I had experienced trauma growing up. I unlocked a traumatic memory in my childhood that made me hypervigilant. I also realised that I was in the midst of unhealthy family dynamics, made worse due to me being an only child. Therapy helped me break my co-dependency with my parents and heal from my trauma.

For the first time since I was 15, I developed the will to live. I had always been living for others: for my parents, my church, my friends, or my education. Now I decided I wanted to live for myself.

At 24, I’m less empty than before

I developed a chronic illness when I was 22, and realised that life was simply too short to wallow in self-pity, or let my anxieties stop me from doing what I want to do. I wanted to live my life to the fullest despite my condition, and so I reconnected with old friends from school and built myself a little support system outside of my family. I tried new things like pottery and flower arrangement, and I also went back to old passions like reading and writing, doing my best to appreciate life as it was.

At 24, my desire to disappear has waned. I want to exist. Even knowing that there are going to be bumps along the road, I also trust that there will be small and big wins for me to celebrate throughout my journey called ‘life’.

 Kimmy is a 24-year-old mental health and chronic illness advocate pursuing psychology. She loves writing, admiring sunsets, and a good cup of tea. She hopes that by sharing her story, someone out there will feel less lonely.

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