I don’t remember the exact moment my depression began.
I just remember always feeling wrong.
I was so young—too young to understand why my chest felt heavy all the time, why my stomach twisted whenever I heard footsteps in the hallway, why I learned to listen for moods before I learned how to play properly. I didn’t know words like anxiety or emotional neglect. I only knew fear, confusion, and the constant need to be careful.
My parents weren’t safe people.
Not physically—sometimes emotionally—always unpredictable. Love felt sharp. Praise disappeared fast. Anger filled rooms faster than air. I learned early that silence was protection and obedience was survival.
But what hurt the most was the hatred from my sisters.
The younger ones didn’t understand what they were doing, but their words still burned. Teasing that went too far. Laughing when I cried. Blaming me when things went wrong. I was always “too sensitive,” always “the problem,” always the one they could step on without consequences.
And my older sister—
She should have been my shield.
Instead, she became another storm.
Her words cut deeper because I trusted her. Her anger felt like proof that I really was unlovable. If someone older, someone who knew more, someone who was supposed to protect me hated me—then maybe I deserved it.
I was too young to understand that none of this was my fault.
I thought the sadness meant something was broken inside me.
I thought the fear meant I was weak.
I thought being treated badly meant I had earned it.
No one sat me down and said, “This isn’t normal.”
No one asked why a child was always quiet, always tense, always watching.
So I learned to carry everything alone.
The depression didn’t crash into me all at once.
It seeped in slowly.
It lived in the way I stopped asking for help.
In how I flinched at raised voices.
In how I felt guilty for taking up space.
In how I learned to swallow my pain because expressing it only made things worse.
I didn’t want to die.
I just wanted the pain to stop—and I didn’t know any other way.
Looking back now, it breaks my heart.
That little version of me didn’t need punishment or judgment.
She needed safety. She needed softness. She needed someone to say, “You are not the problem.”
But she didn’t get that.
So she survived the only way she knew how.
And even though I didn’t understand it then, that was the beginning of everything—the depression, the anxiety, the coping that turned into harm, and the long road it would take to learn that I was never broken… just hurt far too young.
...----------------...
...I don’t remember how I found the song....
...I just remember the moment it found me....
...I was alone—again. Sitting with that familiar heaviness pressed into my chest, the kind that makes breathing feel optional. I clicked play without thinking. I wasn’t expecting anything. I never did. Hope felt dangerous back then....
...Then the sound hit....
...“Hellevator.”...
...It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t comforting in the way people think comfort should be. It was raw. Desperate. Angry. Afraid. Honest in a way I had never been allowed to be....
...It felt like someone finally said the things I’d been screaming silently for years....
...The lyrics felt like a confession I didn’t know how to make—about falling, about being trapped, about wanting to escape but not knowing how. My heart started pounding, not from anxiety this time, but from recognition....
...For the first time in my life, I felt alive....
...Not healed....
...Not okay....
...But seen....
...I sat there listening, replaying it again and again, letting the music fill the empty spaces inside me. It didn’t take the depression away—but it cracked something open. It gave my pain a voice. It told me I wasn’t the only one drowning quietly....
...But the house didn’t change....
...When my parents heard it, their faces twisted with disgust....
...“What is this dumb music?”...
...“Turn that noise off.”...
...“This is what you’re filling your head with?”...
...My sisters laughed. Mocked it. Mocked me....
...“Of course you listen to that.”...
...“No wonder you’re like this.”...
...Every word felt like a slap....
...They didn’t hear what I heard....
...They didn’t hear survival....
...They didn’t hear a lifeline....
...They just heard noise—and decided it was another reason to tear me down....
...So I learned to listen quietly....
...Headphones low. Door closed. Music hidden like another secret. I carried Stray Kids with me the same way I carried my pain—carefully, privately, protectively....
...Even when I got in trouble....
...Even when I was told it was stupid....
...Even when I was made to feel ashamed for loving something....
...Because that song did something nothing else ever had....
...It reminded me that I could feel something other than numbness....
...I was still depressed....
...Still anxious....
...Still hurting in ways I didn’t have words for....
...But now—there was a sound that reached me in the dark and said, “You’re not crazy for feeling this way.”...
...And in a house that constantly made me feel small, that mattered more than they ever knew....
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