Imagine being in an empty black box with nowhere to go. You would feel trapped and scared and you wouldn’t know what to do. I would know. I was trapped in that place for a year with crippling depression, anxiety, and stress. My name is Noah Kovac and I want to share the story of my pain with you. Last year I had one of the toughest years of my life and you are about to experience what was going through my mind as a victim of depression and suicidal thoughts. I cannot stress this enough, you are quite literally entering my mind when reading this article. So, if you don’t want to read about me, a friend, a  classmate, or just a student at BF I suggest you do not read this. 

Mental health is not a joke. Around the end of 2021, I fell into this deep and dark scary place that I didn’t know how to get out of. I was hiding my feelings from my parents, sibling, and friends. I was hurting really bad on the inside of my mind but my family and friends were just seeing a normal happy Noah. I thought that if I hid my thoughts and feelings from my family that  it would be a lot easier to deal with my demons. I couldn’t have been more wrong in that sense. Over time my mood was changing drastically. I was avoiding conversation, becoming shy, and  letting my grades drop. This was just the beginning of my story. I couldn’t really find a way to keep track of my thoughts until I wrote my first journal entry. I started journaling my thoughts and feelings in the notes app on my phone. I would put the exact date and time when writing them. Here is my first journal entry:

“December 6th, 2021

11:22 PM

I don’t feel happy. I feel like I’m stuck in this dark place and can’t get out. I feel like as much as I try to fight my demons, they come back. I don’t know what to do. I tell my parents when they ask how I’m doing mentally I say “I’m fine.” That is not the truth, I am actually really in pain and don’t feel like trying to live anymore. The reason I don’t want to tell my parents this is because I’m afraid they will think I need to go to a mental institution. I might seem like a happy kid that loves music and playing video games but what that really is, is that is my way of zoning out of the world I’m in and try to forget about the pain and depression. This is a note about how I feel on a daily basis. I’m writing this because I’m in pain and I need help ASAP and I’m scared. I don’t know if I’m going to share this with anyone or keep this to myself. The pain is endless. Life is hard. I wish there was an easy way out. I love my Mom. I love my Dad. I love my sister. I love my dog. I just don’t love myself.”

I wrote this like an S.O.S. message. I remember writing this and reading it to my mom at 3:00 in the morning. As soon as I started reading this entry I already felt like I couldn’t finish it. Towards the end of the entry, I broke into tears and hugged my mom as she was crying. I  remember this like it was yesterday because this is where I finally told my parents. My mom called my dad and told him everything I read to my mom. He was at my house within minutes. My parents came to the conclusion that it was time for me to be brought into a hospital to be  evaluated. 

When we got to the hospital they had someone come into the room to talk to me. He asked me a bunch of questions such as, “Do you know why you feel this way?” and “When did you start feeling this way?” I  felt so pressured to answer these questions. Eventually, when he finished his evaluation he gave me 2two options he thought would be best for me. One was to be put into a psych ward where I would stay overnight for a while. I would stay in a room and each day I would have multiple therapists come into the room and talk to me about my thoughts and feelings. I hated that option. The second one was to be taken out of BF and be put into a special program for kids dealing with depression that was called GenPsych. I would still be in my classes at BF I would just be doing the work they assigned on my computer opposed to doing it in person in class.

The way GenPsych operated was way different then normal school. There was a school part called Silvergate in the morning that was 2 hours long, then lunch, then group therapy for another 2 hours. I thought about these options for a while and eventually said I would choose option 2. I wasn’t the happiest when I was told these options so I picked the only option that I felt would benefit me best. The days after that I kept journaling in my notes app so I could keep track of my thoughts. This is my second journal entry:

December 20th, 2021

11:27 PM

I feel like s&%t I have this mindset that I will have this pain forever. I don’t want to give up because I have so much going for me. The last couple days I’ve been thinking so hard to myself on giving up and committing suicide so I can kill the pain. I don’t want to tell my Mom or Dad or really anyone in my family because I want to try to overcome this roadblock. Another reason I don’t want to tell my family is because I don’t want to scare anyone. I scare myself everyday with the thoughts I have. Everyday could be my last, I guess I’ll never know till it happens. I’m a danger to myself and others. Maybe that danger should be erased off the face of the earth. I’ve been trying to love myself and help myself but it’s so hard. I want to stay strong for as long as possible. I will try to stay strong for as long as possible. I write these notes to myself because I want to keep track of how I am doing mentally. The easiest way for me to describe how I feel is that life sucks, and you only get one so make it count.”

This is where my thoughts became even worse and harder to deal with them. I would occasionally read my journal entries to my parents only if I felt my depression, anxiety, and stress was getting worse, which it was. This is when I isolated myself away from a majority of people besides my sister. She was the only person who kept my thoughts rational. She was someone who helped me cope with my feelings.

I also found coping methods that would help me on the daily. Some of these coping methods I found were using music to express myself. I really started expanding my coping skills but at the same time I was getting worse. My coping skills helped me look at the world differently in a good way. When using these methods they would only help for a certain period of time which was pretty short.

Eventually my thoughts started to consume me. I felt like I was falling into a bottomless pit of darkness and there was nothing stopping me. This is where I turned to unhealthy coping strategies. Some of these strategies were vaping and doing all sorts of things that were bad for me but made me feel better. This is where you will now read my third entry from my journal:

December 27, 2021

10:56 PM

I know how to explain how I’m feeling at this exact moment. It’s a mixture of sadness and anxiety but I don’t know what I’m anxious about or sad about. The bad thoughts keep popping up out of nowhere causing me to go into this deep scary mindset. I still don’t know how to cope or get rid of them yet but I’m trying to figure out how. I’m also trying to figure out how this mindset started in the first place. I guess it started by me not dealing with my depression and it kept getting worse and worse until the pain was created. My anxiety is getting worse and so is my depression even though I’m in genpsych and this is what they specialize in. I think this wraps the paragraph up because this is how far I’ve gotten.”

So now you know where my mind is so far. Even though I was in therapy that is supposed to lower my depression and anxiety, it really wasn’t changing much which was a problem. This was a problem since my thoughts were not getting better or worse. My thoughts were kind of stuck at this invisible point  in darkness and my thoughts didn’t know where to go. I was cutting down on my bad coping skills and transferring over to healthier coping skills that could keep my mind off of depression for a short while.

Going  through depression, anxiety, and stress is no easy task. It is probably the hardest challenge you will go through since there are so many roadblocks and hurdles in your way and you don’t know how to get past them. Over my time at GenPsych I was getting better and finally got past that invisible barrier that my bad thoughts were stuck at.  My mood was getting increasingly better and my parents, siblings, and friends could see that as well. This point in my mental health journey was the best thing that had happened so far. My  fourth journal entry will explain how I was feeling:

January 10, 2022

10:30 PM

This is probably the best I’ve felt in a long time. My mood is so much better than it was a couple days ago. I have moved up to 50mg of Zoloft and it’s working really well in my favor. I also just got back into soccer and that’s going really well. It really helps me clear my mind and it’s also good exercise. I’m planning on going to the HAWSE field tomorrow if the snow has melted enough and it’s not so muddy. I am still having the occasional bad thoughts of self harm but not as much as before. Tonight I had my first CBD gummies for a spasm. It’s been about 40 minutes and it’s working. I feel very relaxed and my back pain is going down. I want to keep going down the road I’m currently going down because it’s the best I’ve felt in so long and I want to keep that as well as improving my mental health. 

This is where you want to be when dealing with mental health. Where I was on January 10th is where someone dealing with depression will eventually get to with hard work. This was not an easy journey, it wasn’t an easy journey for my family either. Throughout this mental journey I experienced a lot of different moods and feelings that were bad for me, but eventually with help from everyone around me I got to this point. My story started in 7th grade and I am now an 8th grader who lived through a pandemic, depression, and the storming of the capitol and I am better than ever. So, If I can do what I did with all the craziness that was going on in the world, I guarantee anyone who has experienced the thoughts and feelings that I experienced you will get better. And if you do need help with mental health I would suggest getting evaluated. If you are really struggling and thinking of acting on a suicidal thought then you should call this number 1-888-273-8255.

If I can do it

You can too.