As a young girl I remember starting my period in middle school, around the same time most of my friends did. We never talked about it much, aside from the occasional "Ugh, it's that time of the month" whines simply to prove our womanhood. I remember feeling alone in my struggles with my period because I really had nobody to talk about it with. I thought it was so normal to bleed for 9 days (on a good month). I thought it was normal to miss a day or two of school a month because my cramps were so debilitating. I thought it was normal to spend hours on the bathroom floor in agony, unable to even move. And lastly, I thought it was normal to consider killing myself every couple of weeks, even going as far as planning everything out in detail. 

I didn't quite understand it, especially because I was a rock star of a kid. I had a 4.0 GPA, was class president, soccer captain and leader of every extra-curricular activity you could think of- I was the success story of middle school life. Everything seemed to have been perfect, except every now and then I would fall into a major depression, where self-injury and suicidal thoughts took full reign over my heart and mind. This went on for years, with luckily only one failed attempt at suicide. I chalked it up to depression from circumstances in life, got on some strong anti-depressants and went about my business. 

Time went on and it wasn't until my college years that I began to get serious about getting help. Depression had taken over every aspect of my life, self-injury was at an all time high and my eating disorder was rapidly winning over my lifeless body. 

Very few people were aware of all that was going on. I kept it hidden from those who weren't in the process of helping me. On the outside I was still the happy-go-lucky freshman excited about life to come. But on the inside was a broken mess on the verge of a mental breakdown. I remember praying, since I didn't really want to commit suicide, that God would intervene and send someone or something else to rid me of this world. I remember laying on my dorm room floor in the fetal position afraid to move, out of the fear of harming myself in some way. I felt as though I could feel God standing over me... shedding tears along with me but doing nothing to rid me of my deep pain. I would cry out, desperately wanting Him to do something to prove He did actually care about what I was feeling. This happened many times during my college years and that picture of God never seemed to change. I continued to believe the lie that He didn't care and wouldn't deliver me from the deep depression I was stuck in.  I was on suicide watch within student life on campus and was seeing a counselor and psychiatrist two to three times a week. I would beg them to take me to a mental hospital, because I believed that I was crazy and should not be feeling so broken all of the time. But secretly I think I just wanted someone to diagnose me with a mental condition simply to justify my feeling this way. I believed that knowing I was "crazy" would help me somehow.

I felt like people didn't believe, but what was worse was knowing that people genuinely didn't understand me. They didn't understand how painful it was to simply live. They didn't understand the severity of my "dark mind" as I called it. 

For another two years I managed to keep moving forward. I found a couple of people to help see me through at least the worst of my depression. As much as I didn't want to be around people, I knew that was the safest thing for me to do. At least if I was with people I could keep my mind distracted and I couldn't harm myself. 

Moving forward a bit, it wasn't until recently that I discovered my random bouts of depression, suicidal tendencies and anger had less to do with that was going on around me and more to do with that was going on within my brain. After living with some friends, they managed to connect a few dots that I had always been oblivious to. I knew that PMS was something I had to put up with, but a close friend of mine pointed out that my most severe days or week of depression typically came the week before I started my period. After talking with my psychiatrist and doctors and firmly keeping track of my period, I was diagnosed with PMDD (a severe form of PMS for lack of better explanation). Not that I didn't struggle with these emotions on other days, but it was very apparent that my worst and most destructive days came the week before my period. It's only been about a year since making this formal discovery and diagnosis, and I am constantly burdened by the feeling of not making any progress since then, though that is not necessarily true. It took me a while to be able to prepare myself for what I called "hell week", but in reality there is not much I can do to prepare. It helps to know exactly when it will begin and when it will end, but once I'm in the midst of hell week, nothing else matters. 

As much as I try, I can't keep myself and my thoughts from the downward spiral during that dreaded week. And as much as I know it's coming, it typically doesn't cross my mind that I'm there until it's too late. It goes like this... One moment of the day I can be completely fine. Aside from my naturally emotional self, I can keep myself together for the most part. And out of nowhere, without a specific cause, I will rapidly become extremely sad and broken. Even if I'm with people and my mind is busy, I will somehow drift from whatever is going on and my entire persona will drastically change.