I found the diary of a bulim­ic girl. She seemed so lost, not know­ing what to do. It was one of the only times where the sim­ple read­ing of a diary tru­ly scared me. The image of find­ing blood on one’s fin­gers after throw­ing up is what real­ly affect­ed me. I felt so help­less, so sad that there was noth­ing I could do.

I’m not sure what it is about myself, but I always feel like I should try to relate and help some­one who’s depressed. I haven’t com­plete­ly been there myself (I’ve nev­er been com­plete­ly depressed or euphor­ic), so often I feel like it’s not my place to be talk­ing about it. Yet I feel like I can under­stand such strong emo­tions.

It makes me feel so for­lorn when some­one seems like they’re stuck in a hole, with no way out. I always felt that when I was in that hole, noth­ing could help me out, only the under­stand­ing of anoth­er per­son. That per­son is gone for me now, hav­ing changed my life, nev­er know­ing it her­self.

I real­ize now that I want to help peo­ple in emo­tion­al dis­tress because of how I looked up to that per­son. My admi­ra­tion for her has made me want emu­late her, to help oth­er peo­ple the same way in which she helped me. I still remem­ber how much I need­ed that help. Perhaps if I was able to change some­one else’s life, then they could be bet­ter off than being stuck in the hole.

It’s so dif­fi­cult to cure one­self of such emo­tion­al dis­tress. After a cer­tain point is reached, one feels so help­less, as if noth­ing can make things bet­ter, and noth­ing will ever get bet­ter. Thoughts even­tu­al­ly lead to sui­cide, life goes black, ash­es turn to mud. It’s some­thing that can’t be escaped alone.

I wish there was some­thing I could do.