Started from the bottom, now we’re here…

Well… Here goes, my first blog post.

To begin with, I would really like you to see just how far I’ve come. In order to do that I need to be real and raw with you and start from the start.

I didn’t have a rough childhood in fact it was pretty average, faced challenges most people do in family life but I struggled with depression from a very young age. Since the 4th grade I had to see school counsellors for my depression and suicidal thoughts. We moved around a lot and I had quite a few different schools. I got bullied for anything and everything and was forever the new kid. Kids can be cruel and making friends is hard, one time I found a note in my desk that had been written from my group of so-called friends, saying… “everyone hates you and you should just go kill yourself.” Then they all signed it like they all agreed. Fighting off the thought that maybe they were right would then become a lifelong struggle.

After that incident I would spend lunchtimes at school, helping at the day-care centre attached to our school. I discovered the little kids didn’t care what I looked like or how I talked or that I wasn’t popular. They thought I was fun… they would hang off me and look forward to me coming to see them every lunch break. I believe that is where my love for kids started, their sweet and innocent hearts that don’t judge, they don’t care when you fail them, they love so unconditionally.

Finally, primary school was over and it was off to high school, grade 8 was like being bottom of the food chain again and all my problems just got worse. I was a straight A student but I began to hurt myself and getting messed up in the wrong crowds, soon began drinking and smoking even though I was only 14 and truth was I’d do anything to get some. There was this guy who hung around our school who was 18 and even though I had no feelings for him, he became my first boyfriend, solely because He’d pick me up from school, hand me a pack of cigarettes and 4 pack of Smirnoff and drop me off at work. Being with him was the first time I used someone for my own benefit and wouldn’t be the last.

The following year we moved again new school but this time something was different and it’s actually kind of a funny story…

I met this guy on msn (oh gosh… showing my age), who I just thought was absolutely gorgeous. My dad would say I, “may as well kiss the bonnet of his car” because he had that much metal in his face. We had neighbours down the road, these younger kids that I would hang out with. Their family was right into boxing. One day I couldn’t meet up with this guy because I was hanging out with them and “we were going to boxing training”. Reality was I just stood there and watched and mucked around a bit but he took it as I was actually a boxer doing training. Ha!.

Before we moved he told a friend that I would be going to the same school as her, that I was a boxer and she should watch out for me… So my first day at my new school, there she was saying in a big group, “does anyone know Tegan? she’s a boxer and I need to stay on her good side” I sat there and listened, thinking “Oh my gosh, how embarrassing. what do I do?” I sat there quietly and pretended not to hear her but word soon spread that I was “not to be messed with.” Turns out that this wasn’t such a bad rumour after all, I got to experience a year of schooling without bullying, it was easier and I had great friends, however it still didn’t make me feel any less empty inside or lessen the pain of my depression. I still tried to fill that whole inside my heart with boys… even girls, and drugs and alcohol.

Then…when I finished grade 10 we moved again