From a very young age, I was given many things, but the one I lacked the most was love. Every time I felt sad, my parents’ question always loomed: “Sad about what? You have everything.” Every time I felt upset, I received a: “you’re exaggerating” every time I didn’t want to do or go somewhere I was forced, no one ever respected how I felt, in 2018 because my life and so my family was in danger, I moved to the U.S.A. I started a new life , a place where I experienced racism, discrimination, a place where I saw my parents 2 hours at day, I was far from my friends, my grandparents and my friends; My opportunities were scarce, because as an “undocumented” person, although I had entered the country with a visa, I still needed to legalize myself, because I knew that if I returned to my country, death would await me, I felt more and more alone. When I was little my friends never visited my home, I never visited their home, I simply did and acted based on what I was told, I was a puppet. Every time I saw an opportunity to excel in a foreign country I simply couldn’t, I was simply tired, always the same routine, feeling like a constant failure because nothing I wanted to do worked out or I was allowed to, as time passed each time. My mental health was declining, even in the United States I was not able to form friendly bonds, the only people I could talk to were my friends from Nicaragua and a friend here in the U.S.A. Who lived on the other side of the city, I increasingly felt more lonely. Every time I smiled more and laughed more at my problems, it was my defense mechanism, I won’t deny that it still is, one fucking day in 2022 I was watching Big Bang Theory, the finale episode to be exact, where Sheldon tells how many friends he has and how many people surround him and how loved he feels, that triggered a panic attack, my chest hurt, I couldn’t breathe, it was difficult for me to speak, everything was spinning, it made me want to cry and all I could do was corner myself in my room and cry. For two hours, I was alone, I didn’t even have help to console me, because I knew the answer my parents would give me, I simply managed to calm myself down while thinking stupid things and drowning in my own pain through jokes. Every time after that day everything became grayer, playing with my friends from my country of origin was no longer pleasant, playing no longer pleased me, I had lost interest in seeing or doing anything, I simply went about my routine, my Grades at school dropped too low, that’s where I started to have suicidal thoughts, I always asked myself “Would it be better if I existed?” “It would make a difference if I wasn’t there.” “It would be better if I wasn’t there.” Adding to that, my parents always compared me to my brother, as if I were useless or the word used by my mother was “mediocre.” This same constant comparison led to the fact that when I enrolled in university, I chose the same career as my brother, in some way to be like “finally pleasing my parents” to be what they wanted, this led to me throwing out a year of I was going to waste my university studies, this hurt what I was feeling even more, I felt like a nuisance or a burden that was making my parents lose money, this triggered another panic attack, this time it happened when I was coming home from school after failing an exam, my chest hurt, for some reason I already knew what was coming, this simply led to me starting to laugh uncontrollably and cry at the same time, this time, I entered my room and simply fell to the floor to cry, each time I was out of breath more, it was then that listening to music began to calm me down, I began to recover the rhythm of my breathing, little by little, it was there that I began to devise plans to commit suicide, but at the same time I reached a breaking point where I said : “this is not right, I need help” because I always made sure not to tell anyone about my problems, because I did not want to burden others with my problems, nor to receive reactions that would invalidate what I feel, the same as what happened as a child. It was there that I sought help from Headaway and I met Maria, my therapist, I wrote to her in the early morning, she answered me a few hours later, she made an appointment with me, she started with some questions to get to know me, then she started asking questions about why I was there with her. It was there where for the first time I was able to talk about how I felt without feeling judged or invalidated, I remember that my voice broke with each word, she simply gave me time to relax, from that day she began to treat me, she diagnosed me with Dysthymia , avoidant attachment, among other things, including low self-esteem, social anxiety. Nowadays I am overcoming depression little by little, I managed to tell my mother, her reaction was more than I expected, because instead of telling me what she would have said 8 years ago, it was not what she said, she simply knew and understood it. And support me, I haven’t told my dad or my brother yet, only my mother knows That’s why when I once again regained my passion for video games that kept my head “together” during a period or time, I found that Apex Legends had a badge that alluded to suicide prevention, the semicolon project, was where I began to understand how serious depression can be, because like me, there are many people and it makes me sad that even many of them decided to end their lives. After that reflection I had, I decided to become a psychologist and then study to specialize in these problems, today I love what I am studying, because I know that I will be able to help many like me or like you who are reading this…I simply want to prevent more lives from being lost.

Remember, any problem is too small or too big, all problem as mental health, matters.