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       I go to HTHI and we are doing a project about mental illness. We want to raise awareness and change the stigma behind mental illness. I chose depression. I understand it's the most common mental illness and we know more about depression then any mental illness, but apparently not enough. Not enough people are educated. Not enough people know how it works or what it does to someone. People don't really know much about this topic until they either have an interest or something happens to them involving mental illness. I am a prime example. I didn't really have any connection to this project until last month. Before I had been doing Anxiety but I didn't really connect with it or feel passionate about it.

 

       I had a friend over Thanksgiving break go through a serious depressive break down. He played this "game" that was based on his life. I was the first "player". Players were chosen based on who he trusted. There were a total of five "players" and I only had contact with two of them. My best friend Trinity and this girl Kaila who I don't know. She lives in another state and we didn't really know her much so I mainly talked to Trinity to figure out to do.

 

       At first when the "game" was just me it wasn't that serious. Mostly just simple questions like "what would you do if  I died?" and "would you kill me?" then went into depth about how he would want me to kill him, when, why. It was a lot, but that was nothing compared to what the "game" grew to be. His "game" grew to be a lot more serious. The objective was the same. Keep him alive. Trinity, Kaila, and I did everything to keep him happy. We spent hours every day making sure he was okay and made sure someone was always talking to him during the day.

 

      He kept adding more players and wanting more "help". I put help in quotation marks because part of me feels like he knew we couldn't really help him but he had hope we could help even the smallest bit. His objective was so serious I didn't have high hopes that we could help. His objective was that when he turned 21 he would buy a gun and shoot himself. So we had six years to try and make him feel loved and make him want to live. We tried so hard, but apparently not hard enough. We didn't know what to do. He kept moving up his time line. He moved it up a couple times, but the last one was February Third of 2017. It went from 2022 to next year.

 

       Everyone was freaking out. We weren't aloud to tell anyone about him. We broke that rule clearly. Trinity told my friend Sophie about everything that happened and she told her to call the police. She did and they didn't believe us. They told her that she needed to figure this out and since they had no records of him being arrested or anything there was "nothing" they could do. They didn't take her seriously. She said it sounded like they stopped paying attention as soon as she said that he had been in a mental hospital, and found out she was a teenager. So the police could't help us. She then called me and we were both really scared and also extremely heated over what just happened. We were actually on our own with this.

 

       We were both pacing around in our houses and talking to each other on the phone. We kept wanting to believe that it would go away when his medication started working. We knew we would have to tell somebody before he did something that we could've prevented. So we went to the Principle the next day. My friend and I were so scared and we went back and forth talking about how we were going to talk about it. Everything went pretty well. The police came after school and took him back to the hospital. He wasn't in handcuffs or anything. They just took him. My friend and I would love to be able to talk to him and see him but we know we aren't allowed too. We know what we did was for the best and we know he is safe.

 

      I mainly did my project about this because it was a way for me to connect with the project, make it more interesting. It has also made me not want to do it. Normally in projects I am always done early and am most of the time proud of what I've done. But since this was hard for me to write about I've been pushing it off and just forgetting about it. I do however really like the pictures I have taken below. Each of them have a meaning and each one I feel like someone can relate to.