ZEELAND, Mich. (WOOD) — The life of a high schooler can be overwhelming; life’s pressures start to build — grades remain high priority, college starts to cheap into the conversation, juggling extra-curricular activities, it adds up quickly.
Madison Miller, a sophomore at Zeeland East High School, knows that battle first hand.
“Grades have always been a big thing for me and I think it is for a lot of students. It’s always been a really big source of my stress,” Miller said.
But Miller’s battle goes much deeper, as she wrestled with the typical struggles of every high schooler, Miller was fighting severe depression. Instead of thinking about math solutions or science questions, suicide consumed her mind.
“I just remember being in the showering and thinking, I could do this right now and nobody could stop me,” Miller said said she thought about suicide everyday. “I just kept thinking to myself if I have to deal with this for another week, I’m going to be dead in two.”
It was a shock to her parents. Miller opened up to her therapist, who immediately called Miller’s mother. They were in code red. The shock came from being at this point before — when Miller was around 10, suicide wasn’t just something she thought about — it was something she obsessed with.
“I would be sitting in class and I would just write a suicide note. All the time that was all I did and I did that every day,” Miller said she wrote at least five letters a day, starting with her parents. “I would just say, I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I did this and I just couldn’t do it anymore, I couldn’t keep going feeling this sad all the time.”
Madison says she knew something was different in herself, she researched what she was experiencing and learned about depression. She opened up to her mom about sexual abuse she had survived and together the two of them sought professional help.
Read more at WOODTV.com