I am a 12 year old girl and I have gone through some hard times in the past two years. I suffer from what my mother believes to be Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), auditory hallucinations, and visual hallucinations. This all started in January of 2008, when three teenage boys vandalized my neighborhood and my mother called the police to investigate. The boys had uprooted a street sign and swung it around and rang doorbells at random people's houses. My mother had gone out to see what had happened with a gun, just to be safe. I woke up around midnight, and overheard a conversation between my mother and a police officer about what had happened. To me, that was a very scary experience.
In May of 2008, I lost my math teacher, Ms.B, who was retiring. We had always had a special bond, and that was a great loss to me. I cried almost every night after she had left. She was a very special person, and her loss hit me hard.
During summer break, I began to hear a voice in my head. At first, he was very commentary, simply stating what I was doing at the time. But soon, he tried to influence my decisions (sometimes he was on the good side, sometimes he was on the bad) and, when things got bad, suggested I kill myself or harm myself. At this point, I told my mother, who took me to a children's hospital. There, they recommended me to a therapist, whom I still talk to every week. My voice has always been strange, sometimes encouraging me and helping me and sometimes suggesting I deal with stress in a negative way (i.e. self harm, suicide). I have gotten over these hurdles in life, but it has never been easy.
In school, I had been taking a 9th grade algebra class, two years above the recommended level. This class was very stressful to me as I did not get many of the objectives, and also because I missed Ms. B so much. My voice became increasingly challenging to deal with, but with the help of my mother and also of my therapist, I have been able to hang on.
This story is not over, and will not be for a long time. I can not express in words how this experience has changed me. This is a hard path for me, but I have comfort in knowing that there are many people like me, and we can get through this together.