This is going to be really long so I don't mind if nobody reads it it would just be nice to get it off my chest I think.
This is the only place I really feel anonymous so it's the only place I feel comfortable sharing this haha. So for a bit of back story I've always been a massive perfectionist. Anything I ever did I always wanted to be the best, causing me to put crazy pressure on myself to be perfect at everything (the perfect student, perfect daughter, perfect friend etc) and then going to extremes just to punish myself if I didn't seem good enough for my own standards. And it didn't always help that whilst my mum had good intentions, she was kind of always physically and emotionally distant whenever it really mattered, and even though she's trying now and I truly am grateful, it doesn't change the fact that when I was younger and it mattered the most, it didn't feel like she was ever truly there for me in the way I needed her to.
I ended up spiralling really badly in Years 8-9, I had the worst mental health I'd ever had and I had nobody to turn to. In Year 10 however things started looking up and I felt myself growing in ways I never thought I ever would, even without real professional help. Even though I still had really bad days, I was having good days too, and life genuinely felt worth living.
Flash forward to the beginning of this year, Year 11, and I just threw myself into my studies, barely checking in on myself, falling back into my terrible perfectionist tendencies I'm starting to realise never actually left me. And now I'm in the final sprint and I feel so destroyed. I feel like I'm going back to how I used to be during my worst days. I'm angry all the time, I have horrible intrusive thoughts, I burst out crying practically every day without any real reason and yet my perfectionism and self-doubt stops me from reaching out for help because I just feel like I don't need it, or I don't deserve it, because if I didn't get it back then why would I ever deserve it now when I'm supposed to be "better"? I feel like every day I'm just going back to how I used to be, and I feel like giving up on my studies altogether, but then what's the point of me having struggled through Year 11 if I don't get good grades at the end of it? Teachers have reached out to me to check if I'm okay and given me counselling and stuff but they always end up cancelling it because I appear like I'm doing better, even though I've just learn to hide all my problems and wait until they get unbearable.
I'm pretty sure I have depression. I've thought that since I was like 10 years old but nobody ever took me seriously even though I had all of the symptoms and still do, and yet now it feels like it's too late and I just can't help but feel like everything I do is pointless, especially since with how hard I work I feel like I should be doing so much better than I actually am.
I guess I'd just like some advice? Even if somebody else just understands and relates to what I'm going through, or went through it and came out the other end, I'd just be happy to hear anything. I just feel so hopeless, like the only thing I've ever been good at is my studies and I can't even do that. And I'm supposedly struggling with my mental health but other people have it way worse than me I'm sure so I just feel so useless and worthless. I'm just really exhausted with everything going on right now, and I don't know who to turn to in my real life.