Sean with Ms. Brenda at his high school graduation

I was a naïve kid. I never really paid much mind to what was going on around me. I was bullied because I like to be weird and a little out there—it makes the friends I have now laugh—but in first through eighth or ninth grade, I didn’t have any friends who were like me. People just saw me as a weird kid nobody likes.

That sounds really sad, but I just drowned it out. I’d come home from school and make my little fort out of pillows and play with my action figures.

I knew I was unhappy, but I tried not to pay attention to it. I was a little kid, so I was easily distracted. I never really thought about it until I was at school and realized I had no friends to talk to during recess.

But then I got older and it became too much. I had always pushed my feelings down because I didn’t want to seem weak or be a burden. But I couldn’t deal with myself—I started developing voices, seeing things, losing it. I didn’t know what to do. I was too afraid to die but too depressed to live. Sometimes I would hold a knife to my throat so that I’d realize how much I wanted to live.

That’s when I had a breakdown. I was 16, my girlfriend had just left me, and my grandma and aunt had passed away. I just snapped. I was at school and started screaming and crying that I couldn’t handle it anymore. The school called my mom, who came right away and took me to Bellevue Hospital. I was there for a week and a half, and then they referred me to The Child Center of NY’s home visiting program.

That’s when I met Ms. Miriam. At first it was awkward having some new person coming into my home. But over time, I warmed up to her and got used to her being around. I gradually began to realize how bad my anger was, and how I needed to treat the people in my life better—and that they needed to treat me better, too. Ms. Miriam worked with my mom and me on that, and on communicating with each other.

I’d gotten back together with my girlfriend, and the things Ms. Miriam taught me helped the two of us communicate better, too, and deal with our anger. Normally when I was angry, I’d punch things or break stuff, or hold it in. Or I’d start crying because I didn’t have any other outlet. Ms. Miriam helped me find ways to reduce the buildup when I started getting angry and gave me other alternatives to the crying and breaking things. She helped me learn to think through the consequences and decide if I should walk away or talk about it. Before I started seeing Miriam, if my girlfriend and I disagreed, I’d yell my opinion, she’d shout hers, and one of us would walk out crying. Now, we’re able to say, “Okay, this is what I don’t like….” And we talk about it. Now I know what it takes to have a real relationship, and that helps me not just with my girlfriend, but with my other relationships, too.

Ms. Miriam also introduced me to Teen Time [a group that brings together teens from The Child Center’s various home visiting programs], which I like because I have a lot of fun with the other teens there. I can be myself around them—or at least, myself toned down a little. A lot of times, other people would tell me, “It’s not that bad,” and I’d think to myself, “You don’t understand this pain.” But the people at Teen Time, they understand that it was that bad—even though they’d never say it.

After four months with Ms. Miriam, I got transferred to a less intense program and started seeing Ms. Brenda. In June, I graduated from the program.

Now that I’ve been through it, I can say that getting help isn’t that bad. Nobody ever wants to do it, but it’s definitely worth it. I’m in a much better place now and looking forward to attending Vaughn College in the fall. I’m hoping to become a computer programmer or robotics engineer and either work for a gaming company or go to Silicon Valley and work on robots in the NASA branch.

I feel ready because The Child Center showed me that when you have a problem, there are things you can do. You can work through things, and a lot of things can be fixed; If they can’t, you can move on. Ms. Brenda and Ms. Miriam showed me that I wasn’t beyond help, and things can get better.