the thing i wrote **teachers response included

Depression, Anorexia, Self-Esteem and Self-Image Issues
Based on a True Story
 This story is about Kai, Deci, and Jakk.
Exposition: Deci and Kai are two best friends just beginning 8th grade. Jakk is Deci's other best friend, but he and Kai do not know each other because they don't go to the same school. None of them are popular at school, and they don't have very many friends. In fact, Deci is Jakk's only friend. He suffers from major depression and anorexia. Deci shows signs of major depression but no one seems to notice and no one really cares either, except for Kai and Jakk. Kai also shows these signs, has a horrible life at home, if you can even call it that. He is becoming anorexic as well. All three of these teenagers have mild to extreme self-injury, self-esteem, and self-image issues.



 begins with the three battling their problems together.
Rising Action: Kai, Deci, and Jakk start to get worse and worse, cutting, burning, starving, binging, repeat. No one seems to notice, which is okay, because no one would care even if they did. They get new music, music written by people who UNDERSTAND, who CARE. Deci starts to get better, but she is powerless to help her best friends as they get worse and worse. Deci and Kai's parents find out about their self-harm and get really mad, yell a lot, take away their freedom, basically do everything they can to make it worse. Kai's dad tells him to kill himself four times, to jump off a building, to cut his arm off with a saw, and calls him names I can't write down. Deci's parents dump her in therapy and it does absolutely nothing and after a few months she eventually convinces them to stop making her go. The war over custody of Kai and his little brother between their parents comes to an abrupt end when the court sticks them with their aunt and uncle- it was either that or foster care thanks to what his dad did. Meanwhile, Jakk sinks further and further down into depression and Deci has watch her best friend tear himself apart, unable to help in any other way than to understand and support. She can try her hardest to make him feel better, but it's just not possible for him to feel okay anymore.


  The last time Jakk gets bullied
Turning Point: One day at school, the bullies are especially horrible to Jakk. They call him an anorexic freak, they call him "the butcher's scraps" when they see his arms, they tell him he's "a freak of nature", "you should just go kill yourself". He runs and hides out behind the gym, where he has hid every day of every week for the past 6 months. He cries his eyes out while texting Deci about what they said, and she tries her very best to make him feel better, but she can't make him feel okay, Jakk can't feel okay anymore- it hasn't been possible to even try for months. When he gets home from school, Jakk takes the painkillers out of the medicine cabinet and the vodka out of the liquor cabinet. He texts Deci, tells her he's sorry and he loves her, and not to end up like him. She cries herself to sleep for the next month straight because she knows no matter how much she calls him, he'll never be able to pick up. She has always had low self-esteem and a crappy self-image, but now she starts to develop self-harm issues as well. No one understands, and they all treat her the exact same way the other kids at the other school treated Jakk. The only one who understands is Kai, and if she didn't have him, she would end up like Jakk.



 Not yet dead battlefront
Falling Action: Deci eventually stops cutting, it hurts Kai more than it helps her and she'll just get into more trouble if she keeps doing it. Kai tries his best to stop for the same reasons, but it's harder for him because his life is so much worse. He's watched three of his best friends die right in front of his eyes, held their broken bodies in his arms. He's never had a real home, never had a time in his life when his "family" wasn't at each other's throats. He's so strong for doing as well as he is- he wants to die and he's kicking life's butt compared to how he was doing before. Although everyone is trying to rip them apart, they are inseparable. They were the only ones who cared enough to stay when everything went wrong and they're not about to let "parental units" and teachers end their friendship. They're both still battling depression, self-harm, -esteem, and –image problems, and not-really-trying to battle eating problems. Their friendship is pretty much the only thing holding them together and they're not going to let go of it.



 and ends with Kai and Deci gaining some knowledge about life.
Dénouement: Kai and Deci are graduating 8th grade in three days, and moving onto high school. Their problems are all but solved- many of them are just worse. One good thing has come out of all the things that have happened to Deci, though: she has learned how to be herself and not care what people think of her. She is herself, no one else, and no one can change ever change that. She is strong, she is independent, and she has fewer friends than anyone else at her school purely because her friends are REAL friends. The kind of friends who stick it out with you until the end, the kind of friends who don't abandon you when you need them most. It turns out she had plenty of those, needless to say she doesn't have them anymore. As for Kai, he has something to live for now, a reason to look forward to the future. Life is still a daily struggle, but now he knows there is hope. Someday, it won't be a struggle. Someday, when he can get out of here and away from them, life won't be so hard. He'll still have Deci and all his other friends, but he won't have to deal with his "family" anymore. It really does suck, but it's the truth. Our friends ARE our families.


My teacher just graded this like five minutes ago and this was his response:
Assignment: Mental Health: Project Milestone One
Comments: Hi Lauren,

You have written a very detailed, unfortunately realistic, story. Great job! It is not too graphic, but definitely intense. You've created an engaging real world story line with Deci, Kai, and Jakk. I was happy to read that Deci ends up feeling good about herself.

I look forward to reading your second milestone.

Keep working hard.
Mr. Pagano
Grade: 25 / 25