I’m 23 now and am not yet diagnosed with any disorder. I feel like I’ve had depression and social anxiety since I was 13 years old. 

In the 8th grade, I would get made fun of daily over the way that I walked (too stiff apparently). The teasing started in math class but then other people outside of class caught wind of my problem and joined in on the teasing as well. I’ve been made fun of for being overweight before, but never to this degree. There wasn’t a single day where I didn’t get ridiculed in front of the entire classroom. Nobody ever checked to see how I was holding up and even the teacher did nothing to try to put an end to it. This bullying over the way that I walked hasn’t been an issue anytime after the 8th grade, but some the effects of being made fun of for it still continued for some years after. I was made extremely paranoid anytime I would leave the house. It wasn’t only school where I had to worry about being laughed at, it was anywhere outside as well. I don’t where this weird walk that I would do came from, but I suspect it may have something to do with small feelings of social anxiety. Being made fun of for it and having people imitate my walk amplified my feelings of anxiety tenfold. Anxiety turned into depression and then depression turned into anger and anger made me a social recluse. I still had to be around people in school obviously, but I didn’t want anything to do with them. 

People noticed how reserved I became the following year and onwards. I stopped being made fun of over the way that I walked but was now sometimes joked at over my serious demeanor. People would often joke that I looked like I wanted to kill someone, or that I looked dead. These comments weren’t just made by my classmates, teachers and other adults would do it too. 
In the hallways during transition time, people would always turn their heads to look at me when I walked passed them. There was CLEARLY something wrong with me, yet no one ever asked if I was ok. I even had someone joke that I was going to shoot up the school one day. I live in the US where school shootings unfortunately regularly do happen. To joke that way towards someone who’s the most likely candidate to actually do something like that. In my eyes is absolutely despicable. Who’s more likely to carry out a shooting? A happy-go-lucky life loving person or a miserable anti social recluse? I know nothing justifies murder at any degree, I just don’t think it’s morally correct to joke that way towards someone who is clearly not mentally sound. 

Today I try not to hold any animosity towards my classmates. One because I wasn’t approachable, and two because we were just teenagers. I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt that they’ve matured since then. I still haven’t found a way to excuse any of the adult’s comments. They should have known better. I’m not as obsessive over the way that I walk anymore, but I still am over the way that I look. I often make posts about how much I hate my “resting bitch face” (or whatever the male equivalent term is). My face is what keeps me from leaving my house most days. I don’t know how to deal with all of the staring that I sometimes get. 

I’m a little depressed that I never went to college. I had such a bad experience in high school that I completely rejected the idea of having to sit inside another classroom. I feel like I barely even made it through my senior year because my anxiety was at an all time high. I had considered dropping out of school that year. Now I don’t know what to do with my life. Not having a college degree is something that I think will always bother me. I feel stupid and inferior without one.