Dineo finds solace in helping fellow sufferers of depression
"Open up your legs, you (expletive)! Did you think we'd give you a lift in exchange for nothing" are the words that replayed in Dineo Lethoba's head, every time she tried to sleep. She had just completed her grade 11 at the time and nothing could have prepared her for the turn her life was about to take.
POLOKWANE -Dineo was raped by two men who she had trusted to take her home after she accepted a lift from them. This is where her journey with depression began. After the ordeal she spent a week in hospital due to the injuries she sustained during the rape. “Whenever I closed my eyes, the scene would replay in my mind and I would hear one of the men cussing at me and telling me to open my legs. I saw a psychologist after that but I didn’t feel like it was working for me,” she said.
After the incident she failed matric three times and to her it felt like she was not receiving the support she needed from her family. She took to cutting herself and attempted to commit suicide twice twice. “I still have bruises from cutting myself. There’s a difference between letting out the pain that’s within you and letting go completely by trying to kill yourself. Cutting myself was a way of letting out the pain. There was a certain relief I felt when I cut myself, it felt like I was releasing a demon that was stuck within me telling me to cut myself. The urge becomes so strong its impossible to ignore, you have to release the pain by cutting it out. I would cut myself at least four times in a year and there were times when I would feel like cutting myself deeper so I could bleed to death,” she said of her struggle with depression.”
Her first suicide attempt was in 2016 when she cut herself then drank bleach mixed with a cocktail of tablets. “I remember writing my friend a message telling her I can’t live anymore. Fortunately she didn’t take it lightly, she stopped everything that she was doing and rushed to my house where she found me. I’m grateful to her for that day,” she said. The second time was in April this year where she tried to overdose on pills and then hang herself. This was somewhat of a turning point because she heard the words ‘I love you’ from her mother for the first time after that.
This year alone, she lost two friends who committed suicide just weeks apart. “I feel a sense of guilt because they both reached out to me before they committed suicide but I was too focused on other things to realise they were in distress. I feel that their deaths could have been avoided if there had been somebody to listen when they needed somebody to speak to,” she said.
She added that she still have days where she feel like living is pointless. “Even when doing something as simple as walking to the store I sometimes imagine if I throw myself in front of a moving car, how my family will react, how I will be at peace.”
Dineo has now found a purpose to life through helping others struggling with depression through her campaign Depression is Real Campaign. “My work makes my fight to stay alive everyday worth it,” she concluded.
Find out more about the ‘Depression is Real’ campaign in next week’s Bonus newspaper.
