Ashley Cooke is a brave young woman speaking out about suicide and the effects of bullying.
By Melissa Meehan
SHE once cut herself, deep enough to bleed, just to feel something.
Now mourning the death of a close friend through suicide, 16-year-old Ashley Cooke wants to shine a light on the often taboo subject.
For her friend’s death, Ashley blames a number of things, but mainly those who bullied her.
Having been through it, Ashley wants those bullies to realise they are responsible for the devastating outcome and to let others going through the same thing know that they are not alone.
For Ashley, it started when she was just 12 years old.
The Pakenham teen started to hallucinate but swept her problems aside because she was helping some friends deal with hard times.
Soon she was having thoughts of wanting to hurt herself.
In Year 7 she began to self-harm.
Other students started to notice and believed she was doing it for attention and things went from bad to worse.
“Everyone was bullying me,” she said.
“They said I was a freak and to make sure I did it properly next time.”
The bullying got so bad Ashley ended up in the psychiatric unit in Clayton after her first suicide attempt.
She spent the year in and out of psychiatric care before she was finally diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder and Major Depressive Disorder.
“Year 7 was probably the hardest,” she said.
“I moved schools but the bullying got worse.
“They would call me emo and a freak and say things like ‘kill yourself properly next time, it would do everyone a favour’, and that’s when I turned to drugs.”
At 14, Ashley was smoking marijuana every few days.
She also started drinking and was sexually abused.
She failed Year 8 because she spent most of the year in psychiatric care.
In that year she attempted to commit suicide six times.
“I got bullied a lot,” she said.
“No-one accepted me because they didn’t understand, and that’s what annoys me – they don’t understand these things.
“They would say I was being an attention seeker, but if someone wants attention so badly they do that to themselves, there must be something wrong, they just couldn’t understand it.”
At 15, Ashley gave birth to a son, who’s now one.
“I got pregnant and sort of snapped out of it,” she said.
“I guess it wasn’t just about me anymore, there was someone else.
“If I hadn’t got pregnant I would either be in juvie (juvenile detention) or dead.”
Ashley will set up a stall at the Akoonah Market in Berwick on Sunday handing out material from beyondblue and selling yellow ribbons to raise awareness of depression and suicide.
In the past month, four people she knows have committed suicide.
“My close friend died at the Berwick Railway Station and this is my way of dealing with it,” Ashley said.
“I want to turn it into a positive because I don’t want to sit here and do nothing – I’ll go crazy if I have to do that.”
