I can't quite place this. This is not something you'll want to read, but here it is, all laid out. On the table. This is a piece of my heart.
I don't know when the exact moment occurred, but I realized that I feel this emptiness and this sadness that I cannot adequately convey in the verbal sense. In so many words, after months of newfound happiness and gratitude, I once again feel like the Erica you've all come to know and easily tire of... the depressed Erica. I can feel it happening, and I don't know what to do. So, I'm taking step number one, and I'm talking about it.
I have returned to Athens. My classes do not excite me. I am not even excited about my second photo class. I feel unhappy just thinking about trying to come up with creative photographs twice a week so that an entire class of people can pick and pull them apart. And I'll receive a grade that doesn't reflect my efforts. I'll just feel apart from it. My other classes are so bland. I don't have any friends or companions in these classes. I walk to and from them alone. I sit for an hour by myself in the student center and push buttons on my phone to occupy my time. Until my next class. I go to the bathroom because I'm bored... not because I need to go. This is a perfect illustration of my inner and outer loneliness.
I walk around a campus with thousands of students, and I feel alone. I want the love only a few can provide. But they aren't around. And I don't get any love. I get to come back to my dorm room and go to sleep. That is the love I get after a long day in the middle of nowhere. My parents are a phone call away, but returning home for break brought me to some unsettling realizations. My parents are apathetic towards me. They treat me like an incapable human being... "You can't drive our cars to visit a friend or run an errand," "You can't eat MY cereal or drink MY grape juice..." and they couldn't even spare five minutes of their time watching television when I asked them to come into the den to look at digital photographs I laboriously produced last quarter. My dad has been sick for four months and has been unable to work. My mom is, once again, the sole provider. It looks as though, financially speaking, my family is stuck in the mud. And that, sadly, is nothing new. But perhaps more upsetting than that is their emotional distance from their two daughters. Thank you for possessing an interest in my college career. But then again, I'm here on my own dollar, so I shouldn't expect much. No one helped me get here, and now that I'm here, no one's going to help me along... not with words or encouragement, money, or just simple fucking appreciation.
I enjoy spending time with my co-students here. I like going to meals, getting coffee, making stupid inside jokes, debriefing and the like... but it's a temporary happiness, and before I go to bed, regardless of the day's activities, I always feel alone. It's nobody's fault. No one is lacking here except for me. No one is doing or not doing. It's internal and it's mine.
I am doing things and I do not know why. I am taking these pills and continuing to gain weight and still, STILL getting headaches. I feel sloppy all about myself. I do not feel attractive or funny. I look unhappy just as much as I feel it.
I get sick of shallow and I get sick of teenage petty bullshit drama and this constant need to drink drink fucking pull away from reality because that's mature and healthy and a motherfucking solution to a good time. Can't have a good time unless you're illegal and intoxicated, ever so slightly. Get creative. Get a clue. And stop it. Brutally honest conversation and heart-felt sincerity are not built on the words of a buzz. And when you're ill and tired and dragging and regretful the next day, nothing in my good heart or my best intentions will make it any better. And that isn't fair.
It it makes you feel useless, I am sorry. You're not useless. You are the only happy thing I have, and that is why everything is taken to heart. Every little thing that goes wrong makes me feel like a complete failure. When you leave, I want to leave too.
I am to blame blame blame because I can't get out of bed and smile and feel all right about what went wrong yesterday or last week. I am sorry for that. That makes me someone I don't want to be. But I'm stuck. I don't know how to move.
And now I think it's time for me to conclude this before it gets any... well, you know.
I don't know when the exact moment occurred, but I realized that I feel this emptiness and this sadness that I cannot adequately convey in the verbal sense. In so many words, after months of newfound happiness and gratitude, I once again feel like the Erica you've all come to know and easily tire of... the depressed Erica. I can feel it happening, and I don't know what to do. So, I'm taking step number one, and I'm talking about it.
I have returned to Athens. My classes do not excite me. I am not even excited about my second photo class. I feel unhappy just thinking about trying to come up with creative photographs twice a week so that an entire class of people can pick and pull them apart. And I'll receive a grade that doesn't reflect my efforts. I'll just feel apart from it. My other classes are so bland. I don't have any friends or companions in these classes. I walk to and from them alone. I sit for an hour by myself in the student center and push buttons on my phone to occupy my time. Until my next class. I go to the bathroom because I'm bored... not because I need to go. This is a perfect illustration of my inner and outer loneliness.
I walk around a campus with thousands of students, and I feel alone. I want the love only a few can provide. But they aren't around. And I don't get any love. I get to come back to my dorm room and go to sleep. That is the love I get after a long day in the middle of nowhere. My parents are a phone call away, but returning home for break brought me to some unsettling realizations. My parents are apathetic towards me. They treat me like an incapable human being... "You can't drive our cars to visit a friend or run an errand," "You can't eat MY cereal or drink MY grape juice..." and they couldn't even spare five minutes of their time watching television when I asked them to come into the den to look at digital photographs I laboriously produced last quarter. My dad has been sick for four months and has been unable to work. My mom is, once again, the sole provider. It looks as though, financially speaking, my family is stuck in the mud. And that, sadly, is nothing new. But perhaps more upsetting than that is their emotional distance from their two daughters. Thank you for possessing an interest in my college career. But then again, I'm here on my own dollar, so I shouldn't expect much. No one helped me get here, and now that I'm here, no one's going to help me along... not with words or encouragement, money, or just simple fucking appreciation.
I enjoy spending time with my co-students here. I like going to meals, getting coffee, making stupid inside jokes, debriefing and the like... but it's a temporary happiness, and before I go to bed, regardless of the day's activities, I always feel alone. It's nobody's fault. No one is lacking here except for me. No one is doing or not doing. It's internal and it's mine.
I am doing things and I do not know why. I am taking these pills and continuing to gain weight and still, STILL getting headaches. I feel sloppy all about myself. I do not feel attractive or funny. I look unhappy just as much as I feel it.
I get sick of shallow and I get sick of teenage petty bullshit drama and this constant need to drink drink fucking pull away from reality because that's mature and healthy and a motherfucking solution to a good time. Can't have a good time unless you're illegal and intoxicated, ever so slightly. Get creative. Get a clue. And stop it. Brutally honest conversation and heart-felt sincerity are not built on the words of a buzz. And when you're ill and tired and dragging and regretful the next day, nothing in my good heart or my best intentions will make it any better. And that isn't fair.
It it makes you feel useless, I am sorry. You're not useless. You are the only happy thing I have, and that is why everything is taken to heart. Every little thing that goes wrong makes me feel like a complete failure. When you leave, I want to leave too.
I am to blame blame blame because I can't get out of bed and smile and feel all right about what went wrong yesterday or last week. I am sorry for that. That makes me someone I don't want to be. But I'm stuck. I don't know how to move.
And now I think it's time for me to conclude this before it gets any... well, you know.
VIEW 12 of 12 COMMENTS
I've realized I have depression on a 6 year cycle. Middle school, I was hopelessly depressed, as everyone seems to be. Things got better after a while, and high school had it's drama but no deepset depression. Freshman year of college? Outright mental breakdown. Pills. And then I realized I felt numb, shook the antidepressants, and that decision to act seemed to free me. ....That and the fact that I was high on the attitude I learned from a new friend (who has since died). ....Here I am now, age 24, and I realize that a deep depression has caught me again. I'm feeling helpless and complacent. The more I feel that, the less inclined I am to break out of it.
....But all of that is to say that outlook changes, slowly, cyclically. Try to press yourself forward, learn what you can from your classes, fake your passions if you can't feel them. ...That way when things feel exciting again, you'll be on track to pick up the pieces.
Good luck. Love and joy to you.
What else can you to but get out of bed? This may sound like a Hallmark, but take joy in that you have another day to evolve. It may seem like all odds are against you and everything is futile, but that sense of restlessness and worry is just part of it. And it's all good trust me, because the bad makes the good that much sweeter. Sometimes it's scary going out into the world, but be happy that all days aren't sunny and everything doesn't go as planned. In a couple years, I'm sure you'll look back and see the path you've taken and really be in love with how you got to be who you are.
You are moving always whether it seems that way or not.