"Why Am I So Happy About This Little Duplex""Why Am I So Happy About Having A Key And Unlocking This

"Why am I so happy about this little duplex" "Why am I so happy about having a key and unlocking this door" "Why am I so happy about cooking" "Why am I so happy about this classwork" "Why am I so happy about this resumé I made" "Why am I so happy about opening curtains" "Why am I so happy about people coming over"

My roommate must be so annoyed with me at this point, I've been saying things like this at least every thirty minutes for the past week

how the hell do i talk to people

“All people dream, but not equally. Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their mind, wake in the morning to find that it was vanity. But the dreamers of the day are dangerous people, For they dream their dreams with open eyes, And make them come true.”

D.H. Lawrence (via vaatividya)

Protip: Today will never happen again. Use it wisely.

I feel like I'm finally figuring out what I want to do with my life: I want to be the best friend that I can.

I enjoy making people happy. That's something that's been ingrained into my being since the start. What better way to make them happy than by being their friend? It makes me doubly happy to see someone I care about with a smile on their face, so I try to entertain, and tell dumb jokes, and listen to their problems, and.... that sounds like being a friend, doesn't it? I do this with people I hardly know, and it still brings me joy to see them laugh. 

Yet there's days when I realize that I haven't spoken to someone I know in a very long time, or when I make a mistake and hurt someone, that I wonder if I'm actually cut out for this. I often can't even bring myself to initiate conversation with someone I've known for years; how can I expect myself to be a friend when I don't even have the basics down? Sometimes my friends, even my family want to talk to me and I just ignore them. Or I make a mistake and push them away, hurting them in the process. It pains me when I realize what I'm doing.

But I'm not perfect, and no one is. I'm still an introvert, and that's hard to grow out of. Sometimes I need to be alone to better appreciate the company of others. The more I appreciate my friends - and the more they appreciate me - the more I feel like I'm doing the best I can.

Paranoia pt. 5: The ongoing struggle

My first quarter of college went really well, but that was from being cooped up at home doing nothing all summer. I was ready to do some work and get some stuff done. Winter quarter didn't go so well, and spring quarter was even more of a struggle, as my complacent tendencies kept getting worse and worse.

I was certain that my pill was the cause. Between that and some new information that it can cause memory loss in some cases, I was tired of it. So, midway through winter quarter, I stopped taking it. There were no adverse side effects (probably because I halved the dose over a period of time), but I did notice myself get more tense and jumpy, and my thoughts raced faster. I haven't had a panic attack since.

But it was immediately apparent that the pill wasn't the problem. It didn't necessarily get worse because I stopped taking the pill, but it did keep getting worse at the same steady rate as before. By spring quarter, I was barely staying afloat grade-wise, and my attendance record was 50% overall.

At some point I even stopped making levels. When I noticed this, I really began to worry about myself. "Maybe I have depression or something? No, that's just my paranoia again. I just have a really bad work ethic. Haven't I always been this way, though? I was this bad in high school too."

With my record this past quarter, I am once again appalled that anyone took pity on my and let me keep my scholarship. And of course these feelings of worthlessness are bigger than just that, knowing that I don't have the drive to complete a simple assignment, or even fully enjoy my hobbies. I feel like I've just turned into a little ball of consumption with nothing to give back.

And thus we arrive at the present day, where somehow all of these feelings of shame, worthlessness, and nothingness have somehow, some way increased tenfold over the summer, even though I've had little to no real work to do. Every time, I think that maybe something's wrong with me, only to remember my paranoid tendencies and tell myself that it's actually my fault.

Just less than a week ago now, a close friend of mine who was worried about me showed me a game called Depression Quest. It's a short text-based browser game playing in the role of someone with depression. The player is given a set of possible ways to deal with a situation, but some of them are crossed out due to the player's condition.

It scared me how much I was able to relate to almost everything in the game. That was the real turning point for me, in thinking that maybe it's not just my paranoia, and maybe something is beyond my control here... Reading and hearing about other people's stories of depression only make me more and more convinced of this:

I think I have depression too.