Some of you may be curious as to what's been going on with me lately. I know I've been a little crazy for a little while. I thought it would help to just write everything out and let you all get an inside look into my brain to hopefully better understand me.
First, you need some background information if you haven't been a really good friend of mine for more than 5 years. I was diagnosed with clinical depression in the Fall of 2005. I'm not looking for sympathy at all. I just really think you should know this in order to understand me and why I say and do things. If you've had real depression, you already understand exactly how I feel. If you haven't, please don't say you know what it's like. I used to think I could sympathise, but I was wrong. With depression, you don't necessarily feel sad or "depressed" like when somebody just has a bad day. I don't even think it should be called depression. That gives people the wrong idea about it. You don't feel sad because you simply don't feel. It's like everything goes numb, and you're completely empty. It's kind of like how you don't really think about having arms or legs because that's just how it is. They're always there. It's not something new. When you get a headache, you notice it, but you don't notice a lack of a headache because that's normal. The pain, loneliness, and hopelessness become normal. They don't go away so you accept them as a part of life. Eventually, everything goes numb. You can't have the ability to feel because all you would feel is pain. In depression, you learn not to care about anything. Don't get your hopes up because you'll only end up being disappointed. When everything goes crashing down around you, it's not a surprise. Sleep becomes your best friend because when you're asleep, you forget about how bad everything is. It's the closest thing you have to your old life and happiness. I love bedtime because it means I'll be ok for a little while. And those first moments when I wake up are wonderful because none of the bad things have hit me yet. It takes me a little bit to become fully aware of the world when I wake up, and I'm thankful for that because that's my bliss. I was prescribed medicine for depression in 2005. I took it for a year and a half and stopped taking it. Depressive episodes typically last 6 months to a year. Once you have one, you have a 50/50 chance of having another one in the future. Once you have another one, you're stuck with them for life. I was hoping it wouldn't happen to me again, but I know it has. I try to hide it when I can. I'm typically pretty good at it, but I slip up sometimes and lose it. Some of you have seen that part of me. Some of you haven't, but that doesn't mean it won't happen. Now you have more of an inside look, but you still don't fully understand what it's like unless you've been through it yourself. I don't mean that to sound bad towards anybody. That's just how it is.
I am a very emotional person. People have to watch what they say to me because I can take something the wrong way pretty easily and get really offended. I guess you could say I'm always in defensive mode. I tend to assume the worst in a situation. I really don't mean to, that's just how I'm wired. I also cry super easily. Sometimes it's because I'm offended. Sometimes it's from stress. Sometimes it's from thinking about a past situation. Sometimes I have no clue why.
I also got picked on through school based mostly on my appearance. I'm not going to get into specifics. You can probably figure that out for yourself. I've never been confident in my looks because of that. I have a pretty strong personality if you didn't know. My family jokes that I should be a lawyer because I can argue about anything. I'm also pretty smart. I've always done well in school and despite what some people seem to think, I actually have some common sense. No, I don't know everything. If I don't know something, I'll go insane asking questions until I figure it out. My intelligence is something nobody has been able to make fun of. When I know I'm right about something, I'll get into it with somebody until they give up or accept that they're wrong. This can cause problems. Combine how I interpret things differently from how they're meant with my need to prove myself right and it can get nasty.
So now you know me from my own point of view. Now you probably want to know what's been happening.
Everything started going bad just over six months ago. My relationship ended out of nowhere and a lot of things happened that I felt were purposely done to hurt me more. I had to completely remove my exboyfriend from my life just to keep from doing something really stupid. I deleted him from my phone, facebook, myspace, and anything else I could think of. The person I had spent everyday with since moving to school had to stop existing to me. Unfortunately, my friends were also his friends. I didn't want to lose them, but because I couldn't let myself be around him, that's how things worked out. I was really hurt and really alone. I started skipping a lot of my classes because he was in them and I didn't care enough to bother going. I laid in bed a lot. I lost my appetite. I actually went for three days on one brownie. I can't eat when I'm deeply upset by something so I just don't. I spent almost every bit of my time in my room, only leaving for class, and eventually to get food after about a week and a half. I ate by myself in my room. I couldn't bring myself to do anything because nothing interested me. My parents came down and I went back on medicine (I was prescribed medicine to help with the depression). That didn't seem to help so I gave up on it. I wanted to go home, but I stuck it out through the end of the semester and went home for Christmas break.
My winter break was great. I got to spend time with my friends from home. One friend and I got a lot closer than we had been which was great. I learned a lot working with my dad and uncle in the office. I was finally starting to feel better. I didn't feel quite as awful. There were still times when I just wanted to run away from the world, but they weren't happening as often as before. I was determined that things would be better because I could start fresh at the beginning of the semester.
I was wrong. I went back to school in late January and spent one night with friends. Just one. We watched a movie. I went to lunch with them twice and that was the end of my social life there. I spent another month there feeling horrible, but nobody seemed to care enough to try to help. I sat in my room doing homework. I ate by myself. I went home every weekend because I didn't have anything to do at school since nobody wanted to hang out with me anymore. The last weekend of February, I was back home and spent the weekend with some of my closest friends. I decided Sunday night that I didn't want to go back.
The next morning, I cried nonstop because I had to go back to school. I told my mom that I wanted to drop out because I was so horribly miserable there. I was finally forced to go down there and told to come back home after class. We decided it would be best if I lived at home and drove to school. I had to drive to SEMO and back 27 times. I drove 130 miles 27 times (and I hate driving if you didn't know) just to avoid being there as much as possible. I did ok and finally got through the end of the semester. Goodbye SEMO. Never again will I make the mistake of living there.
You'd think that with school being out for a little while, I'd be a lot happier. I thought so too. Well, this summer has been absolutely horrible. I found out that my GPA for the year was only a 3.419. This is pretty good except that I am in danger of losing my scholarship because I didn't average a 3.5 due to horrible teachers who can't teach worth anything. Now, instead of just taking 4 credit hours to get my math class done this summer, I'm taking 10. Six of these are through SEMO. I have to get A's in both classes or I lose about $30,000 worth of scholarship money. I'm pretty disappointed with myself over that. Then, I got stuck with trying to get all the parts to put together the racecar. I should be thrilled since we quit racing 5 years ago. I'm glad we're racing again, but I'm really stressed over this because I don't know much about the car or what I'm ordering. It's coming together, but I'm slightly freaked out that I screwed something up. I'm also working for our contracting company which takes a lot of time and yelling, but none of that has put me over the edge yet.
My most recent problem (the straw that broke the camel's back I suppose) is with a friend of mine. This friend has always been very important to me. He has helped me through a lot of problems. He is completely honest with me when others won't be. He's always there for me when I needed help. This friend has been a true friend to me since we met. Well, he used to be. Lately, this friend has basically treated me like crap. He typically only speaks to me to yell at me or if he wants something. If I speak to him, ask him a question, or say something in general while he's there, I suddenly become the most annoying person to ever exist. He has been taking advantage of me and my loyalty to our friendship for the last month or so. Now, he yells at me for everything and has formed a lovely habit of informing me that I'm stupid. I admit that I'm no genius, but I am certainly not stupid. He says things like this to make me feel even worse about myself. He knows my self-esteem is really bad and that I put a lot of emphasis on what others think of me, but he insults me anyways. My intelligence is the only thing I've ever been confident in so calling me stupid on a regular basis really hits home for me. He fights with me over everything even if I haven't done anything wrong. I finally confronted him about it and told him to stop picking fights. I thought we were ok after that.
Again, I was wrong. Less than a week later, after being constantly ignored, I finally asked him what in the world I did to him to deserve being treated like this. Of course, I got screamed at via text message. He tried to turn everything around to be on me. I didn't know that seeing somebody twice a week because of a common activity was always being around. I didn't know that treating somebody with respect and helping them out when I can (just like I do for all my friends) was trying to act like somebody's girlfriend. I also make things way too complicated by analyzing situations and trying to figure out what's going on in my life. I had no idea I was such a horrible person. Oh, and I'm the one who makes everything into a fight. Explaining myself and calling people out on how they treat me is making everything into a fight. And even better, me getting myself out of the situation and separating myself from him except once a week when we have to be in the same building is a self pity routine. If you all were aware of this, I wish you would have told me because I sure as heck didn't know.
So here's what I did. I deleted his number from my phone and I kicked him off my facebook friends list. I know. You're probably wondering why that's even a big deal. Well, it prevents me from texting him (even though I know his number, it's harder to contact him if he's not in my address book) and I don't have to see him on my news feed. This makes him as non-existent to me as possible right now. You probably think I'm overdramatizing the situation, but I've found that doing those things is a great thing for me. Getting away from the situation as much as possible is how I deal with emotionally stressful situations like this. I don't want it to be forever. It just has to happen like this until we've both had a chance to cool down and stop wanting to kill each other.
This doesn't mean I'm happy with the situation. I hate it, but I think it's necessary. I can't be around someone who is so mad at me that he resorts to attacking my emotions knowing it will hurt me. He needs to be away from me because that's what he seems to want. I need to be away from him because of everything I just told you. It probably won't last long, but I don't think I have a choice right now.
I hope you have a better understanding of how I've been acting lately. I know, it can get pretty frustrating. I don't mean to be a pain. I just don't know how else to act. If you've managed to read all of this, thank you. I know it's a lot, but you reading this tells me that you care about me. For that, I appreciate you. Let me know that you've read it. If you're curious about something, ask me. If you have any words of wisdom, I'd love to hear it. If you think I'm just crazy, let me know. I've had much worse said about me. I'm really curious about your opinions of everything. This is the first time I've even told anybody about this blog. Compared to this post, the rest of it is trash. I love to write though and want to start sharing my thoughts with you if you'd like to hear them. So again, thank you for reading this. :-)
