I honestly feel kind of out of place writing this here, both writing about this stuff on a website and I'm not sure if its the right category here. Anyway.
I am 21 years old, male, and currently in college, about to finish my first year. Moved out from home, and only see my family when I go home for holidays or when I have a few days free during the term. (Just as a fact, please don't read into this too deeply just because I mentioned it so soon).
Back in highschool, mainly in my last couple of years, teachers expressed concern for me, under the impression that I was depressed. I did not take their advice and see a psychiatrist, so I was never diagnosed with depression (back then) but I sure felt depressed. One of my main problems back then was that whenever I connected with anyone, it would normally turn out that they were one of the couple of people in my class who moved away at the end of the year. It was an international school, so it was fairly normal for a couple of people to come and go in a year. I was so demotivated that I ended up repeating the second to last year, and on the second attempt it looked like i might fail the year again, but in the last couple of months I managed to somehow scrape through.
Anyway, after graduation I spent a year doing pretty much nothing.
Now I'm in college, I am living alone and I have now got the feeling that I have noone to turn to. I have been feeling depressed since around the beginning of the year and since around april it has gotten more serious.
I have a couple of friends here, but I do not feel that close to them. When I'm in a conversation with them I somehow have the feeling that it isn't really a conversation, but a string of statements, as if there is no emotional connection involved. I personnaly am not normally open about how I feel. Another thing is that I do not normally feel sorry for other people, a few months back a friend of mine's Grandmother died, I acted as if I were sorry, but even then I did not feel any empathy towards him. I'm not sure why. Last summer I was in his position, as my Grandmother died after around 9 months of illness. Even at her funeral I didn't shed a single tear. (I'm noticing now that most of what I have written is not actually what I intended to write while signing up). When I meet new people, I often don't talk much and have problems connecting to people that I don't know. It sounds condescending, but I find a lot of people to be simply boring, and I feel that even if i were to connect deeply with these people, that I would find that there would simply be nothing of interest there for me. I even don't connect that deeply with people in my family.
Ok, now some stuff I was planning on writing.. This is all different for one specific person. Yeah, it's a girl from my course. Since meeting her I have had the feeling that she has been sending me mixed signals, but she is in a 2 year relationship, which has left me feeling kind of confused. Before I told her anything about myself (concerning depression/anxiety) she had already opened up to me about her past. I had only known her for about 2 months, but we had bonded fairly quickly, and she was telling me about her childhood where she was..I'm just going to say the victim of certain (traumatising) actions by a man. I am not going to go into more detail. She did however tell me that I was the first person other than her boyfriend who she had told this to, the only other people who knew were a friend of hers, who was also a victim, and her mother who found out about it. I am not quite sure why she decided to bond with me so fast, maybe it was because she did not, and to some extent still doesn't, get along that well with some of the other girls in my course. I honestly can't blame her. Maybe she just thought my personality was like that of her friend who she was hardly seeing after moving here, or maybe I reminded her of her boyfriend, who she only normally sees on weekends. No idea. I think she was feeling alone after moving here and felt the need for somebody to be emotionally open to. She also told me about how she was constantly argueing with her boyfriend after moving here, although never telling me what they fought about. He even cut himself and told her it was her fault that he did so. (She has a history of cutting herself as a consequence of her childhood trauma, she has been in therapy before but quit, and there is a possibility of her being borderline, which I believe she was diagnosed with, she has been to a psychiatrist before and says she is, but I don't know if it was a professional that diagnosed her). Anyway, I developed feelings for her extremely quickly and have no idea if she knows this or not. Other people have noticed, so I'm under the impression that she knows. There is nothing I want more than to just quit this childish crap and tell her, but the risk is too high as she really is the only person I can be open about anything else to. She has been on good terms in her relationship for 2-3 months now.
Now more about me. After some people, the girl from my course included, told me they ewre worried about how I was doing as I was seeming depressed and generally down to them, I decided to see the school's psychiatrist. I have been feeling depressed, and thoughts about my future often make me feel nervous. The school Psych can only be visited 5 times in a year, so she sent me to another one who would then send me to specialists. In situations where I should feel nervous it sometimes comes to the point where I have to throw up, it's as if I always feel 5x more nervous than I should in any situation. The anxiety has gotten better after seeking help, but depression is as bad as ever. I have been put on anti-depressants, I was on them for 20 days and they made me feel worse for a while, but I understand this to be normal. They ran out 3 days ago, and I can only get a refill tomorrow. Since they ran out I haven't actually felt much of a difference apart from feeling extremely bad in the evenings. I have a kind of sedative to help me sleep that is supposed to calm me down while feeling nervous, although it is hard to say how much of an effect it has as I have only used it twice against feeling nervous and as I don't know how I would have felt without it then its kind of hard to tell. I had a talk with a psychiatrist and a psychologist about 2 weeks ago. The psychiatrist offered a 4 week therapy program, but I do not have time for it untill after the summer, and I'm not sure whether to go or not. She was the first professional that i had talked to who I saw as being really competant, and it talking to her helped me. I asked whether My feeling for the girl in my course could be making me feel depressed instead of it being a real depression, but she said it did not help my situation, but it shouldn't be the cause. This actually took a load off my mine and allowed me to see depression for what it really was, rather than being confused about what I was feeling.
I did a series of tests with the psychologist. I had the problem that I could see through most of the questions and see what they were targeting, most of the first questions were directed at eating disorders, after that germophobia, OCD, and a bunch of questions asking in different ways if I ever plan on burning stuff down/hurting people. I have yet to find out about the results, but actually answered a lot of the OCD questions positively, but I can honestly live with myself even if it means that I dislike stepping on cracks in the pavement and avoiding odd numbers of steps on different surfaces while doing so, I think it would be a mild case at the very most. The psychologist also asked me about my religion. I truthfully answered that I am an atheist. I simply think that any religion based upon a deity calling everything into existance is an insult to nature. But thats it just my oppinion, I do not wish to start a debate. I hope I don't sound too bitter right now
One of the reasons for feeling so down sometimes is that I am often alone, mainly on weekend. A lot of students go home over the weekend and I am left here alone with my thoughts. On days where there are no lectures, I often stay in bed for hourse after waking up, just not seeing any point of getting up. I do not have money problems (one of the things asked repeatedly on the tests), I am not rich, but I shouldnt have to worry about money at all for at least 6 months after graduating. I like to see myself as someone who is generally very good at handleing money (which is useful, as I am interested in going into investment after college). Sometimes I have problems even going to lectures. When I get home I just feel like I dont have the energy, either mental or physical, to start anything, so I spend hours just lying around listening to music. I generally feel demotivated and tired over the course of the day, although I wouldnt say that that is my main problem, and in the evening I start to feel worse and worse. Last night I took a large dose of sedative to simply sleep through it, but even then I was awake for 3 hours. I do not always have sleep problems, but it does happen quite often that I can't fall asleep. I also wake up early a lot of the time. Last thursday it was so bad in the evening that I broke my razor apart and used one of the blades to cut my shoulder. This is from something the girl (lets say she's called cherry, as I am drinking cherry coke right now) told me when I found out about her cutting. She said it comes from wanting to distract the mind from emotional pain by causing physical pain. It suprised me how rational it sounded, just like scratching an itch to distract oneself from irritation by causing pain through scratching. I do not think I would try this again. It's pointless as razors are so sharp that I could cause myself more pain by scratching myself with the blade of a pair of scissors and not even drawing blood. (Although I am aware that there are other reasons for hurting one's self). I was looking for a distraction, but I have the feeling that I also injured myself as a cry for help, I have however not told anyone about this yet. I also strongly dislike the idea of injuring myself simply to get attention, although I am worried that I might do so.
My current problem is that I have no one to talk to about this. Cherry (you know what? thats a stupid name. Let's call her Mary) has been pretty much ignoring me for the last ~3 weeks, but acting fairly open to everyone else. She used to come to me with problems, but now she hardly acknowledges my existance, and now she has been talking about quitting college as she hates a lot of courses here. I have asked her if anything is the latter, she said no but did not even look at me while saying so. It's times like these that I am glad that we men have deciphered the no=yes and yes=no code. We don't text much any more, and most texts get answered with a simple "?" or "^^". She has been the first person I have really opened up to at all, and now she is simply blocking me out of her life. While saying goodbye after class, she has given me seriously apologetic looks, but I really don't feel like trying to decipher any body language. She recently had her annual anniversary in her relationship. I have given up waiting for the relationship to fall to pieces, as all it was giving me was false hope, but I am far from being over her. Back in february they broke up in the middle of exams after all the fighting that had been going on, but the boyfriend returned after a short while and they got back together, since then they have been fairly stable.(Editing this in: We spend the second half of the second year and the first half of the third year abroad in out corse, we were actually going to go to the same place for the first abroad period which is about 4 months, but now she is planning on trying to switch destinations and hasn't told me yet. She is not the reason I chose my particular destination, although she was the person who pointed out it's courses to me. But this does not mean that I am not upset about her not going). Right now my focus is on keeping her as a friend. The main reason I am writing this is because I have no one else to talk to. I don't care much for internet tests, but on this site's depression scale I scored 69. But if you already know what you have (or even think you have) then you will most of the time end up with a higher score than otherwise.
I'm not quite sure how much longer I'm going to spend writing here, I think I have covered pretty much everything by now. I hope I didn't write too much about cherry/mary/whatever I called her last, my main focus was supposed to be depression I kind of dread her quitting college after making an emotional connection with her, after so many friends moving away over the years I honestly don't know how I would react. Think I've written enough now.