I finally plucked up some courage to go and get some help, and for the past few weeks I've been seeing a doctor regularly. It's been helpful, I think -- I was seeing her every week and then it had been changed to two weeks, and then a month. My next appointment's in a few weeks, so I'm obviously looking forward to that (*sigh*).

The thing is...I'm almost eighteen. Which means I've had something of this sort for almost...seven, eight years. I've spent my entire teenage life like this. This is literally who I am - I'm this depressed, paranoid person. And if I continue to go to the doctor's, and if I try and rid myself of this depression, then who am I going to be after that?

What happens after?

Do I just...live? Survive? Try and forge a completely new personality? Or am I just going to be this person, stripped of everything that defined her these past few years (for almost a *decade*), and just a shell of what she once was, albeit in an apparently positive way?