I have had a solid group of friends for a long time. All throughout school, the same friends have stuck together. Then they graduated and went off to various universities/studies/apprenticeships, and the underclassmen in the group (me and a couple others) stayed for the last year at high school (or as we call it here, college). Then my underclassmen pals graduated along side me and went off to university as well while I... didn’t. I wasn’t really sure what I was going to do. I told everyone, and myself, I was “taking a gap year”. What a joke that was. I’m fairly sure everyone saw through that, including myself. I was just scared and too doubtful of the world that I froze up and decided to stay in my safe little cocoon, where I could eat well, play, and listening to music as loud as I wanted. Even though my family is a whirlwind of emotion and unfortunate happenings, it was more comfortable that what was ‘out there’. I was familiar with the constant arguments with my dad, the constant mediation between him and my sister, the constant procrastination that sustained my life just enough to keep living in the same hole. That lasted about 3 years. 3 miserable years that got worse as they went on. I developed severe anxiety and depression. I had suicidal thoughts. I wanted this feeling of “I’m not good enough” to end. I never made a plan to kill myself. I only ever got the image in my head of me hanging. Then, it became from my own view, through my own eyes with the rope around my neck. That scared the crap out of me. After that, I got help, from my GP (doctor) with encouragement from my Life Coach, who was trying her best to keep me going in a positive direction, and my dad, and I’ve been seeing a counselor occasionally to make me see what’s going on in my head and what I can do with it. It’s been a constant battle with myself to just keep going, to keep finding myself and what I want. It’s always felt like what other people want is so much more important, I was clouded to my own desires for my own life. So, I want to move forward, I really do, but shit keeps happening. Pushing me down and just making it hard. My Life Coach said “things happen for a reason” and I have no idea what to make of that. In my opinion, things happen regardless of what’s could happen next. What happens next depends on what you do with the situation you’ve been given. So, with this loneliness, the anxiety and depression, the financial crisis, I will make the most of what I can. I feel so useless and weak, that what I do doesn’t matter no matter what I do, but I will die someday, and I don’t want to feel like I did nothing I wanted to do, didn’t achieve what I wanted to just because I felt like i wasn’t good enough for other people or myself. I want to just do what I want to and can do. Not in a childish way, but in a “I have a dream” kind of way. i dunno. I guess there’s only one way to find out if that’ll happen and that’s with perseverance