I'm Not Alright

It amazes me how long it has been since I last looked at this blog.  Reading posts I have made makes me realize the pain I have felt, the loneliness, and the depression I constantly struggle to overcome.  Considering everything I have overcome, you would think that I would be immune to pain at this point in my life.  I'm about to graduate and should be mature enough to not let little things get to me.  But the truth is, I am just as unhappy now as I have always been.  I have just learned to suppress it enough that even I don't realize I'm not content with life.  I feel as if I have created a fake persona for myself, and I struggle so much with knowing who I truly am.  I catch myself saying things, and I can't believe the words are coming from my mouth because it is so far from who I used to be.  Maybe it is just the fact that I am changing as I age that I am having such a difficult time coming to terms with.  I used to have this picture in my mind of how my college experience would be like.  I intended to get super fit and attractive and attract the "popular" group as my friends.  I figured that I would make life-long friends in college and that it would be the best years of my life.  The truth is, college has been some of the worst years of my life.  Being so far away from my true friends and family and being so poor that I can never afford to go back has been a major struggle.  I haven't made the friendships in college I had hoped to.  I made friends at JBU, but I've lost touch with all of them.  They are strangers to me now.  It is crazy how someone can go from being your best friend, to being a complete stranger.  I don't have a college best friend anymore.  A majority of the time when I need to talk to someone, there really isn't anyone around to talk to.  I don't want to burden anyone with my unhappiness.  There are so many times when I wonder what purpose my life serves.  To be honest, a lot of days I wonder why I should continue living.  Part of me realizes that if I were gone, there would be people who would be sad and would miss me.  Though, I never see those people anyways.  I feel like such a burden bringing up my issues to people that I hardly talk to anymore.  Plus part of me is scared to let anybody in because I have been hurt so badly by my best friends in the past.  I just wish forgiveness were easier and we could just fix things.  I just don't know how to develop relationships anymore.  I don't know who I am, and I have no idea what I want out of life.  I wish people understood depression better.  I try to fight through it every day, but deep down inside I am numb.  I don't know what my hobbies are, or if I have any.  I spend as much time as I can sleeping, listening to music, and watching Netflix because all of these things create an escape from my life and drown out my thoughts.  For so long I have been avoiding feeling anything.  I'm afraid that I've been broken beyond repair.  A year ago I used to be so much peppier and I had so much more confidence in myself.  Now every time I look in the mirror or see a photo of myself, I am repulsed.  I don't see the person I used to be, and I don't recognize the person looking back at me.  I have no idea how to bring that person back.  I don't even know if that person was ever me.  What if being depressed is who I am and any other person I may appear to be is just a facade?  I don't know how to be happy or content with life.  I don't know how to stop myself from envying other people who have two parents who care about them and have always been there.  I don't know how to not be envious of people who have nice things and don't have to take out a payday loan just to be able to do things for my 21st birthday.  Simply, I don't know how to love others because I don't know how to love myself.  I've always thought that I just needed a guy to come along to love me and then life would be better.  But from what everyone says, nobody can love me until I love myself.  This just makes me fear that nobody will ever love me because I don't know if I will ever be able to love myself.  It isn't that I don't want to, I just don't know how.  The things I think I want to do, I am too afraid to do because I hate doing things alone.  I hate being left alone and stuck fighting off negative thoughts.  I have no idea what to do with my life.  I have no idea if I want to move back to Iowa or if I want to travel and move somewhere new.  I just want to be somewhere where I can learn to like myself and enjoy life.  I don't want to keep feeling so alone.  I don't know if it is strength or weakness that keeps me going every day.  Because to be completely honest, on my 20th birthday I told myself that I had a year for my life to improve or I would kill myself.  My life is not any better now than it was then.  But I don't want to kill myself.  I want to have a better life.  I want to be a better person.  I want to build friendships and find a guy to spend my life with.  I want to have children one day.  There are so many things I want out of life, I just don't know how to make them happen.  My biggest fear is that they won't happen and I will wake up one day realizing I am old and still completely miserable and still feel alone.  For now, I'm not alright, and I need to learn how to live with that until I know how to change it.  Maybe I will never be alright, but I at least want to keep trying to be.  I deserve to find love and happiness in life.  I'll either find it, or die trying.