1 Chapter One

     My whole life I've asked myself the questions of, why me?

     In different contexts, of course, but it's on going and I don't see it stopping anytime soon, therefore I think I have depression.

     I hate self diagnosing things, which is why I don't tell anyone I what I think. I don't even know if I really have depression, it just helps me understand the way I am, a little bit more. I probably don't even have depression, just depressed thoughts.

     Depression is a funny thing. It's not exactly sadness, but it's no where near happiness. It's dissatisfaction with the life one lives, but it's more than that.

     It's easier to understand what it is, than it is to know that you have it. I can't remember a day in my life without depression, therefore I never knew I had it until I self diagnosed myself.

     I hate self diagnostics. Everyone does it, and trusts that google is right when it isn't, or it is, you just need to be able to put it into the correct context, which one can, really, only do with a higher education in that field.

      It's not that I don't have loving parents, or loving friends, or a bad school, it's more than all of that. Every materialistic thing in my life is good, it's fine, there is nothing wrong with it. It's more of me, and less of everything else.

     It's the way I perceive certain things, it's different than everyone else, and my parents got frustrated with it. More like my dad got frustrated with it. It didn't matter how many times he would explain something, what mattered was how he explained it to make me understand it.

     Because this frustration was hard to fix, and took patience that he didn't have, he would always yell at me. He never hit me, he never touched me, but he did emotionally. Every time he got frustrated, or angry, or aggressive, he left scars, and wounds, warping my perception.

     I wouldn't sleep, I couldn't sleep, his voice was left echoing in my head for hours. I needed out of that house. I knew they loved me, and I loved them, but we couldn't live together, I couldn't live with them, but they couldn't live with me.

     So, here I am, in my college dorm room, laying in my bed, staring at my blank, white ceiling, listening to the sweet sound of my roommate, Brittany, snoring. Even after two months of not living in the house, I wake up abruptly in the middle of he night, afraid for my life that I didn't put a dish in the dishwasher, or I forgot to grab my towel from the floor in the bathroom.

     I'm glad I left, but part of me still misses it, probably because that's all I've ever know, and leaving it just like that, left my mind in shock.

     I don't have PTSD, which is a medical diagnosis, though that's what it sounds like to me, this isn't a long term thing. I'll get over it, like I always do.