Happiness, that elusive bastard

I suspect I'm not quite well. But then, nobody is really happy, right? I mean, whatever "problems" I might have, or fancy I have, well! That's just small potatoes! There's people around me getting kicked out of their homes, and people who are scared to come out of the closet because their family is freaky religious, and people who have depression, and eating disorders, and are living in a strange city and feel like they don't fit in, and people whose dad died out of nowhere. I mean, I didn't just make those all up.

But just now I've realized that I've been... I don't know. I'd repeat the previous paragraph to myself every time I felt bad, small, insignificant, uninteresting and lonely. I haven't felt too happy since my last year of high school. In fact, I don't remember all that much of my last year of high school, except that I felt miserable a lot. They made us take like 5 different psychological tests (those horrible ones that take hours to complete and are hundreds of questions long) and the psychologist called me in to discuss my results because I came out unhappy.

I'm wondering if I plan to publish this post. I meant to at first, but now it's getting a bit embarrassing. I have a whole bunch of private-ish posts that sit unpublished.

Anyway, she held up the results of one test that evaluated... I forget, but there were five or six things, and one of them was sociality. I still remember that she held up my chart and said, "Look! Your social bar isn't there! It's a zero!". We talked for about an hour (well, she talked and asked questions and I went through her Kleenex), and she said she'd like me to go back but I never did.

My self-esteem remained pretty low until... Well, let's see. There was a little spike where I felt a bit better around December before last, while I was on a trip with a group of students. We were in Europe, and I could let loose a bit there. We were in sort of forced cohabitation, so it was easy to hang out with other people, get to know each other, and so on. Then the trip ended and I don't remember anything much after that, except that I became really irritable. Like, I though everyone else was being annoying and stupid. And then I realized it was me (and started crying in the library. Luckily my friends are not asses like I am, and patted me).

I'm just going to briefly mention again that I feel really stupid writing this. Wait for the end.

Anyway, I finished high school feeling sick of everyone (and feeling guilty and mean for it). Oh, and I felt fat because I'd gained like 5 kilos during the last year and especially in Europe, where they force-fed us pasta, pizza and fast food. My jeans did not fit. Also I had a brief stint with a dude who was an ass (he wasn't mean to me or anything, he was just dumb and had some weird sort of god complex. I mostly hung out with him because we hadn't known each other very long. Then I got sick of him, too, and sort of stopped talking to him).

Then I got into university. Yay! I was determined not to fuck this one up! I wanted to make friends! Be proactive! Hurray!

So I sort of sat by myself until one very talkative girl in my class spoke to me one day and I got very slowly sucked into her social circle. It took me ages to actually be comfortable talking to the other people. Like, months. Like, pretty much the whole semester. Even now I still don't know what they're talking about half the time because I'm out of the loop so much. But! I'm there. And the talkative girl is basically my best friend at university.

Then what? Oh, yes, holidays after my first semester. We all hung out once, just as the semester was ending, and then I lost contact with everyone. I stopped charging my cell phone because nobody was texting or calling anyway. I mostly hung out by myself and didn't do much.

Don't get me wrong, every now and then I'd do something with my cousins or my sisters (one came to visit. We sat on the couch and talked a bit). But mostly everyone was busy and I, um, wasn't.

Then I started my second semester at university. Oh gosh. My second semester. Well. I wasn't in any of the same classes as my crowd from first semester (except for one girl whose name I barely knew –I told you I was out of the loop– and whom I've since gotten to know much better). Luckily after a few weeks we realized that a lot of us (the crowd, I mean) finished our classes at roughly the same time several days a week, and we'd meet up at the end. I got rides home with my friend, and eventually befriended another guy in my Biochemistry lab team who'd give me rides home when my other friend couldn't.

That guy is awesome. My friends were all disappointed because he's both gay and good-looking ("But why?! Are you sure he's gay??"). He's just one of those people who you sort of click with, even if you're quite different, sappy as that may sound. I've come to associate the feeling of being in a cigarette smoke-impregnated car full of garbage with being in some sort of safe little cocoon. And when I had a bit of an eensy panic attack once and was hyperventilating manically into a corner, he showed up out of nowhere and hugged me and suddenly I felt so much better. I mean, that won't work coming from just anyone.

I'm going to take another moment to remind you that this is really embarrassing for me to write.

Anyway, meeting my friends at night and riding home with my friends were about the only decent times I had for a good chunk of the semester. The rest of the time I felt like a piece of shit, pardon my french. I couldn't concentrate in class, no matter how hard I tried. I walked around aimlessly in my free time with nobody to talk to and nothing to do. I'd randomly burst into tears (in the library, in the lab, sitting on the grass, in class...). I lost my appetite (and, thus, some weight!). For the field trip for Algae class we went to the beach. Everyone else ran around all happy in the sand and went swimming an, you know, had fun. I was just sort of on automatic. The only pictures I have of me are the ones I took on the last day because I realized I wouldn't have any to show my parents, otherwise.

It got worse, until I wasn't just feeling crappy at school. I was feeling crappy at home, too. And then I started to feel crappy at home and not care much if my parents saw me feeling crappy. And then I started to feel crappy at the gym. The gym! The gym is where I was always happy! My mom said I'd get over it, and my dad –oddly enough– sat down with me and we talked a bit. Also he bought me stuff.

It sounds awful, but that made me start to feel somewhat better.

For the first four or so months of the semester I didn't want to go see the faculty's psychologists because I was afraid of making them bored. I was convinced that if I showed up and said that I wasn't feeling well, they'd think "Oh, geez, another bored, whiny kid who thinks they've got problems." When I finally decided to go for at least one appointment, I figured it wasn't worth it anymore, because I was able to concentrate in class and was feeling pretty much okay.

So why was I feeling so bad in the first place? I have no idea. I know that way back in high school it was because I felt that there were so many things that I couldn't control, first and foremost that trip to Europe. It was done on the terms of some egomaniac bossy ladies. The psychologist I mentioned figured that one out, that I felt bad because I couldn't control any of it. And then, built on that, I felt so, so, SO stupid and guilty, because come on!!! I'm unhappy because I'm going on a fucking trip to another continent? Um, hello, how many people would love to have that, on whatever terms? And that's sort of a theme throughout the last two years. I felt stupid and guilty for feeling sad. But I have so many things going for me! My family is complete, we've got money, I'm in university studying something I love, my grades are okay. Or what's more, there's clothes on my back, food in my stomach and a roof over my head.

How could I be so selfish? Why on earth would anyone feel unhappy, having all that? God, I don't know. This is all messed up. Anyway, on to the epilogue.

I made conscious decisions to be more open, to talk to people more, to adress things that bugged me. I learned corny, useful things, one of which I remind myself about often: Happiness is not a destination, but a journey. As in, you don't wake up and say "Finally! I'm happy!". It's a process. And I'm working on it.

Oh god oh god oh god, am I going to publish this? Aaagh. Okay, must not chicken out. Nobody reads this blog anyway, it'll be like saying it out loud... to my pillow.