Filling Free Time and Finding Friends

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maxfisherb
Posts: 1
Joined: Sat Apr 01, 2017 9:59 pm

Filling Free Time and Finding Friends

Postby maxfisherb » Sat Apr 01, 2017 11:06 pm

Hey guys,
My depression has been pretty bad lately. Most days I don’t notice the persistency and intensity of my depression due to the fact that I keep myself busy: a mechanism I’ve developed to diminish the depressing thoughts that flow into my mind. Lately, however, I have found more free time. For neuro-normal individuals, more free time is a good thing. Those individuals use that time to take up a new hobby or meet someone new or do whatever the hell I should be doing with my free time. But I, unfortunately, feel as though I don’t control my free time. My free time is controlled by the melancholic dictator residing in my mind that psychology has named Depression.

I used to have friends to be with during my free time who would take my mind off the depressing thoughts, but for various reasons, those friends are no longer with me. After our falling-out, I spent most of my time with my girlfriend which was really nice, but she cheated on me last week so I had to break up with her. I knew I would be lonely when I made that decision, but I’m too prideful to stay with someone who cheated on me simply to avoid loneliness. But now that I have literally no one within a large radius of where I live to keep me happy, I can’t help but feel that I will be miserable and alone forever (or at least for a very long time).

When I am at work or school (which are the same place since I teach biology at the university I attend) I am very popular, but for some reason I can’t seem to find anyone that I want to be friends with there. Since my job is relatively prestigious, most of my colleagues are older than I am. When they go out they like to go to night clubs and bars; places I am not allowed to go to as a 19-year-old. And their weekends are spent with their family, which is time that I don’t feel comfortable intruding on. Some of my colleagues are my age, but I know that I won’t get along with them well if we had a closer relationship than we do now. Despite this fact, I try to never be alone. Every opportunity I get, I surround myself with people, rather they be strangers or acquaintances. Instead of doing work in my office, I do all my work in the science lounge where most of my colleagues go in between classes, that way I can sit with them and chat. I also started volunteering at an organization I am passionate about on Sunday mornings so I would be with other good-hearted people once a week. I even went so far as to take up another job (that I totally don’t have time for) preparing the lab activities at my university, but my effort to find one person that I can see as being a true friend with have left me empty-handed.

As I am writing this, I am realizing that my problem isn’t that people don’t like me, it is that I don’t like other people (or don’t like them enough). By saying this, I am not trying to sound like I think that I am better than anyone else, because I don’t. I just feel incompatible with everyone else. Is that common with depression :?: Do you guys feel that way sometimes too :?: If so, what do you do about it :?: I really want to change and improve, but I feel like I’ve hit a brick wall.

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