My Story: It's probably nothing...

[James90]

I joined this forum as a way of letting everything out that is inside of me. The only sort of counselling that I have had in my life was when I was about 10 or 11 years old and it was because I was going from primary school to middle school. It was a big scary mess for me. I wasn't a popular kid or anything. I was always bullied about my weight and no longer the 'big kid' of the school. I had counselling but it didn't do much for me and I carried on. Things started to get a better but it took a while.

At High School I again wasn't the most popular person and bullied a little bit. Although this wasn't as bad. I played sports with the popular kids so become acquainted with them but was never friends or anything like that. I guess that saved me from being labelled a 'loser'. During this time I tended to keep to myself quite a bit. Sure I had some friends but none who were very close. I found it hard to talk to people about anything serious. Teenage culture confused me and I just couldn't become part of the norm. I guess it just really wasn't for me. I had my own interests.

My life was never filled with abuse in any way. I have one sister and my parents were married for about 30 years until my mother recently passed away. I have just always found it hard to be happy about life. It might be that I focus too much on the negative but I really don't know completely. I am always battling with myself with frustrates me greatly. I know there is positivity in life. I at times to see the beauty of the world around but at the end of the day that feeling feels foreign and far away from what I assume to be my 'true' feeling towards like. Gloom, hard, difficult, challenging, negative etc etc etc.

I have always been the sort of person who fears change. I am scared about life that I don't know about but at the same time I am very interested in it if that makes sense. I am currently 23 and after finishing high school I decided to take a gap year to decide what I wanted to study at Uni. 5 gap years later and I still work at the supermarket I have been at since I was 15. Since entereing the work force I have improved socially and had a few girlfriends yet still have felt alienated. Like nobody has really gotten to know who I am. The partners I have had in the past have all filled some sort of void which has unfortunately left me feeling empty when the relationship is over.

I don't want to get in that sort of situation again as it hurts too much. That saying "You can't love someone until you learn to love yourself" has never hit home to me so much. I just can't be happy about the person I am. When I ask myself who I am, I think of negativity and sadness. Someone who feels pressured by culture and society. Someone who doesn't know what he wants to do in life. Nothing positive. I think to myself life would be so much easier if I didn't care about everything else out there. When somebody tells me about something they learnt how to do I wonder why I don't know how to do that and that becomes my life.

It's really a battle in my head and I'm sure none of this makes sense at all. But thank you for reading.

[scrabble]

Hi James.

You are making perfect sense. From my own experiences and reading this forum, feeling different and apart from the world is very much a part of depression.

I can totally relate to what you say about talking to people and the battle inside your head - I feel those things too.

Just because you are different it does not mean that you are wrong or less valuable than other people. We live in a society where there is great pressure to conform to the "norm", whatever that is. If you can't or won't conform, life can be very hard and lonely. I could not conform to this norm even if I wanted to, which most of the time I don't! But this doesn't make us bad people.

Stick around and tell us more when you can.