I want to get rid of this feeling

[ellie123]

Hi 🙂

I havent ever talked to anyone about this but i thought i would try venting through beyond blue. 

I think I have been depressed for a few years now, this past year has been though has been alot harder though. I am now 2 years out of highschool and i think that not being at school daily with my friends makes it harder to avoid what im feeling. about half way through highschool i began to start feeling upset a lot, there was nothing really that was overly bad about my life at all. I have great parents, they are fairly strict and have high expectations for me, but i know they just want me to do well in life. I did well in my classes, recieving A's and B's, I was in lots of sporting teams and had a really large group of friends. So i felt, and still do, that i had no reason to feel like this and i just pretended i was happy. I am the 'funny one' i guess in my group so if i didnt pretend people would know and i didnt want anyone to know because i thought it was stupid for me to feel like that. That continued for a couple of years. I dated one of my best friends during year 12, he was a amazing person but it didnt work out after 1 month and since then i still havent gotten over him which i know is stupid after over 2 years, i think the main reason i havent gotten over him is because in that short time we dated i started feeling happy again. 

Since leaving school, I went straight into uni doing a double degree. I failed one of my classes in first semester which was a massive thing for me as i haven never failed anything before. The class wasnt overly hard but i found i had no motivation for doing my classes and would miss lectures all the time. In second semester i failed 2 classes as well. i havent told my mum because i know she will be super dissapointed and angry. 

At the moment i have 4 jobs, working 40 hours a week and i go to uni for 20 hours a week. I had a cousin pass away 2 years ago from suicide due to severe depression and my nanna passed away a few months ago.  I have put on 15kg in the past 6 months. Im finding it really hard to pretend im happy anymore. As soon as im alone i will cry and i cry myself to sleep most nights. I think im mostly upset because of stress but also i have pretty much always been single and no guy has ever loved me which is a thought i hate. 

The main reason i am writing this is to vent but also i want to get rid of this feeling. Most of my friends come to me for adivce alot and i also teach primary school children guitar so i want to become a better person and i dont want to be lying to people all the time because i cant be myself. 

I know most people will tell me to go to a doctor etc, but im too embarrassed to do that and also my mum will find out and i dont want her to know this is how i feel because i dont want to see it wreck my family like what happened with my cousin. 

[geoff]

dear Ellie, sorry to hear you say these things which are starting to break you up.

Having 4 jobs, working 40 hours a week and then going to uni. is a hell of a lot to cope with. I think that by working 4 different jobs is by itself is a hard feat to do, because you are always changing your employment, that is, it may not be as bad if you were working only one job for all these hours, but by the time you get to job number one work a few hours, then clock off and then go to job number two and so on, all of this wears you out, not only physically but also mentally.

It's a natural feeling to worry about the lose of being close to your friends when at school, because when we finish all of you split up, always saying 'we will keep in touch', or 'I will give you a ring', but many times this doesn't happen, and the more we broad on this thought depression sets in.

I can relate to being the funny one even though it's fake, we seem to do this just to make sure we cover up any signs of being depressed, because sometimes we don't want our friends to know that we are suffering, simply because they may drop us, and our friendship will end.

I am just concerned that you are doing too much, but maybe the reason is to keep yourself busy to avoid your depression from getting any worse, but if something happens to you and you can't work, nor go to uni then you may fall into heap, however this seems to be happening, and it's a worry.

I appreciate that you don't want to upset or let your mum down, which brings me to this point,---------------------------------,---------------------all these things you are doing is it to please yourself or your mum, sorry.

Ellie, there is no reason on earth why you should feel embarrassed, I was before I contacted my doctor, I put it off time and time again, until finally I had to, and then the relief was great, the depression was still there but I knew that I had made the move, and the same applied to my psychologist.

Doctors these days have a large majority of their patients who are depressed, it's never a shock to them at all, and often they say 'why didn't you contact me earlier', that's what my doc said to me. L Geoff. x