I don’t really know why I’m doing this, other than I’m feeling like shit (screw the <EXPLETIVE DELETED> garbage) and a lot of people have been asking me annoying questions after I started going a bit over the rails.

To briefly sum up my answer to the most common one: No, I’m not OK. But thanks for asking, and don’t ever do it again.

If you aren’t really into soppy, emotional stuff just stop reading, because I need to be a bit honest and right now honesty is telling everyone about my problems. Imagine slow violins and cellos in the background, me standing alone on a stage, the spotlight blaring down on me. All eyes on me. I can’t speak for anyone else, so I’m not going to. Just stop if this is annoying you.

How do I start? Simply put, this year has been especially hard for me. No, I’m not overworked, I haven’t broken up with anyone, my pain is all someone else’s trials. I won’t be specific because it’s not my place to divulge the specifics there, but some people reading this know what I’m talking about. Anyway, the big issue for me was really the loss of a support network. When bad things happen I would turn to my friends, but after a year of living four hours away from any of them, and being largely telephone and social media illiterate, I had lost a fair few of mine. It didn’t help that at the start of the university year I moved here, leaving behind the few that I still had in my small home town. To make matters worse – and people who know me would already know this – I despise texting, and I don’t really like saying anything with weight over a telephone. I have to do it in person. Maybe I’m a control freak, maybe I just don’t like the idea that someone could instantaneously sever communication when things get tough. I don’t know, I’m happy to say it just bothers me.

So, when the lightning crashed I didn’t have anyone I felt comfortable turning to. Within twenty-four hours, I’d say I told four people: My roommate, Bec, my friend, Jess, and two fellow RMIT students, David and Myyen. You might know them. One of them definitely helped, the others were mostly in the ‘I’m so sorry’ field of speaking, which is fine. I’m generally there too when someone tells me something unfortunate, it’s just never really what I want to hear. There’s no blame though. I’m not really in a position to blame.

The months that followed weren’t too bad. I was pretty fine. A little more emotional, maybe a bit more reckless and brash, kinda angry a lot, but none of those things were entirely new aspects of my personality. I was just more… well, intense, at least more so than I was before everything. It did get worse, and as much as I don’t like it I became somewhat dependent on the friends I’d made, whether it be through my course or through my work with student organisation RMITV (but that’s another story). In all my time, my friends had always been casualties in my search for money or experience. They were the first thing I overlooked when I wanted something else, and all of a sudden they were the thing that I wanted more than anything else. That was definitely the biggest difference for me, I was worked hard to be around people after nineteen years of preferring to be alone.

Let’s just say I wasn’t very good at it. I can see that I clearly didn’t really understand how to maintain that kind of friendship, especially when all the people I was trying to be buddy-buddy with had far busier lives than me, and had some very old friends they’d gathered after the many years they’d spent living in my new city. There was no competing with old friends, and after a few months of trying I became complacent with having to wallow in loneliness and self-pity for the rest of my depression.

And no, I don’t have depression. I spent quite a long time staring at the screen trying to think of some other, less connotative word to stick in there, but depression fits the bill pretty well. You see, I’d convinced myself that it was a phase, that in a few months I’d pick up and be myself again, content with spending days alone and unoccupied. I still stick by that, because my feelings have definitely changed over the last while.

Just in the last bit of time, I’ve managed to fight with a lot of my friends, mostly because of my inability to communicate like a normal person and my severe insecurity when it comes to other people. As much as I shouldn’t say this publicly, whenever anyone says anything to me, I have a habit of turning into some sort of veiled, verbal assault on my character. It annoys me as much as it annoys anyone else, but it just happens. Then, I get angry. Then, I say something stupid. Then, friendship over, I feel like an idiot.

My emotions worked in phases.

First: contentment.
I’d be happy with my current standings, regardless of how miserable or fantastic they’d seem from the outside. No, I was not a constant pit of misfortune and dread. I was… pretty satisfied.

Second: fear.
Happiness was always followed by my natural pessimism seeping in like chlamydia. I’d see or hear something that I’d take the wrong way. I’d overthink a simple event. I’d overthink the future. I’d get scared. Here is the fall into the pit of misfortune and dread. Being as cynical as I am, I’d see my happiness as temporal and relative. It’d go away, essentially, and I would feel stupid for basking in the warm glow of my surroundings when winter was coming.

Third: anger.
As I suggested: I overthink. Whenever the fear came, the anger followed, because I’d search and search for the causal agent in what was about to or what had gone wrong. Then, I’d act. I’d yell or send an angry text message or just stop communicating (I am intensely passive-aggressive, and I really badly don’t want to be. Everyone out there has the permission to punch me in the face when I’m PAing all over them). Of course, sometimes I’d sit tight in my anger, or try to repress it for later retrieval. Luckily, I believe a few horrid mistakes have taught me a few lessons about anger, and I think that this is one stage that I’m slowly getting control over.

Fourth: regret.
Regardless of what I did or didn’t do, I’d always regret doing or not doing it. That’s a sentence and a half. Maybe I think ahead too much, so when I do something, I invariably end up realizing the other option would have resulted in a better outcome. This isn’t always true, and in the long run nothing I’ve done this year has had consequences so dire that I’d have not done them, were I given the chance.

Fifth: sadness.
Following regret comes sadness. This is probably the shortest, and interestingly the least devastating phase (other than contentment, obviously). This is the quiet, lonely part where I’d sit in my room, on my bed, staring at a wall. I’d think – never a good plan – about all the things I should be doing, then I’d just stop caring about the fact that I’m not doing them and think about something else. Perhaps sadness isn’t the best word, but indifference doesn’t work either. Complacency is pretty good, as that’s essentially what I was feeling. It’s like contentment, except I’m not satisfied. I’d become so pessimistic and scared and sad and angry that I just… stopped caring that everything was wrong and that it wasn’t going to improve. I just accepted it, and gave up trying to fix anything.

First: contentment
We’re back here, because after giving up the fight or sending an angry text message and wigging out on someone, there always turned out to be a solution. I’d have dinner with a friend, I’d do something with RMITV, I’d volunteer with Fareshare. I’d do something, and I’d do it with people I loved. And yeah, I’m happy to say I fell in love about twenty times this year, with literally anyone whose simple presence would instantly drag me out of the second, third, fourth or fifth stages of my made-up emotional segmentation and put me back here. I lost all desire to have a sexual relationship, so I was actually pretty happy to say I fell in love.

Of course, with all my grateful infatuations came more fear. Once they were gone I’d decide I was just annoying them, that we’d never be real friends. All that stuff. I wouldn’t love them anymore, and thinking about them would cause physical pain. I’m dramatic like that. I did everything short of putting the back of my hand to my forehead, tilting my head back and wailing at the top of my lungs: ‘It’s all too much!’. I’m a bit too shy for that.

Interesting story: My sister once did exactly that, then pretended to faint. This was because she didn’t want to wash the dishes though, so it’s not quite the same.

Before you ask, yes, I did see a professional. It’s nice to have someone sit there and be your friend, but I only get five free sessions and I don’t want to waste them. What’s more is that the friends I know I have help more than someone whom I know to be getting a nice pay check to talk to me. It’s just… not quite the same. That, and I know far too many psychologists as friends and acquaintances to trust them. They’re just like us and I don’t like that fact.

Don’t write me off: I’m pretty fucking normal sometimes. Sometimes. I have no desire to off myself or anything, so don’t take this as some sort of suicide note. This is me both explaining myself and putting myself out there a lot more than I should be. I’m outing myself as a bit fucked up in the head, but mostly OK. It’s just, I can’t always be taken at face value. I can’t always be expected to be motivated, or on time, or hard working. Sometimes it just doesn’t happen. Working with me in a group can be hard, and I get that, and I’m sorry. Unfortunately, I don’t think that’s gonna change before the end of semester. I think, come week 12 or 13 or whatever, I’ll still be insecure and needy, a little bit sad and easy to anger. I’ll give up pretty quickly. Just… don’t let me.

In the end, I don’t want to.

Before I jump off this self-centred tirade of why-you-should-give-a-crap-y-ness, there are few, awesome people who I need to mention, but I’m gonna keep it to only those within RMIT, whether or not they study my course. If they’re in Networked Media, I’m gonna link their blog and stuff, so definitely give them a look. If you know of them, talk to them. They’re all great people in their own ways, even if I’m not really friends with them. These are the people who at least partly know that I’m not always that great, and who’ve been even a little bit supportive. I don’t know where I’d be without them, and anyone who fucks them over doesn’t deserve to be considered decent human beings.

In no particular order (OK, alphabetical):

• Myyen Au
• David Delmenico
• Jess May
• Nick Pearce
• Rachel Reynolds
• Nick Stevens
• Georgia Symes

I may not have known all of you that long, or really talked to you that much (two of you I’ve only started talking to, like, four, five weeks ago), but you guys know more than some people I’ve known for most of my life. Which is, well… good for you. You’re all awesome people (except Nick Stevens, who’s a dick) and I definitely love all of you in weird, creepy ways. Just mull on that for a while.

It’s because of you guys, regardless of whether I know you as a friend or if we don’t hang out anymore, whatever, it’s because of you guys that I have to retract my statement from earlier on.

I am absolutely, honestly, OK.

Nonetheless, don’t ever ask me if I’m OK, ever.