It started with the band t-shirts.

I'm thirteen, and for the first time I know what it's like to be truly isolated. My relationship with my parents is a mess and I don't have any friends at school. So in the library at lunch, where I sit alone, I listen to emo music, Google "Am I gay?", and think about what shirt I'm going to spend my next $20 bill on at Hot Topic. I want someone to notice I'm not feeling normal. I want my feelings to be validated as not normal. I want someone to say something because I'm scared. All I hear is snickering at my half-naked, wounded, pubescent body in the locker room.

A hundred years later and I'm fifteen. Time goes by really, really slowly when you're miserable, which is weird because for a long time all I did was sleep. Anyways it doesn't matter because now I'm a vegan, and I have lots of energy, and I have purpose. I convince myself I've Found The Light At The End Of The Tunnel, the magic cure-all. But it's really just another band t-shirt. People despise me. I loath myself. In my last two months of being fifteen I'm sleeping for seventeen hours in a psych ward, playing a dingy electric piano in a mental hospital, and awkwardly trying to have sex. He was a Republican. I was drunk.

Sixteen. My stomach twists in seventh period when I think about the fact that when I die I'll never think again, but that seems like a good problem, because for the first time I want to live. And people at school seem to like the essay I wrote about my suicide attempt. My phone is blowing up from all the messages and it's giving me more dopamine than the meds ever did. I think about being a therapist one day.

Seventeen. I write my essay on how being in a mental hospital impacted me. I say my depression was an "obstacle" I "overcame", but it's not. I didn't. Depression is a red light. Depression is a dull #2 pencil. Depression is adhering to the suggested serving size when life is the entire bag of chips. My girlfriend breaks up with me out of the blue. I wish I could go back to when that was the most confusing thing in the world.

Now I'm eighteen. I go to a good school. I auditioned for a music major and performed terribly, but I tell myself it's okay because I like psychology and I can always pursue a minor. I eat three meals a day. I'm reading for pleasure again. I have a tattoo that says "Let It Be". I tell people I am doing well. Then I pause because I feel like I have to give an example of how well I'm doing, then I hesitate because I can't think of anything more exceptional than "deleted Tinder and this time it's for REAL", and then I get stupidly anxious because they can see I've been typing for 30 seconds and I should have said something by now. So I just say something along the lines of "Fitter Happier" and they say that's good to hear, and I'm sure it is.

I miss being definitively sad. Like, textbook depression sad. I used to describe it as "feeling nothing", but I wasn't feeling nothing at all. I miss the intensity of the highs and lows. I miss passionate mistake making. I miss telling stories the day after it happened. I miss crying. A good, hard cry. I miss being able to label things. Now, I don't know. I guess you could say I'm casually depressed, as in I'm not nearly as miserable as I once was, but I'm not particularly happy either. I can't hold a conversation as well as I used to, I'm uninspired, and if I think about myself too much I start to wonder how I've been able to live with myself for the past eighteen years.

I thought that maybe there's a solution for my casual depression. Maybe I need to switch up my routine, or go to the gym! Endorphins, and stuff. Maybe I could travel the world, take a bunch of LSD in the woods, buy a train ticket to anywhere and just go. Maybe I could start practicing witchcraft. Maybe I could go vegan again. Maybe I could get another self-love tattoo. Maybe I could cut my hair. Maybe I could change my profile picture. Maybe I could stop thinking about myself so much.

I've become so accustomed to changing I never gave myself a chance to sink into normalcy. Nuance. Tuesdays. Now I'm here and maybe it just feels bad because I thought my life was a movie. In reality, the most cinematic parts of my life are my walks to class, when I'm listening to Bjork and the harp and violins in my head perfectly compliment the overcast weather. Maybe that's okay. Maybe tragedy isn't sustainable. Maybe the key to living my best life isn't constantly being in pursuit of "finding myself". Maybe that's a myth.

Maybe I'll drive to a Hot Topic and speed through a red light.