It's two in the morning and you can't sleep again. "Why?" You ask yourself and come up with no answer, so all you can do is toss and turn in bed, trying to get comfortable while your roommate sleeps soundly across the room. You are alone now, possibly for the first time in your life, and you don't know what to do with these feelings. With new stresses. With having to do your laundry for the first time by yourself and now some of your shirts don't fit right for some reason.
What. Is. Happening. To. Me.
Well, knock knock. It's depression, and it's probably been with you longer than you've realized.
College is a time where new feelings, especially depression, can rage rampant with so many new changes. Students, many who may have never experienced depression before, can easily find themselves feeling symptoms that they have never felt before or have maybe felt only a few times. However, there are those of us who are just going through the motions again, just without the usual people to lean on, which can easily make things go from bad to worse very quickly.
My depression, even though I've managed it for years now, has spiked since I've come to college. New places, new people, new activities, new everything, equals new anxieties. New anxieties equal new highs and lows in my life, add in being alone and homesick and the problems become more complex. It makes things interesting when you need to sleep before your 10:30 class but you were up until three in the morning crying into your blanket in order to not wake up your roommate. Swollen and puffy eyes are not attractive and hard to cover up with makeup. It's hard when everyone you would usually call when you're feeling upset is now hundreds of miles away, all in different directions and in different time zones. When you can't find anyone to be friends with in college. When your parents are not down the hall anymore and it's just college students having another rager. There are times where I worry that I will go down the slope and not be able to make it back up.
Depression and anxiety are the top two reasons college students seek counseling... if they ever gain the courage to even go to counseling. Many don't. I am part of the group that tries to deal with it on my own and I can say that it doesn't always work out how I plan. However, the longer I work with my depression, the better I am at overcoming it, with the understanding that I may need to go to counseling and ask for help. Even though depression is already inside, I have the power to kick out unwanted roommates.
