It has been rough. That is what I tell everyone at work that asks me I look a bit down nowadays. I guess I can’t mask it as well as I thought I could. A little bit of advice, don’t drink four cups of coffee if you feel down because it will only make it worse. My internship isn’t looking up to be the promising two years of training as it would’ve been when I started three months ago.

The thing they don’t tell you about college is how lonely it can get. Your friends aren’t minutes away, but hours, even days apart. The sense of having to go out of your way to find people to be friends with drastic changes, from being used to it being easy because you are put with a bunch of other people your age in a confined area. Out here, I don’t know if the grass is greener, I just know there aren’t many people on it as before.

I am trying to find my direction. Somewhere my compass can point towards knowing it is True North. Things could be worse, far worse. Any existential crisis comes up short when compared to world issues. If you don’t want to go to an extreme of comparing yourself to refugee deaths across the seas, look only to people who work more jobs than hours of sleep they get. Yet, it is still your situation, and that situation is all you will ever know.

I had been down that road before, being depressed and paralyzed into not knowing what to do. Questioning your worth and analyzing every step you took to try to see when you wandered off of the path if there was any in the first place. Music always played an important role in my life for treating my mood. Sure video games and movies and TV are great, but they are distractions. Music lets you think. What you will think will vary, and trust me, it will be affected by what you listen to.

I have always found it interesting why if we feel down, we listen to songs that are quite depressing themselves. I don’t know why it helps, but perhaps it is a way of someone else telling you how you feel, so you know how to describe the pain you are going through. I am no psychiatrist, so don’t take my word for it, but it is what I have come to think of while I sit on a bench alone listening to Lana Del Rey’s sad, yet soothing, tales.

Something is greatly different in my life though, and that is that I finally have a car. 23 years I had to wait, but I have found that driving long hours, feeling the breeze on my hair and the warmth of the sun coming through the sunroof all while listening to songs is of great help. A breather like I had never had before.

Weirdly enough, on my latest drive, I took upon myself to listen to songs I hadn’t listened to since Freshman and Sophomore year. Songs that feel like they were from a completely different life. However, something unexpected happened I could not foresee. I picked one of the many playlists I would slave away at making, avoiding my homework, and what I found astonished me. The lyrics were spot on with my situation. Spot on with my mindset. Spot on with the tornado that was shaking the core of my sanity.

I don’t believe in coincidences. I never have. I don’t believe in fate either, that concept is too perfect. There is this gray area, of something incomprehensible at work throughout the cosmos, that of which I cannot find words to describe, but that I can perceive as clearly as I see the words get typed onto the computer screen.

I really enjoyed my last drive, for I tapped into a Diego I had not conversed with in ages. It was weird but comforting. Maybe, just maybe, he is trying to help from beyond, with what he knows can help, whatever and wherever that may be. ~ad Astra ultraque