<p>Perhaps now is as good of a time as any to ask. I've been dealing with incredibly heavy-set depression for the last year for a multitude of reasons. The most major reason is because I was forced to go to a community college immediately following high school.</p>
<p>I'm currently 18 and am a college junior by most standards thanks to dual-credit classes from high school. I currently have an overall 4.0 GPA in college for the moment, which I'm hoping I can keep. But the stress of my life is a little overbearing.</p>
<p>I graduated from high school a year ago and that's when the depression started. Many of my friends went off to a fancy-pants university where they're boasting great grades, great social lives, and the thrill of being away from home. I've saved tons of money by going to community college, but... Being in community college makes me feel inferior to all my friends. It takes a toll on my mentality, sadly. </p>
<p>I do have plans for university this fall, but it's still in my hometown because I can't afford to go anywhere else.</p>
<p>BUT! that's not the overall point of this topic. My living conditions have gotten worse over the past year which has been adding to my desire to become independent and adding to my depression. I live with my dad, my step-mother, my sister, my biological mother, and my step-niece's two kids on the weekend. My bio-mother was recently evicted from her apartment because of sky-rocketing housing prices in west Texas and uninvitedly came to stay with us. When she moved in, we went from a shambled house to a house cluttered with clothes hanging from doorways, plants hanging from everywhere, and junk everywhere you look. If not that, her stuff overflowed into my room, the only place that I find sanctuary in. My room is 10 feet by 10 feet: not very big, where my bed takes up most of the floor space. I feel extremely claustrophobic in my own house and it only adds to my anxiety. My parents cannot do anything for me. Adding insult to injury, my mother isn't necessarily the most sanitary person. My biological mother "needs" her dog in the house, of which I'm highly allergic to. She also does not brush her teeth or shower EVER, which causes the air in the house to smell REALLY bad. It's a really bad problem when I want to get out of my room and study elsewhere in the house. Talking to her about these things more than 20 times has not yielded results.</p>
<p>I can't move out either because I live in west Texas where people are coming in from all over the country for the oil field jobs and there's no affordable housing anywhere in the area--People are living in storage units without running water because it's so bad. My parents wouldn't even care to help me pay for something like that.</p>
<p>So my question to everyone is... What do you do when your depression of still being in your hometown is overwhelming, but there's really nothing you can do?</p>