<p>*I know what you're thinking based on the title of this thread: "Another pseudo-intellectual college kid thinking he has it hard because he's having some stupid 'existential crisis' or whatever." But just hear me out.</p>
<p>First off, I never do this. I never post revealing rants about my life on the internet and normally ignore people who do. But right now I have a lot of things going on in my head and no one to communicate with. I’m sorry if it’s too long or self-indulgent, but there are things I need to say and which I need help in figuring out. If you’re going to respond, please, please read through to the end. Anyway, here’s my blind stab for help. This is my situation:</p>
<p>I’m 18 and right now a freshman at college. I haven’t been here long, but already I know I can’t stay here. I’ll explain. I’ve been through some pretty bad depression in my life, stemming back from as early as when I was in 6th grade, and it was particularly difficult when I was in high school. I never had friends, was often very lonely, and was always, always bored. I toughed it out though, because I was hoping that when I got to college, things would change. I was hoping people would be more interesting, more diverse, and that I would have an all-around better experience. However, when I was a senior in high school, I put very little effort into choosing the right college and am now paying the repercussions. You see, I matriculated at a Catholic college where the student body is composed fully of affluent, materialistic people with heavily superficial personalities. There are not many anomalies as it pertains to that description. Very few are intellectually curious, and even fewer are passionate about what they’re being taught. I feel so lonesome here and I want to go home; but I can’t go home because I hate being home as much as I hate being here. It’s like I can’t go and I can’t stay.</p>
<p>But that’s certainly not the only thing plaguing me right now. Some other things have augmented my depression as well. For example, someone very close to me committed suicide last month, and, although it’s hard for me to talk about, I will say that it has affected me profoundly and gotten me thinking about the levity, precariousness and absurdity of life--so much so that I become suicidal myself at times. Moreover, this person was undoubtedly the smartest human being I’ve ever met. And her death has forced me to reflect on what seems like a very painful truth: Profound intelligence begets profound unhappiness. In other words, all insight into the conditions of life on this planet culminates in a piercing sense of melancholy. I mean, are all half-way intelligent humans destined to be lonely, miserable animals in this cold, indifferent universe? I think about this and immediately I start to feel the crushing smallness and meaninglessness of my being here and I start feeling so infinitely sad about everything. I think about all the uncertainties in my life, all the directions I can go with it, could have gone with it, never will go with it; all the people I could have met but never did, could meet but never will; all the moments and opportunities that may or may not arise in the future (most of which never will).... I think about how uncertain and fortuitous everything is in my life and I want so badly to just get it right. But the more I try, the more I’m paralyzed by all the uncertainty and the more I flounder and crumble. I’m afraid to do anything because no matter what I do, I’ll always think about all the other directions I could have taken with my life. And what’s more is that I look at how ephemeral my time here is. It makes me think of a quote from this book I like called Speak, Memory: “The cradle rocks above an abyss, and common sense tells us that our existence is but a brief crack of light between two eternities of darkness.” That’s how I feel. I feel like my life is just a brief crackle of warmth, soon to die out and be lost forever and ever. And it makes me so desperately anxious to try to make everything right. But I can’t take all the freedom and all the uncertainty. I carry this sense of lostness everywhere I go. I feel it when I’m with my family, with my ‘friends’, everyone. At home, at school, in a crowd, alone in my room. Always, always I feel this gnawing, burning sensation down in the pit of my stomach, like I’m being continuously enveloped by a dark and expanding void, or like I’m constantly missing someone I’ve never met. I can’t stand it. I want it to stop. And it’s so constant, so immediate that I’ve begun to curse the waking hours. I crave sleep because it means being in oblivion. When you go to sleep, it’s like you break apart into a million fragments--almost like a shattered picture. And for eight or nine hours, you have neither a name nor a face nor a self. There is no ‘you’ anymore. But when you wake up, all those tiny pieces come back together again in perfect solidarity; all your faculties stir again and all your memories come back in tact and suddenly you’re a person again with a name and a past and a future and a phone bill to pay off. I’ve come to loathe that moment. I wake up and immediately I just start to feel... disappointed. That is, disappointed to know that I’m back. That I’m here again. Here again to begin a new threshold of the same stinging day-to-day consciousness of which I no longer have any interest in renewing. I want it to stop. But I’m scared.</p>
<p>Anyway, I’ll try to wrap this up a bit, because it’s getting kind of long. Here is where I’m at: I’m in my first semester at a college I hate. I’m trying desperately to get and maintain a 4.0 so I can transfer to a college I would like. It gets hard, though, when I feel so distracted by all the depression. I’m thinking maybe I should come home to Long Island (where I live) for my second semester and go to Hofstra or Adelphi. Then I can transfer to somewhere better for my sophomore year. I could get a job at home and would not have to live with people I loathe so entirely. I don’t know what to do though. Help would be appreciated. I need direction, and I need it so bad that I'm willing to reach out to a bunch of people I don't know to ask for it. What can I do?.... (I've been through therapy twice--never worked, by the way.)</p>