I’ve read The Bell Jar. Prozac Nation.

Hated them.

The authors seemed so selfish, so self obsessed. So I can only assume I come off the same way. I don’t know why you’d want to read this at all to be honest. And frankly, I don’t care.

I’m writing for me.

I’ve written blogs before. Popular blogs. And I know what it involves: the social media profiles, sitting on Twitter for hours, crafting titles, writing lists. It’s not something I enjoy, and certainly not something I want to do here. I just want to share how I feel. Get my thoughts together. Record what’s going on in my life.

This is my diary, I’m just willing to share.

Here’s where I am.

20.

At university, studying what I love.

Staying with friends and a supportive boyfriend.

Wishing I was dead.

I haven’t really ever felt happy. At least, I can’t remember ever being happy for more than a week or so. When I first started university, when I went on holiday with friends, I was excited. It was a change, and it was good most of the time. Deep down though, I don’t think I’ve ever felt good. I’ve always wondered why I keep going on, and felt bad no matter how great my life seems to get.

That’s not to say things have always been this bad though. The past few months, I don’t know how I’ve survived. I don’t want to get out of bed in the morning, I forget most of my meals and can’t be bothered to eat when I remember, and then stay up all night worrying about everything else.

The big things don’t really get to me. Deaths, exams, that sort of stuff. I can phase that out. It’s the everyday that’s hard.

I worry about being late for appointments so I check the time and location over and over. Even when I’m on my way, I worry that I might be going to the wrong place. I worry that I might not perform well in a class, that I might make mistakes or not keep up. I worry that I might have cancer, that everyone has the plague, that I’ll get food poisoning. I get so afraid, so full of dread. It leaves me continuosly anxious, ready to jump if you so much as look at me, and hounds me at night when I feel most alone.

The lonliness is hard. I’m not really alone. There are people around me. But I just feel like I can’t connect. Like every conversation I take part in is superficial, I’m taking part in a soap opera and reading a script not being myself. As for myself though, I have nothing to say.

Sometimes it feels like everyone talks over my head, even when they’re talking to me. Like everyone else converses on a different level, and I’m stuck below all that trying to work out what they’re saying. I understand the words they use, can put together the sentence, even understand what they mean. I just can’t reach up and take part, can’t be part of all the socialising.

I smile a lot. People like you better when you smile. I smile so much I can’t help it. A stupid saleperson’s grin that I don’t really feel. Can’t let people see what’s inside me.

I sometimes wonder if anyone else is happy, or if they just fake it too. If everyone wants to cry at night and jump out the window during the day. I cling to the thought that I am different. Not because I want to be alone, or because I don’t want others to suffer, but because if everyone feels how I do, there’s no point. No point feeding the poor. No point sharing a smile. No point helping someone in the street for a moment of gratification when they actually seem glad. I need to know that people don’t live like me.

If I cling to this, maybe I could have a future. I don’t see it. I don’t know what it would feel like. In some ways it scares me – being sad is so much part of who I am that just letting it go will be a challenge. But now is my time to try. In the moments where the world isn’t black I am determined to have a real life.

This is my journey.