another saturday night alone at college. i miss people. i miss connections. am 21, i feel sad that i am not going out and being social. i don't know how to change, how to make friends, how to start over. not so overwhelming a sadness as last weekend. i think its because the days are getting longer and it felt more like spring today…not bitingly cold.

i am…happy with myself…who i am…after years and years of feeling unhappy, not good enough…..i am happy with myself but i hate my situation and i hate that everything i try to do to change does nothing. really, how do you make friends? where do you find good, kind people? they are such easy questions that i never get an answer to, and i think sometimes, what if this never changes? what if i always feel like i am dragging myself through the day? i feel like this is the high point of my life, or should be, should i say…and i feel like i am wasting away my prime years of youth being sad and alone. i dont want that anymore, and when people dont want me, it makes me feel like there must be something wrong with me. i am so tired of coping. i dont want to cope anymore. i feel like i am constantly messing things up even when i try so hard to make things good. and i dont understand. all i want is one person to reach out to me, to give me a chance. all i need is a chance and then i could deal so much better. i dont want to spend the rest of my life alone. i dont want to let these years pass me by and then look back and see all the wasted oppurtunities i had. i hate the nighttime and i hate that noone has even tried to check on me, which is pathetic sounding, but i dont have the time to explain.

got in a fight with my mother last monday and have not talked to her since. she was the only one i had, but i already feel like i am giving in with everything else in my life. i cannot bear to give in to her. i cannot bear to take another criticism, another patronizing speech about how i am not doing enough to make friends. when she speaks to me, she cares, but it feels like she is spitting in my face, spitting on all the work ive done coming back here and surviving. the fight was about how she makes me feel….not normal, like there is something wrong with me…she compared me to some autistic person she saw on tv who had an awful college experience…and she said i could live my entire life being like that, like this woman did. there is nothing wrong with autism, but i am not autistic, and i try so hard to say that i am normal….i really think i am normal, ive just had depression and some really bad friends.

when i was younger i felt like a freak, i was in those special help classes for, "slow" kids, i was ugly, i was shy, i didn't have many friends. i have worked my whole life (ok not that long) to change that, i got out of the "slow" classes, i worked on my appearence till i liked what i saw, and i tried to be more outgoing. it was and is a constant struggle, and after all the pain, i feel like i have achieved some kind of normalcy which is just complicated by depression and an awkward set of circumstances. i think, "how dare she call me not normal, how dare she throw me back into the despair of my past, how dare she say that this will last forever". i work so hard to say that i am ok, that i deserve to be treated like a normal person just like everyone else, her saying that i am not, the person who i am closest to me drawing me back there, it makes me want to give up.

i am normal, i repeat to myself. i do not deserve the way people have treated me, but her saying things like that over and over again erodes at the last bit of me i try to hide. she makes me feel like i am doing something wrong. and it makes me so mad, because that's all ive heard people say to me for the last two years, ever since this hell started, and i….i am trying to tell myself that i am not doing something wrong, and that if i keep trying things will get right. i am so mad at her for degrading me, for thinking that of me, even though it was not done cruelly, that almost makes it worse. like that is her honest opinion of me.

people are having a loud party next door. it makes me sad. and i hate sundays, tommorrow night will be even worse.