I think it's going to be okay (TW)

Camp is....not how I expected to be. Everything was peachy keen up until yesterday and today was just downright awful.

It took a 30 minute phone call to ZS and some goldfish to get me calmed down, but I think it's going to be okay.

I spent my last lab extremely depressed. When I'm going through a HUGE, depressive low, it's sort of like the front of my head is weighed down (it makes sense to me). I really wanted to cut and started crying a bit and walked back to the dorms alone and started to deconstruct my razor.

My roommate came in and ZS called and that kind of made me feel better.

So I decided that it's okay if my camp experience doesn't meet all of my expectations. As long as I get something out of camp, it will be okay. There are plenty of novice who start sophomore year and do great. One of our lab leaders started policy junior year and is still a good debater in college.

Yeah it's all alright
I guess it's all alright
I got nothing left inside of my chest but it's all alright

Where do I find the line between clutching my memories and completely letting them go?

I'm an extremely nostalgic person. I hold onto my memories and remember certain dates and times. I can tell you how I felt about certain issues exactly a year ago. I remember the day I flew out of the U.S. and headed to Ankara, Turkey (June 6, 2010-almost two years ago!) I remember random bits of my days. I'm committed to writing down every detail of my forensics tournaments because I cherish those memories so much. Remember my yearbook incident? I had as many people sign that puppy as possible and I'm still disappointed that I didn't have the chance to let as many people sign it as I wanted to.

I guess I cling to my memories because I'm depressed. Because living in the present kind of sucks, so I resort to living in the few happy moments of my past.

And I hang on to my happy moments because they're so rare.

That's one of the reasons why I've been afraid to go back on medication. Because I know that sometimes it will numb you. I don't want to give up the extreme happiness I experience-even though I know after every peak there is an extreme valley. I want to have the extreme happies but not the extreme sads. And being in high school, these may or may not be the best three years of my life (I certainly hope they aren't, but you never know). With depression, you can't have both. With medication, you can't have both.

...And this is where I find myself wishing that I could just be normal.

I have so much happy

I've been recovering from depression for a long, long time.

My highs were high and my lows were low. And during my emotional highs, I've felt as though I was just so happy- too happy- and that I needed something negative to bring myself down. With depression, anger and sadness were my defaults, and being happy or excited, especially for extended periods of time, was abnormal. I had to force myself to find something to be angry about, and I usually did, dragging myself down to my normal depression.

Lately I've been happy all the time, but not abnormally happy. It's starting to feel more normal, and there's less of a need to be sad or angry at someone. I'm less quick to anger.

The past month has been a lot better. My relationship with my mom has been much, much healthier. We spent some time together shopping and watching TV yesterday. She wasn't mad when I made last minute plans. I haven't groaned when she has asked me to do chores.

We say "I love you" a lot.

The trick? I'm not sure. I've found that I have to keep myself constantly busy with school, debate, and other extracurriculars, especially the state National History Day competition coming up in a few weeks. If I'm not busy, I'm sitting around on the internet all day feeling sad and bad for myself.

Now I just have to find the perfect balance between being super stressed and busy all the time and doing nothing at all.