My high school experience could definitely be cataloged as a journey of overcoming depression and finding happiness. It essentially went from being at my absolute lowest of lows, cutting everyone off in my life, and spending every day wallowing in self-pity to the happiest time of my life. I had built a community of friends, was involved in a lot of groups, and was actively pursuing my passions. Then I went to college...

I am a 19 year old trans female who just finished her freshman year of college. College started off great. I met lots of people and experienced lots of new things. I also was surrounded by a lot of queer people which made me feel very comfortable and safe expressing my indentity and empowering myself to be proud of my transness. From there I had, what on paper is, the ideal college experience. I went to lots of parties and had lots of sex and smoked a lot of weed. All the things that were supposed to make me the happiest I've ever been. For a while I thought I was super happy, but then I realized I wasn't and that's where the downward spiral began. I realized that all of my relationships with people were superficial and it felt like I was just hanging out with people as a game to get invited to events that I often didn't even have that much fun at. I completely ignored all my passion in lieu of smoking weed and partying and I felt extremely lost as a person.

From then on, I began to seek change. I had pulled myself out of a depressive rut before so I figured that I knew all the steps to do it again. This has been my downfall. Since then I've been constantly analyzing if I'm happy or not. If I ever find myself having a good time I instantly think "oh this must be a good thing because I think I am enjoying myself" and then I begin to question if I am enjoying myself or if I am just pretending to enjoy myself to keep up with social expectations and much more my own expectations that what I am doing is bringing me hapiness. It totally pulls me out of the moment and literally splits my head voice thats freaking out with my real voice that ends up just going through the motions. As for the non social sides of life, I completely forgot how to relax. My obsession with getting better has convinced my that doing the hobbies that used to give me so much intrinsic joy will make me better again, and honestly I still ascribe to this belief, under the condition that I could get fully invested again. What often happens is when I try to do an activity that I remember being passionate about, I do it with the expectation of loving it and it bringing me hapiness. So instead of acting out of interest, I basically go through the motions with my so called passions and am constantly analyzing if I am enjoying it the whole time, which of course leads to me not enjoying it really. 

To top it all off, I'm back home with my parents for the summer who just moved to a new town on the water, filled mostly with old people and tourists. My parents constantly misgender me, I'm terrified of expressing myself for a fear of violence, there's nothing to do here except go to the beach (A.K.A. immediately get clocked), and I have no friends and am really struggling to make some. 

I'm really at a loss of how to not be depressed. There doesn't really feel like any point of getting out of bed in the morning and when I am awake it's a constant struggle to figure out what I'm gonna do with my time. I feel like shit whenever I just sit around and play games or watch tv because I have a voice in my head telling me that I could be spending my time better, but basic tasks like cleaning my room seem insurmountable, which ironically gives me some comfort in the fact that I always feel like theres a task I could be doing. I just want to be able to relax and have fun again but I don't know how I could get back to that point without first reaching the absolute lowest of my lows. I feel like I need to completely give up on everything and myself to began to feel free enough to just do things that make me happy. And that's such a shitty option that I would like to not do that. So idk I'm at such a loss and trapped in this catch-22 where trying to get better is just making me feel so much worse.