I already hate myself for writing this right now. Just a quick look on the front page shows me people with much bigger problems than I have.

I was diagnosed with medium up to severe depression a couple years back and I have gone downhill since then, until one year ago, where I finally decided to just better myself.

**And I did.** I lost over 50lbs and still go to the gym regularly with clear goals. I have gotten into a somewhat prestigious degree program that just started this year, that will pretty much guarantee me a safe workplace until the end of my life among other benefits. I was proud of myself for achieving this...for about 5 minutes.

Now I am back at a university, right before I reach my mid-twenties. I enjoy it here, but I am lonely, very lonely in fact.

The thing is, I know I don't look bad (anymore), but I know that something about my personality pushes people away from me, women I mean of course. The funny thing about this though, is that I didn't really have this problem before the depression hit big time, even though I was packing much more weight and looked "worse". I know it's my fault, but I don't know how to fix it, because I cannot figure out the *exact* problem. It's like standing in front of an unsolveable puzzle that you try to solve every day over and over again. But while the depression was looming in the background the whole time, I felt "normal" or at least whatever my standard of this word is by now.

I talked to this one girl a while ago, really cute and every time she looks at me, she gives me the warmest smile. I just simply enjoyed talking to her and there were no deeper feelings as of yet, even though I was thinking about asking her out at some point in the future if we got to know each other better.

However, I recently saw her with a good looking and probably cool guy I sort of believe she is involved with and usually I just think "aw man unlucky, but I meet new people every day right now, and just a friend more doesn't hurt".

But this time, yesterday, I felt like every negative emotion I felt over the past couple months just hit me all at once. I wasn't super broken up about the fact that she was (probably) taken, but this feeling of overwhelming loneliness and thought of all the problems that are going on in the background just hit me out of nowhere. The feeling of being worthless and feeling *incredibly stupid* for thinking that someone would start to really like me. At this point I just completely shut down, mentally and physically. I felt awful and just went home, even though I still had classes for the day.

And that's when I finally realized, it doesn't matter how much I achieve, how much money I will earn or how fit I will become, I probably won't get out of this alone.

Two years ago I thought the root of my depression might be because I was fat and had no confidence because of it, but losing weight didn't fix it at all, it didn't fix anything. I thought I will feel better after I finally found a path in life after just looking at what my friends achieve, but I have a really good path now and it didn't fix anything.

I cannot seek a therapist, because the waiting lists are 4-6 months and I will have to commute between cities far away from each other every four months because of this degree program for the next 3 years. There is no stability in my life and I cannot fix it.

If you read until now, thank you. I know it's not really a dialogue I am having with you, but I don't feel comfortable writing or telling these exact feelings anyone from my circle of friends or family.