I Was Happy, Content, and Depressed But It’s Okay

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Last night, I knelt down and pulled my journal out from the darkness of my desk. I write in my journal when I’m flushed with inspiration, trapped in a state of dismay, or about to pass through a major life experience.

I graduate college tomorrow.

For the last 9 months, from August 2018 to May 2019, I’ve experienced the lowest of lows and the highest of highs. I mean lows so low they felt unbearable. And highs so high I’d remain there forever if I had the choice.

As I opened my journal to write my latest and greatest introspections, I peered into the past and read some of my previous entries. In an instant, I retracted to the desolate, dejected version of myself just 3 months prior:

2/3/2019 (9:54pm)

“Life is so strange. I’m living in a dream. I’m completely alone. For the first time in literally ever. I was with her for 6 years. I was 16. I didn’t know anything at 16. Never in my adulthood have I been alone.

The world around me feels distant. Everything’s changed. Everything. Communication is bleak and clunky and slow. I have anxiety about many things that aren’t normal. I feel tension and awkwardness. I feel displaced, misunderstood.

My ideas and focus are thin. I live alone. I have to grow up. I…