I don't understand

I realize my blog may not be the correct place to put this but writing here always seems to help me.

My life is great.

I mean, the workload is sometimes intense, but it's nothing I can't handle. I just keep doing a few things here and there, and making sure everything is prioritized. I've been keeping up with it all quite well, and I sent out a great newsletter last week for EPASS. So school is fine, that can't be it.

I haven't been going down to dinner at the usual time I do, but there's still people down there I can talk to when I eat with them, and that's really nice. And I see Carina most days of the week now, and she's in my bio lab, so that's good. It's not like I'm not making friends up here. So that can't be it.

And my relationship is just fine. So that can't be it, either.

I just can't figure out why I'm sad.

One clue I see is that my dad came up on Thursday/Friday of this past week to do passport stuff, and I was okay last week as of about Monday and then until yesterday, and this morning I woke up sad again. I suspect that the week of midterms I'll be happy too, which is good because midterms. I'm not sure if it's an accurate analysis, but I think I just miss my family a little bit. I always thought it would be more obvious, like I would be thinking about them all the time and missing them like crazy.

I know I've been waking up and feeling really lonely, like unbearably lonely, and powerfully sad, and I can't figure out why. And it's so hard to make it go away, but usually getting up helps. I'm not sure if it's because my life is genuinely enjoyable or genuinely distracting. Probably some of both. But the problem is that sometimes the sadness gets in the way a little bit, like in the morning I'll be down eating breakfast and a couple of other early risers will be down there too and we'll talk a little and the whole time I'll be trying not to cry and it makes me so frustrated because I don't know why I'm crying and so I can't make it stop.

I worried about depression this morning, but from what I've heard of depression it often involves a loss of self-esteem and really bad sadness before it's depression. The thing is, I have a very realistic assessment of my life. I mean, my body image is good, and it's not like I think I don't deserve any of the things in my life. I'm not a bad person (most of the time) (I mean everyone fucks up). I deserve good things just like anybody else. And I'm not stupid, and I'm not lazy. I'm just sad and I don't know why.

I thought it might be family earlier, too, when I was thinking about last year. Last year was a lot worse, but I never felt like this. And I think that might have been because I was living at home with my family. (Well and also because I knew everyone in IB really well and I had spent the past four years of high school making a lot of really excellent friends and I really liked high school and I really like university too but for different reasons).

I guess maybe I'm just lonely but at the same time I just want to be alone a lot, lately. I mean I talk to a few people on skype quite regularly and I talk to my mom or dad or sister via text message a few times a week. And I guess I have reading week to look forward to. The only problem is I have to wake up about 14 times before then, and that's starting to scare me. I hate waking up, not because I'm tired, but because I'm sad. And getting past the sad every day is a challenge. It's conflicting because my bed is nice and warm, but staying in it also means not feeling okay.

I don't even know what I want anymore, whether I want a vacation or just less work or having a group of friends again or being able to see Ptarckas more or maybe I'm guilty about not talking to old friends as much as I should have.

Either way, I'm feeling kind of blah now, which, while not what I was going for, is certainly a step in the right direction and means I can get my homework done now.

yer pal,
swegan