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A little over a week ago a friend had asked me to join Facebook since she uses that more and was only staying on MySpace because I was there.  I gave in and joined.  I’ve reconnected with some old friends from high school and even middle school.  I want to say how lovely it is to be reconnecting but, instead I’d rather tell you how I really feel.  I can sum it up on one whole word. 

Depressed.

Talking to these old friends is the fun part.  I love that part of it.  I’ve reconnected with people that I was really good friends with and have wondered about on and off through the years.  I don’t know about you but, I loved high school.  I had a great time.  I have many great memories of people in connection with those years.  

So why the depression?  I know exactly why.  Reconnecting with all these people has made me look at my year book and read all the things people said about me back then and has reminded me of the expectations everyone, including myself, all had for me.  I am nowhere near where I thought I would be.  All this looking back has made me feel inadequate.

I knew in middle school that I wanted to be a therapist of some sort.  My close friends knew this.  One time my best friend in high school told me about a major problem that was going on and I went so far as to type up my “diagnosis” of the problem and gave her my advice.  That’s how much I knew what I wanted in my life.  I could already picture it and was already trying to live it.  The other day my husband asked me if I wanted my double cheeseburger with leafy lettuce or shredded.  I couldn’t choose as if I was making a life’s decision.  That’s how much I don’t know what I want.

My mom was a single mom.  We couldn’t afford for me to go to college.  I wanted to go to USF here in Tampa because I heard they had a good Psychology program.  We applied for and were awarded some grants but, that wasn’t enough.  I tried to win a Disney Scholarship.  It was based on your GPA and you had to write an essay.  I poured my heart out into that essay.  I wrote about what my childhood had been up until that point and what I had hoped winning the scholarship would do for me to progress into adulthood.  I won that scholarship with my essay.  Only one scholarship is awarded to a sole winner in each school that is participating.  I was thrilled.  My family was proud.  My friends were proud.  I was proud.  I felt like that scholarship helped seal my fate.

Not so.  I got accepted into USF as I had hoped.  I went for the first year.  I began to suffer from depression and didn’t know how to deal with it.  I was used to helping everyone else with themselves that I didn’t know what to do with me.  Instead of figuring out what was going on with me I broke up with someone I had been dating for 5 years, went crazy over the summer dating guys and partying, met the man that would become my husband and suffered the loss of my grandmother.  Losing my grandmother was the final blow to whatever sanity I had left in that brain of mine.  I was as close to her as I was my mother.  I was devastated and that sent me over the edge with depression.  After her death I made it through one more semester and dropped out half way through my sophomore year.  I never went back.

All those expectations, hopes and dreams were gone in one big swoop.  Reconnecting with everyone and reminiscing has made me relive some of these moments mentally and emotionally.  On top of which I have to deal with the reality that I never did accomplish what I thought I was meant to be doing.  My life is nowhere NEAR what I had imagined or planned for it to be.

Today I realized something.  I may not be a trained therapist but I am a therapist to my friends, my family, my husband and my kids.  That is what entails being a friend, a daughter, a sister, a wife and a mother sometimes.  I need to stop dwelling on my past and worrying about my future so I can enjoy some of my present.  The life I live now is a gift. 

That’s why it’s called the present.