The Origins of Depression

I don't want to be depressed. I used to have a positive outlook on things. Nothing really got me down too bad. I was able to roll with the punches. Looking back, I think the first time I dealt with depression was in college. I was being pressured to graduate early by my parents even though I was on my third major, because I was their "gifted" child,. I was due to graduate halfway through my senior year with a degree in philosophy and had absolutely no idea what I wanted to do. I didn't think grad school was right. I was lost and started shutting down. I stopped going to classes, sleeping all day, playing computer games all night. I ended up failing all my classes that semester except for marching band. That was one way to not have to become a grown up. They couldn't force me to graduate at age 20 when I didn't pass my classes. Unfortunately, they also couldn't justify paying for me to live on campus and fail all my classes.

I got lucky that my music professor could see someone who was losing his way and took pity on me. He put me in touch with another professor who lived near him who was going on sabbatical and needed someone to housesit second semester. I met with her, and I'm sure he must have vouched for me and promised to look in from time to time, as she agreed to let me stay at her home the following semester. I could only afford to pay for one class on my own, and rather than taking something to fill a requirement, I took another music class.

During this time, I was also working a DJ business that my parents had cosigned on a loan to help me purchase. I thought I'd like it, but after a couple of years, I was miserable doing it. I still had the loan on it, along with the standard 3 credit cards that I'd acquired during my college years. As I was working a business I didn't like, I probably wasn't very good at it, so I wasn't getting many referrals, wasn't able to make enough extra to pay for the advertising that was necessary to get new clients, and was falling behind on my bills. I would scrape together every dollar I could each month to pay for the loan my dad had cosigned on, as I wasn't about to incur his wrath about that as well. However, I soon started getting phone calls from the credit card companies at the professor's house. She got a couple of them on weekends when she'd return home. I was so embarrassed.

That spring, my girlfriend at the time and I convinced her parents that I should live at their house for the summer. They agreed as long as we both found jobs, which we did. At her house, I finally began to emerge from the hole I was in and resolved the issues I was facing. First, I found out we were not meant to continue as a couple, second, I fixed my relationship with my parents, and third, I got my parents to cosign on a consolidation loan, fixing my money problems at the time. At the end of the summer I moved back to my parents house and quit school. I was able to transfer my job and JCPenney ended up being my employer for 6 years. There, I became eligible for health insurance, which was important, as I wasn't covered by my parents plan anymore because of quitting school.

I didn't know it at the time, but looking back now, it's easy to see how depressed and stressed I was feeling about my life as a grown up. I wasn't ready to face any of it. Luckily, my parents stuck by me regardless of the disappointment I caused them by not finishing school. It took another 3 years and meeting Becky before I decided to go back to school, starting over with my fourth major. I still don't feel like a grown up a lot of the time, but now I've got 3 other people in my life depending on me to get my shit together. And so, the battle continues.