Let me take a step back for a second and really process what happened, because I think that’s the only way I can move forward properly. Late February was the turning point. That’s where things started to shift in a way that I didn’t fully understand at the time. I made a decision to reach out to someone that, deep down, I probably shouldn’t have reached out to. Not because they’re a bad person, but because of what that connection represented for me mentally. It wasn’t stable.

It’s crazy that it’s almost March. Midterms are either here or around the corner. The semester is moving whether I’m ready or not. Time doesn’t slow down just because I’m overwhelmed. It doesn’t pause because I feel unproductive. It doesn’t care if I spent Monday watching YouTube instead of pushing my research forward. And that’s the reality I have to sit with. I just ate a whole sandwich, and now I can’t sleep. Too much food, too late at night. It’s small, but it represents

I don’t know. I’m just getting sadder and more depressed, and I can feel it happening in real time. Part of it is because I push people away—but in my mind, I do it for a good reason. I tell myself they were going to push me away first anyway. I’ve been rejected enough times to believe that before anything even starts, it’s already over. There was this one person I felt close to. We had a shared trauma bond, both struggling with our mental health in different ways. I thought

I didn’t even take the FE exam like I was supposed to. And yeah… I was late to another meeting. Again. But that’s better than where I was...