Swelltide.

Yes, still awake. And, should be studying and doing something productive but am drinking a beer and watching the Late Late Show instead. Have a final coming up. The big one. The one that I probably won't do well on.

So, I procrastinate...

It is a funny thing. I obsess over tests and homework, give myself a hell of a time for not doing well-- but don't actually put the time in. Just being honest with myself, here.

I sometimes don't think I was ever meant to be a grown-up.

I lay down to take a nap earlier today. I drift in and out of sleep. I have these very vivid memories of being a teenager. Things that I have forgotten about, almost completely. Walking home from school and smoking one of my first cigarettes. Drinking cheap wine out of soda bottles on the way to school. Girls actually acting like they like me. Doing random, fun, outgoing-personality kind of things. Giving the finger to a car while passing the street. Holding hands with my 'girlfriend' in school. Falling asleep in the floor at a friend's house. Taping my name on the wall of her closet. I am overcome by this intense sense of nostalgia, regret and melancholy. There was a time-- the only time in my life that I can say that I was truly happy.

I didn't think about things, or over-think things. I just was. I was a weirdo. I had friends. I had fun.

What does it say about you, when the best moments in life happened when you fifteen?!

Now, I am barely in control of the things that I think. I am anxious. I am up and down. I don't even like myself most of the time, and I don't know what this means! I am not happy. That is what it means. I have a wonderful partner, that I have been with for a long time. She is anxious. Depressive. Like me. She now takes medication just to be able to cope with day to day stress. Just to be able to go into work, everyday.

How did my life end up like this?! Bipolar. Sad. Indecisive. Reclusive...

The past haunts me, at every turn in life. When I should be happy, I am thinking instead of when I was actually happy. When things are not well, I look to these people that meant so much to me at one time-- and I think, 'He has 700 friends on Facebook. He has the energy for school, work and Karate. She plays in a regionally-influential band. He is a web-developer, and has a good paying job in the town that I wish I could be living in.' Everyone else seems to be getting somewhere. Following their hearts. Making friends, and moving on. Having kids. Living overseas.

I can't get passed having a few awkward conversations with strangers at school. I am not even sure what having a platonic friendship is like, anymore. Woe-is me... blah blah blah.

Guilt. Memory. Shame. Guilt.

That is what my life has become.

There was a time when I would talk to anyone. I would make an ass out of myself for fun. I would get off on talking to people and disclosing things about myself. Anything for 'meaningful' conversation. I got a buzz even being around people. With a friend nearby I could, and would, do anything.

I have somehow lost all of that. I, of course, don't have any friends around me. The last friend that I made, was my beautiful and wonderful girlfriend. Almost a decade ago. Where does that magic go?

It hurts to think of the past, for the pang in my heart.