You know, I should probably start thinking about what I want to do after I graduate, since I’m a senior. Maybe I should have already started thinking about that. Maybe I should have started thinking about that a couple of years ago.

Other people””people my age, seem to know what they’re doing, at least outwardly.

I’m just sitting here with a couple of retail jobs under my belt and several summers of dealing with other people’s kids, like, where am I going with my life? Besides nowhere, that is.

Maybe I should have tried harder. The thing is, I usually like planning ahead. I like knowing in advance what should happen. But then when it comes to things that actually matter, I don’t. It’s kind of funny how that works.

Now I’m not sure why that is, but I do have a few guesses. My first and sophomore years were spent in the midst of a severe depression.

Now if you’ve ever been depressed, you’d know that it’s not so much that you don’t want to do things, it’s that you really can’t. It’s easy to tell someone to just go and do things they like to do. I mean, it sounds like it should be easy, right?

But depression is more like a giant weight that’s settled on your shoulders, over your heart and inside every fiber of your being. It’s so heavy, it’s difficult even to step outside some days.

It’s not the kind of weight you can just lift off; it permeates your entire being, and you recognize that things should be enjoyable to you, but you’re just unable to enjoy them or even participate.

In my case, I think that my depression kind of prevented me from doing anything meaningful with my first two years of college, and now that I’m almost at the end of the road, I guess I feel kind of lost and maybe a little cheated.

On some level, I blame myself. Granted, it’s not actually my fault; it’s not like I could control whether or not I was depressed.

I mean, it’s not like I’m not getting anywhere.

I just think I could have done a lot better and gone further if I hadn’t spent a couple of years being at odds with myself. I’m happy now; I’m better, and I’d like to think that this thing that was a huge problem for me a couple years ago is completely gone. But it isn’t. It’s still affecting me, albeit indirectly.