I'm just generally not feeling my best...

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Some things have been crossing my mind and stuff like that that have been really effecting me and at times, feeling like they're eating me from inside. I think the worst thing about this is that I'm only just turned 17 years old yet all of this is on my mind and bringing me down. I thought being 17 was supposed to be fun? Pah.

Last night, while I was trying to get to sleep, the thought of death crossed my mind, and then I was suddenly awake, with the realisation of mortality stuck on my mind, something I've always known but had suddenly took over my head. There'll be a day where I'll be alive one minute, and gone the next. What will happen? Will my entire life experience amount to nothing and disappear? Will it be exactly like sleeping forever? (I doubt it, since unlike sleeping, my brain will be no longer functioning). I mean, it's scary.

I couldn't sleep any longer. So I went to my sister and she told me about going to "happy places" but I never found this to be an effective method, since my mind usually just makes bad things happen in my imagination or it's impossible to focus my thoughts on it and negative thoughts just flood my mind again. I started worrying about everything I do in life - if even when I am enjoying myself, am I just wasting time? The years seem to be going on faster and faster, eventually my time is going to catch up quickly with me and it's all going to go away and I'm just afraid of wasting it despite best efforts, and wasting my chances with the people I know, have known and ever will know, for they are all mortal too.

This Summer, I spent a week in a course-like thing, very tenuously related to school, in Dublin, the whole other side of the country. It was made up of 250 people I didn't know and we all had to stay in the same building, have classes with each other and stuff like that. As you can imagine, on the first day, this was TERRIFYING. But it ended up being one of the most positive experiences of my young life. Why? Because I got on with these people, really really well, and this is something I'm not used to. I don't really get on with people in my school, or similarly aged people in my neighbourhood, but these people were amazing. I was able to talk, laugh, get to know them, let them get to know me. The fact that it was only a week was painful. The other fact that they all live so far away from me is even more painful. As sad and cliched as it might sound, for the first time since I was 9 or so years old, I felt like I was truly making friends.

I really really miss them but I feel bad admitting this to people because I don't want to seem obsessed to them or give the impression that my social life is so sad that I'm really missing these people that I only knew for a week. They all probably have their own friends and lives to get on with that it may not have even passed their minds much since. I really do want to see them all again but the distances makes it difficult, and I'm worse at communicating on Facebook than I am in the flesh. It's like a Catch-22. I know that if I want to meet up with those guys again I should just suggest it and see what happens but I can never pluck up any courage. I know that I'm effectively answering my own worries here and that I'm just being an idiot, but I still can't do it.

I think, for the most part, I'm just sick of spending so much time with myself and people I'm not even sure I do like. I want to spend more time with the people I like and get on with, but there's such a dearth of them (and it's not for lack of trying, if I can make so many friends during the Summer why can't I seem to do it at home?) and everyone just seems really busy with their own lives or other friends that I tend to wind up spending each day with myself. I value my "me-time" but I just want a change, you know? "Me-time" becomes tortuous when it becomes me-time-all-the-time, and it just gets worse when time is spent with people I can't even stand (like my sister's friends who come over a lot, I don't want to share her friends, I want my own set of friends). It's difficult to open up to people since I'm not particularly close to many people and finding convenient times to talk with my family is difficult - they're either gone somewhere, pre-occupied, or sleeping.

I don't really know what the purpose really was in writing all this, as The Haven is meant to be about serious help and discussion and in my usual way I'm paranoid that what I'm worried about will seem superficial and whiny to everybody else. It's always what I end up thinking when I've tried to open up about stuff on this forum in the past and I'm even fighting the urge to delete all this text and forget about it. But I need to let it out somewhere.

That's existential angst/depression. On the bright side most people go through it to some extent and most of the complaints you have here - you can take solace that these very common complaints about the human condition, and as for most of the people who don't at least have these sorts of struggles occasionally - if you could experience being them I have a feeling that you'd wonder if they ever left childhood at all.

Nothing wrong with writing a post about it at all though, sometimes we just need to get it off our chests and if our friends are tapped out or if we're feeling like we need to keep a stiff upper lip for everyone around us IRL - thank God for internet forums right?

About the friends, just letting them know that you'd like to meet up won't make them feel that you're obsessed. If you were to send more than one message with no response on their part it might be a different matter but one message does no harm.

I remember being at your age and tying myself in knots about this kind of thing. You don't have to say you miss them, you can say stuff like 'Hey _____ , I had fun at this course. Do you want to meet up/visit?' (change as appropriate adding slang and/or changing the wording.). You don't need to let them know about the feelings side of things. Halloween usually has a mid-term break as well.

Anyways, it could make for a nice time and a break from your me-time-all-the-time.

Also, don't worry about the haven as techstepgenr8tion said, sometimes we just need to talk and can't do that in real life for various reasons. It's what the haven's for.

Thank you both. I already feel a bit better today. I was having a bad weekend and I guess it must have fallen in on top of me. I've been in bad spots before and I've got out of it. Today's the start.

I'll remember what you said and I'll try to follow out yr advice. Thanks again.

Glad to be of help.