Number 28.

I have a bad feeling that I might be experiencing depression.  Not in the "there was a sad moment and it is depressing" kind of way.  The for real way.  I read about it.  They say that people with depression oversleep, don't sleep enough, eat too much, or eat too little.  People lose interest in things they once found pleasurable.  They have constant feelings of sadness or anxiety, or just plain emptiness.
I can sleep for a half a day if people would let me.  I have a large appetite.  But what bothers me the most, because the other two symptoms are symptoms of another thing I am dealing with, is that I don't have any interest in the things I used to love doing just a few months ago.  It's not that I don't have any time to do them... it's that I don't want to.  I've lost interest, I guess.  I don't write fiction anymore.  I have many unfinished stories and pages of notes that are just collecting dust in a notebook in my closet.  I don't really pick up my violin unless it is in orchestra class to play with a group.  I just got my new cello not a month ago and I haven't played it in two weeks.  I don't know what's come over me... but it bothers me that I can't do the things I used to love without feeling like I don't want to do it anymore.  It's a hard thing to admit, saying you hate something you used to devote every single moment of spare time to.  But I want to be able to love these things again.  I want to enjoy picking up a violin or cello and feeling music flow through my veins.  I want to put my pen to my paper and feel a story flow from my brain out through my fingertips, the ink darkening the page with a promise of success.
I once told a friend that music was my drug; that music kept me alive.  And it does.  But not like playing it used to.  When I was playing music, I could feel what the composer felt while writing it.  I could feel his (or her) sadness, anger, love, or joy.  I could feel the chaos.  The calm.  The storm.  The victory.  Now, I just listen absently to the music playing from the iPod headphones.  I don't feel the rush it used to give me.
I used to say that writing gave me a sense of calm; that each word that left my head gave me a sense of ease, like everything in the world would one day be okay.  I used to feel the wheels in my head turn as I thought of a plot to add to a story about a girl and a boy.  I could feel my imagination visually giving me the story, waiting for me to add the verbs and adjectives and pronouns to make it into something real, not just something imagined.  Now, I don't get that feeling.  I lay in my bed and stare at the ceiling... trying to will myself back into normalcy.  I don't know what's come over me.  But I aim to find out, however I can.

Even though it almost feels helpless to try anymore.

As always,
Jules, the High School Nomad.