Depression

I felt at my worst two weeks before the end of my first semester of college, I cried out of nowhere, waking up was harder than usual, and I didn’t feel any motivation to do the things I love the most. Those last two weeks were final projects submissions and my performance was impacted. I handed a couple of works late, which made me feel terrible since I had not done such a thing for a long time.

For my design projects I couldn’t find motivation, I spent hours trying to draw my iron design a certain way and couldn’t work it out. I had to move forward with a shape I didn’t like if I wanted to finish. I had to pull many all-nighters but failed to stay up sometimes, which led to late submissions. I didn’t sleep from Monday to Tuesday of the second week, and somehow I felt energetic all throughout, which is unusual. By the end of the day, just as I got in the elevator I nearly collapsed, like the phantom energy that I had was suddenly taken away. It was extremely draining and unhealthy.

It’s just that I am a very happy and cheerful person, but I couldn’t do anything! It sounds dumb and feels dumb, but I didn’t have the energy or motivation to do anything.

I missed my design project deadline and the submission was locked on Canvas. I felt devastated, I quickly wrote an email to my teacher asking for more time, mentioning that I was having mental health difficulties. Thankfully, he extended my deadline for Friday. I worked very hard and at my fastest, and the quality actually was very good but I felt I could do better. I finished scanning my work at 1:59 and couldn’t rename the file name so I could submit it before 2pm. Since we are supposed to rename files I felt terrible because I didn’t do it. I think that is an autistic thing, feeling terrible after breaking a rule.

I also had been working on a cardboard trashcan project and as usual, I decided to go above and beyond with it. I made it extremely complicated for myself, but the result was a very clean look. At least up until things began to not go as planned. I had to replace some elements very quickly, and couldn’t put much dedication on them, so in the end I didn’t like how the trash can looked, even though everyone, including teacher told me that my trash can looked so clean and nice.

I did feel a bit of happiness among all of this when I showed my teacher the trash can before all the changes. A senior joined in, and everyone was very surprised. My teacher laughed out of surprise and awe and congratulated me for the cleanliness of the trash can. After the senior said the same, my teacher said: “yeah, she makes the cleanest models.” I felt very proud and happy, even though it quickly wore off.

At the end, my trash can earned full marks, along with my final writing project which I handed in late. But that was not enough to make me feel better.

The semester ended and I could finally rest for a while, but not much because my mom and I were going to travel to Mexico, stay for New Year’s, and later a big birthday party for my grandma.

I felt extremely drained, and depressed, and didn’t want to go and submit myself to that sensory nightmare.