(This is mostly a repost of FA, with some addendum. Needless to say, I still won't be very active here. I don't have the energy to.)

I'd been doing better. Really, I had. There was always lingering depression, but it was beginning to fade. I was finally drawing again.
That's all changed. Looking at the here and now, as well as glances back at the past confirm only one thing.
It's really easy to withhold information, isn't it? It's frighteningly easy to make an innocent individual look the villain, and glorify yourself, simply by picking and choosing quotations, rather than having the common decency as a human being to be honest, and explain the entire conversation. This is frustrating in itself—especially when said individuals seem to think that the law doesn't apply to them. And there are entirely too many people like that in my life.
Heh.
Either way...

I'd rather be doing something else right now. Honestly, I'd love to be drawing at the moment, or painting. I'd love to be working with resin, or writing, or even working with clay. I'd love to be sewing, or world-building.

Instead, I'm sitting here staring at my screen, without much will to do anything. This is, of course, where things diverge; often, I'm told that if I want something, I should simply do it. I shouldn't say "I wish I could be..." I should just do it.

The problem lies in realizing that a desire to do things does not often go beyond that--and when it comes to issues such as depression, while one may have a desire to do things, finding the willpower to do them may prove quite difficult.

My parents aren't helping much. My mother has always been one that's simply 'too busy' for her family, and for anything, really. Previously it was work. Now it's her garden. This takes priority over all else in her life, including me. This is fine--it's something I'm quite used to, after nearly nineteen years of it. The problem is that usually, a child--now legally an adult--normally has at least one parent they can turn to.

I, do not. My father, if you can consider him a 'father' at all, and not simply a humanoid lump on either his bed or the couch, does little more than watch tv. All day. This is common enough, certainly, but with him it reaches the point of him simply not caring about anyone else around him. I cannot count the number of times he winds up watching my mother or I struggle with something, only to keep laying on his fat ass, doing nothing to help.

Oh, wait. That's every day. Doesn't matter how simple it would be for him to get up for FIVE MINUTES and help us do something even as simple as hauling in a bag of cat food. No, he'd rather watch his family struggle, then demand he be given dinner a few hours later. What's that? We can't make dinner because we're still trying to get things done around the house he wouldn't help with? Why, how dare we!

I don't have anyone in particular to turn to. Honestly, I'm only writing now because it makes me feel better if I vent, even if just marginally.

Gaming used to be a place I escaped to. In fact, there are few things I enjoy more than a challenge, with friends to talk to along the way. I...don't really have this anymore. I have a Steam friendslist that teeters near max, and yet rarely do I encounter any of these folks in-game again. And typically, by the time I do--whether by one following me to a server or otherwise, I've gotten to the point where I'm so fed up with the game in question that I wind up just closing out at the next map change, and aimlessly browsing the web for a few hours.

But of course, my father insists that "all I care about is that damn game." Note, not games. Game. Because in his mind I've only ever played one game, and only ever do. And I'm supposedly isolating myself from the world.
Ironic, considering that I spend most of my time talking to people, whereas he spends most of HIS day staring at a tv screen.
How dare my interests not be the same as his.
...I'm not even allowed to use the couch, because apparently it's his sole property, and should I be sitting on it when he wants it, I'm forced off via threat of being kicked out.

Oh, the joys of being 18.

Among other things, I am, of course, still job searching. ….a real job. Not SecondLife shit, although I AM starting to build again. My original plan, (aside from the failed attempt at securing another place to live,) involved me taking a year off from school to work. Now, I love learning. Wikipedia is set to my homepage--inaccuracies aside, I take joy in learning new things.
School is hell for me. I never really had any friends until High School, before which time I couldn't bring myself to consider people my own age as peers, and instead took solace only in the teachers. This worked well enough in middle school, but prior, in elementary school,I can tell you first-hand that none of the women intended to 'teach' me really cared about their students beyond a paycheck.
As for high school? Well, I haven't really had any contact with any of my 'friends' from there since graduation.
So, as I said, I wanted a year-long break to work, get my head straight, and figure out what I wanted from life.
Naturally, my mother won't have that.

Oh, she still fully expects me to secure a full-time job, and I AM trying. She fails to understand this, needless to say, and I'm being punished for not having one yet.
Unfortunately she...also expects me to become a full time student, effective next month.
I'm not ready for this. Really, honestly, I'm not. I've taken college classes before. I know I can handle them. They're a LOT eaiser than AP High School work, and the last time I took a College course, I made easy A's all the way through.
The same goes for any AP class I've ever taken, test included.
School in itself is easy, there. Grades, that is. I pulled a 3.96 GPA without trying.
But I'm honestly not ready.
Looking at the list of courses pulled for me, I wound up crying. Just reading through the list, I started CRYING.
Government I won't mind taking. Algebra's fine. I just zone out and do math for a few hours, like before. History courses in general I'm good with. Comptech courses are easy.
But Composition. Dear, God.
I went through AP composition last year. I made a 4/5 on my AP test, and my score was a BORDERLINE 5 at that. But that only takes one year out of comp, unfortunately. I literally started sobbing at the thought of enduring another year of it.
It's not that I don't like writing--and I can't understand why it bothers me so much. I've always been told that my strength lies in essays. It just brings back the same things I've been struggling with already, however. It brings back those same nagging feelings that I'm stagnating, going nowhere, and making no progress at all. I'm going to see if I can take a literature class instead. I've wanted to take Lit since 6th grade, but I've been denied the chance every single year.

I just don't know how I'm going to do this. I'll get through it, I always do--and I suppose that I'm really just being whiny. It's simply that looking at everything looming over me, I feel so trapped. It's not fear, so much as it is dread, and a general feeling of hopelessness. And I KNOW I shouldn't feel that way. I know.
I have no one to lean on, really. My mate's a dear to put up with me, and I love him dearly, but there's no one physically HERE. I feel selfish for wishing he could visit again, just so that I could at least have someone to physically HOLD, to cling to.
That's what I need right now, I guess.
It's just another year of what high school was, either way. Hell. Me being expected to pull all A's, with no one to talk to, and likely with a curriculum every bit as backwards and dated as I remember, learning nothing, and churning out busywork.
Maybe I'll luckout and get a teacher like the Psychology prof I had last year. Should that be the case, I'll be fine.
...but there's a much, much greater chance than I won't, especially since America's school system rewards teachers for seniority, not actual skill, or love of work, or education in general.
Add an eventual full time job to that, AND the fact that my mother expects me to have "plenty of time for your art, sweetie!" when the thought of drawing ANYTHING at the moment is too physically hard to comprehend...

I feel like I'm going to crack. If I can't do anything artistic now, how am I expected to with MORE stress?

I think I'm going to lay back down...