I am seated at a table surrounded by a group of people who I just realized I have little to nothing in common with. They speak carelessly and nonchalantly about nothing important. Or nothing I care about, which in my books means it is inconsequential.

The more they talk, the more frustrated I feel. I watch them silently and try not to judge them, but I’ve never been good at it. Dread creeps into my body, and I imagine myself somewhere else. Somewhere nicer. Somewhere I belong.

Ah, there it is again. That feeling. That weird yet familiar feeling that sits in my gut from time to time. I’m used to it. It’s like a phantom limb. No matter how much time passes and how much healing I do, I know it lives permanently somewhere deep inside my body. I stopped worrying about it ages ago.

When you have a history of depression, you learn how to identify the differences between wanting to die (real) and wanting to die because your hormonal imbalances are making you feel that way. That feeling usually belongs in the second category.

I don’t remember exactly when I diagnosed myself with Premenstrual Dysphoric Disorder, but I remember that it was a couple of months before I started taking sertraline. Once I started taking the medication, the symptoms lessened. If you are lucky enough to not know what PMDD is, it’s basically PMS on steroids, and like many illnesses that affect mostly women, there are no easy ways to diagnose or treat it. You can either take birth control, antidepressants, or raw-dog the mood swings, lethargy, and suicidal ideation with nothing but radical optimism, exercise, and a low in sugar and salt and high in protein and carbs diet.

I’m a masochist and off SSRIS so the symptoms have exacerbated in the past months. Last week I was having such a hard time that I texted my sister I needed to be medicated again. She got worried, of course, which is why I don’t often tell people when I feel this way. Those who have never experienced mental illness never get it. But it’s ok. I love that they don’t get it. I’m happy that they don’t get it.

Seated at the table, I had a revelation: when that feeling takes over me and leads me to despise everyone around me, it has little to nothing to do with them. It usually means I’m just disappointed with how my life is playing out. Or maybe my period is just around the corner.

I think this disappointment comes from my need to be impressed by people and by life all the time. I keep waiting for that one friend to reach out. I keep waiting to meet someone cute and smart at my favorite bookstore. I keep waiting for people to realize how much damage they are doing by teaching AI to behave like a human. I keep expecting politicians to act like they care about people and not their interests. I wait and wait and wait for things that never come.

It feels anticlimactic when you expect too much of life. When you have to schedule hangouts and calls with friends as if they’re doctor’s appointments. When you want people to love you back and they don’t. Or worse, when you only love someone because they love you.

I try making lemonade with my tears and sorrows, but they taste bitter. I drink the whole glass anyway and remind myself that lessons don’t feel good when you are learning them. Only time can make them sweet.

I chant as many times as necessary, “this too shall pass,” and I practice gratitude. At least I’m wanted at the table.

I was in the backseat of my supervisor’s car on our way to work the other day. I had my headphones on, something I rarely do but that felt necessary that day. Some sad song was playing as I looked through the window. We usually avoid using the main roads, so we cut through the neighborhoods on the outskirts of the hilltop monastery because it’s faster. I thought that even if it meant we got there in less time, it was a shame that we were sacrificing a pretty view. When you take the main road, you get to see the sea. All I could see was one house in poor conditions after another, bony stray dogs and cats, a man without a shirt lying on the asphalt ground, and people scavenging in the garbage for plastic bottles they could recycle and sell.

I wished we had taken the main road so I could look outside the window and feel anything besides guilt. Now I was thinking about the real cost behind the cheap things that I buy, and every time I let food in my fridge go bad, and who made the shoes i’m wearing? where does the fabric of my pants come from? how much water did they use to make them? why did I starve myself willingly for years, knowing lots of people wish they had an ounce of what was in my fridge?

Every unnecessary purchase I make leaves my bank account a couple of zeros emptier and my guilt a size bigger. But how big is it truly if I keep buying shit I don’t need? I guess I’m a conscious hypocrite. My sister says I have a scarcity mindset and that I need to work on it. I think it’s more complicated than that. Probably something to do with our situation growing up and my self-righteousness.

Maybe I do need to work on it, but I don’t think this type of guilt is an issue worthy of examination. On the contrary, I think it means there’s still some humanity left in me.

I think my frontal lobe is in its final stages of development because these days, instead of analyzing my every action and the meaning behind it, I’ve been trying to stay present in my body and let it do its thing. I’m not bothered by the amount of unanswered questions I have, and I’m not making myself miserable by trying to understand people who don’t care to understand me. I’ve been loving how my face looks without makeup, and hating myself feels wrong. I have no interest in engaging in self-sabotaging activities to make myself feel more alive, and it doesn’t bother me that I’m the 8th prettiest girl in every room.

I’ve been choosing silence even when I have something to say. I’ve been the perpetrator of unnecessary cruelty upon those I love in the past , and I made the conscious choice to not do it anymore. These days I’m sitting with the discomfort and taking my time to digest words instead of reacting to the first thing said.

Maybe this is what maturing feels like. Maybe that’s just life. Learning how to live with the uncertainty and embracing the unknown. Loving people for who they are and not for what they can do for us. Being okay with being walking contradictions.

I don’t know when or how it happened, but someday it just clicked. I didn’t want to be miserable anymore. It’s like Addison said, “I know the lows are what makes the highs higher. So I tell myself this is a reminder. Life's no fun through clear waters. You can't fix what has already been broken. You just have to surrender to the moment.”