the depression that follows

a very summarized conversation with the smart sam clark

me: hey sam.... i wanted to ask you something psychology-related.

sam: ok, shoot! i love psychology stuff.

me: hmmm.... well, you know i haven't been able to study all day. :( [yesterday] i have no motivation and it's killing me because i'm supposed to study for this DAT, but i just feel alone and bored and i can't make myself do it.

sam: yes, long-term studying like that is very self-motivated and it's tough because unlike a regular class it's at your own pace and etc.

me: yeah, well :( the thing is, for me i feel like i have no one that i'm really close to around here... so it defeats my motivation because i like my life to be propelled by people. if there's someone i really care about around, i can do whatever i need to. otherwise everything seems so pointless. i had this same exact problem a year ago, especially sophomore year and i just could not study when i really needed to. i'd stay up all night and do nothing, it's so frustrating. that happened when i had a really bad relationship experience with jonathan, this jerk of a guy and it was very on/off and a bad experience. but yeah, the times when i would see him and then not see him would leave me in a depressed state of being able to do nothing.
and right now as you know i've been talking to josh less..... >< because he's far away in long island...

sam: ah, yes. i see what's going on here. you have set this primary, high goal for yourself that you want a strong companionship which you place above everything else. now when you fail at that goal, you feel like you let yourself down and all of your other smaller goals like achievements crumble into pointlessness and so you just lose the motivation to work again. a lot of people experience this kind of disappointment and such, even athletes who set goals for themselves to achieve-- when they don't perform how they wanted to, they just feel bad and retreat into losing motivation to do anything else. And especially because you just met josh, so you feel like you finnnallyyy may have achieved this high goal, and now that you're talking less it's even more of a bummer that it's not working out for you right now.

me: gahhh, that's it exactly, all this pointlessness +___+ that's exactly how i feel.
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sam: yeah, and there was very little sun last week, so your serotonin levels are not sufficient and you are probably being affected by seasonal-affective disorder and it's making you feel more depressed and not motivated. get some sun!!!

me: its fine! ive been outside. i sat in my windowsill today. [before the rain] but... anyways... the thing is, i did really well last semester. I got 4 A's!!! and 1 B.... and i didn't have josh or leo then.

sam: wow that's great!!! :D but you still have to get more sun. and, we have to figure out, what did you do that gave you the motivation to get your work done. was there a lot of stress last semester, or what?

me: yeah, i was taking really easy classes. also, i had a regular ish social life with random people. like for the luau, the hawaii club met up a lot. [ah, also my 9.70 group meetings] and daniela's been here so i have someone to hang out with.

sam: so it sounds like you were able to distract yourself from your failed goal of wanting companionship by filling your life with constant distractions. Also, this phenomenon gets amplified by stress. so probably right now you're feeling pretty stressed about your anatomy and other stuff, while there's hardly anyone around on hall and everybody's gone, etc. but when you could fill your life with distractions in the semester, you could avoid feeling alone and down and just keep doing random things.

me: yeah, that makes a lot of sense! that's what's going on.... so what am i supposed to do right now???

sam: well, so how about leo though? you said your life was better after you met him?

me: yeah it's been great, he definitely keeps me sane. it's just that he's so far away so it doesn't really count for much, and also since he's not in school we can't relate to these kind of things. =(

sam: it sounds like from what you told me that you guys can connect on some level very well, but not in all areas. especially that he's a non-christian, there are definitely some things you're getting frustrated about and from this i would say that you can't connect really, really deeply. For me, i have in my life avoided getting close to anyone who is a semi-match but not a perfect match to my personality. because you are wasting your time! when you get close to someone who isn't a really good match, you lose part of yourself and also you might miss out on a better person that God had planned for you.

me: yeah but!! it's kept me sufficiently happy and i would not regret being with leo, because he makes life okay when it gets bad. plus, if we take the value of happiness on life on the day-to-day scale, shouldn't you be as happy as possible each day of your life? then it makes better sense for me to be with him. Sure yeah, maybe things aren't gonna work out later because there are some big differences there. but it has been worth it making my life better.

sam: but you're still occupying your life with someone who is /not/ the perfect person God intended for you. What if you miss out on that person because you're stuck with leo?! what if you meet him very soon and you're already taken up? but i can't say that being with him is bad or good, maybe leo will become a christian later or he will be the one, or something.

me: ugh, okay-- well whichever, this is still not helping my situation now. i'm supposed to be studying for the DAT!!! how do i do this?? :( i still feel no motivation, i still have no one.

sam: well, the way you do this is you just focus on your smaller goals: you want to do well on the DAT. focus on that. In the semester, besides socializing with random people you also had random fixations on things, and this further distracted you from your disappointment in yourself. So just try to really focus on what you want, and make that one of your fixations. Get more sun!!

Remember that you have nooo control over meeting people. The reason you're so disappointed in your life is because you've been trying to take things into your own hands. All this time, you've been trying to make things work for yourself. What have you even trusted God with over these few years? Name me something.

me: ... uhhh..... hmmm... nothing major that i can explicitly remember...... =/

sam: aagghghh1!!!! see! the point of being a christian is that you trust God with stuff!!! you have hope and faith that He has everything planned out for you, and you just know that right now obviously isn't the right time for you to find that perfect person, because you haven't met him yet. so you still need work! you can't just go find random people and try to make it work when you find that it doesn't and your own efforts just can't compare to God's. you're messing up His plan!

me: yeah... BUT!! what are even the chances of finding a crazy person that would fit me!?!? theres like no chances!!

sam: WELL... the chances are close to zero when you're trying to take matters into your own hands. If i was talking to a non-christian person, i'd say that all they can do is focus on school and just try to hope in the random chance of the universe that they will find what they are looking for. But that's the difference with non-christians! They don't have hope, they don't have the security and trust that we do. Tiffy you're supposed to be trusting God with all of this! That's all you can really do, and just be really, really happy every day with what God has done for you.

me: wow, sam. yeah.....
i guess as you know i was kind of taking a hiatus from absk and stuff this semester.

sam: yes i noticed!! tell me why though.

me: (i tell him problems pertaining to absk and the atmosphere etc: pet phenomenon, invisible pressures, sterility and secrecy of everything)

sam: ahhh wow, i had no idea!! tiffy we should have been talking about this earlier. it's so interesting! and it's so asian. i completely understand everything you're saying, i wonder if there's a way to fix it....
But! it's time to go to bed now, let's definitely continue this conversation tomorrow.



Copyright © God 2009



Sam and i really have a lot in common. he used to wear black pants with decorations like studs and safety pins on them!!! who knew?! i said sam, i didn't know you used to be cool!! he thought that was funny. XD he also has sisters 19, 16, and ~9 which is the mirror of my family except i also have a tiny sister.

and who knew that he's a really strong christian. we had a talk a while back on relationships and finding the perfect person and he's 100% convinced that God has someone lined up for everyone. very encouraging.

sam is sooo funny when he tells his stories and he's so knowledgeable about psychology and relationships in particular. he is incredibly good at identifying people's problems and defining them. But when it comes to solving them, he says... This is the part where you have to trust in God!!