Some days it just hits you when you lest expect it.

I'm having one of those days. Nothing seems right and I have no idea what to do with myself. All the songs in my computer just isn't the song I want to listen to. There's no game I feel like playing, despite having so many to pick from. I'm not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow. There's nothing I'd like to watch on TV. Besides, TV just lost its appeal to me.

I don't even have the luxury of being depressed. I don't have the delusions of illness. I want to go out yet I don't.

I just feel blah.

Somehow, this feels more scary than the bouts of depression I used to get while I was in the US. I used to get major bouts of depression for absolutely no reason at all. I wake up fine, I go about my day. Then just as I'm about to go find food or go to class or just go shopping, it hits me right between the eyes. I start crying for no reason, the kitchen knife looks damn appealing and I have a good-bye note all written out in my head. Just like that. I could be laughing at a comedy on TV one minute and down in the dumps the next. No warning, no PMS, no known reason. So instead of yelping about it, I decided to see what triggered it. Later I found that nothing triggered it. I read up on depression until a point where I had almost convinced myself I did have depression and I stopped. Reading too much about it convinced me I did have it so I stopped. Then I just decided to keep a better eye on myself. I tried to see a pattern to my emotional upheaval. I've always been an emotional person so I figured maybe that's it. But I soon found that I had no known, consistent trigger. What made me happy one moment depressed me the next.

Eventually, I got angry with myself. Especially after the second time I deliberately cut myself to see how fast my blood would flow from different parts of my body. I knew then that I needed help. And I always hated the thought of the stigma of depression if I had taken medication. So I went to a counselor and talked things through and decided to join real life.

I joined societies I thought I might like, made lots of friends, went travelling, went to any event I thought was interesting, even went to those that were only mildly interesting, did a lot of community service, went to watch a movie every week and just generally socialised. I had three different sets of friends; Malaysian and American. I did something almost every night. I even went for study groups at the library at midnight because that's when my vampire RPG group went. On weekends, I went to my friends' homes or went around the state or went to Chicago or Detroit. Even after an asthma attack once, I got up the next hour and ran in the street while waiting for a tornado to hit the town. I just refused to be depressed anymore. When I feel it coming up on me, I just went out and made sure I was never alone. My counselor felt it was a good thing to try out. She advised me against wallowing in it. For her, meds was the very last resort. When I told her I used to stand in the middle of the road to see if I'd get hit by a car, she thought I was nuts. I told her I wanted to die. Once, the car had to swerve away because I refused to move. This was in KL so there were no charges brought up against me, just a very loud honk. I was also one of those insane people who ran across a highway.

In a way, I was scared of suicide. I was depressed enough yet I knew I'd never do it, hence the cars. I was more scared of rotting in hell than suffering on earth. But if someone else kills me, I'll be murdered, not suicidal. A warped explanation but one I stayed with. I took a lot of risks back then. So many it scares me thinking about it now.

But this blahness I have now, this I-don't-care-about-anything-at-all really worries me. I rather be depressed than unfeeling.