watching the squirrels go round

I just wandered around campus in a haze for ten minutes, feeling like I wanted to cry, and then laid on the grassy knoll outside the education building and actually did it. Not for long, and I feel okay now, but I wish I could understand myself a little better sometimes.

I'm watching three squirrels chase each other through the branches of a tree.

I know the kind of thoughts that lead to me feeling sad, but I do wonder if those thoughts are really the 'problem,' or if there's something else going on. I will try to describe the thoughts the best I can, though I don't know if the description is going to make any sense to you unless you've felt this way before. Also, I don't want to make too big a deal out of these thoughts by describing them like this. I recognize that they are only temporarily, that they will go away--they seem more like an illness than anything else. I just have to wait them out, like one has to wait out a cold or the flu.

The thoughts are these: there are moments--they usually don't last too long, though it varies--where I feel the bottom drop out of everything. Where I cannot think of anything--literally--that is worth anything to me. Nothing seems to matter. My life feels utterly empty. None of my work seems important, and nobody else's work seems important, because I don't really see how any of it will make a difference. All of the things I do for fun seem meaningless, because they seem like frivolous distractions that I use just to keep myself busy and cover up my actual unhappiness. I don't feel like talking to anyone, because I don't think anyone will understand and because I don't know why anyone would want to deal with someone who's so depressed. I think all of these things and then make myself feel guilty and ashamed for feeling like this (because I know I'm just feeling sorry for myself and that I don't actually believe that any of it is true), so I end up just feeling worse. Everything and everyone's lives just seem meaningless, and I feel like there's no way to snap out of it--like I'm caught in this cycle, and I'll never be able to get out of it.

Of course, there are times where I feel just the opposite. Where everything seems to matter, where my life feels incredibly rich, where I'm excited about the things I'm going to be doing for fun, where I feel surrounded by wonderful friends, where life seems so full of promise. And I feel like all of that is going to stick--that I'm not going to feel deeply sad again.

So I go back and forth, is the thing. And when I'm down, I try not to think about it--not to overanalyze it and dwell on it--but I almost can't help it, because it's all I can think about, for some reason. I feel like I need some kind of trick to pull me out of these moods--because I think they're all just moods. There must be some reason I slip into them but then there must be some way that I can slip out. Honestly, it's just frustrating because I feel like I'm better than this--like my life is better than this. I have little reason to feel upset, and so I feel like I should be able to avoid it, for the most part. But perhaps the fact is that sometimes people just get in bad moods, and this happens to everyone, and they'll always end, and you just have to wait. What do you think?