A place for Vase and Berry

(responding to your message from today)

it's okay if you took a bit longer to reply. it's perfectly okay. i'm glad you got your stuff done. it sounds good to have it done. good luck with all that you still need to be doing.

i tried but i think i really messed up both the tests.

you're right about wifi lol it's so helpful sometimes but also very unhelpful other times.

umm can you help me figure out a good schedule for my winter break? 20th is the last day of school before hols and i'll be back in school on 3rd jan. that's 13 days of break and i cant afford to waste it away like i wasted my summer and diwali hols. i need to study and complete my notebooks, and actually study too. and i also wanna have some time for cups and other fun stuff. i don't want my sleep schedule to become a mess, i want to fix it rather. so how am i supposed to do everything to make sure i actually make the best of my holidays?

what would be a good time to wake up? my mother will be more lenient about waking up because she doesn't have to worry about the maid coming at 9 am anymore. she just fired the maid today, so today was her last day working here. my mother has had enough of her horrible work behaviour (she's been lying, arguing and not doing her work properly). anyway, so she wont let me sleep till too late, but i do have some more freedom. so when do i wake up and try to sleep? and how do i manage studying and cups?

"What kinds of things do people normally do for internships?" they find some organisations that offer internships to school kids and charge for it, like we have to pay to do the internship. that's what my mother is saying, i don't really know.

my parents came up with an idea. my mother was thinking i'll go to my father's office and take some pics of pretending to do something there, and write some random stuff about it. (he's a mes (military engineering services) contractor so he technically has his own company lol.) but my father says his office is not in a condition for me to do that and send those pics to the school. and i agree his office is in bad condition. it's a very dirty spidery place made of tin sheets (because they don't allow permanent construction) and he doesn't clean his place properly.

so he's gonna bring home come bulky files and stuff and we'll just take pics of me pretending to do something at his desk at home. basically we plan to fake everything. lol. it's all my mother's idea and i think i love it. we can make it look real with my father's company logo and everything. and the school wants some kind of certificate can my father could even produce something like that. what a lovely way to do nothing and get my marks! i feel lucky lol that my father has a company that's all his.

i don't know how things will be when she's not here. last year when it happened, my father was really depressed and hence easier to deal with compared to his usual. he's not really depressed anymore. it's not like i enjoy seeing him struggle with depression, but he's easier to get along with when he's depressed. when my mother was gone in may this year, things didn't really go great with me and him at home.

Somehow I completely missed that second post last night. I will attempt to get as much of it here as possible in the time that I have to type.

Ok, that first part of the message from yesterday has lots of it that isn't really true. First of all, you will hurt more than just your one friend by leaving. You know it. You will hurt your entire support network. You are helping lots of people in the world simply by smiling and caring. And you have NO idea what you could do that would be awesome in the future. You deprive the entire world if you leave. Yes, friends can hurt you. They often do. Loving someone, caring about a friend, means that you are going to not always see eye to eye. Friendships do evolve because everyone is self-absorbed.

As I have said in other situations, focus less on the pain and more on what you can do to believe in you. Have you started looking at that beginning 7 Cups stuff yet? Remember, I was only suggesting once a week for now. Just read it. You don't have to do what it suggests. It will really help how you think about things. Most definitely - DON'T BE SELECTING DAYS. That is horrific and really hard for me to imagine. You have fought too hard to lose the battle now. Have you ever looked at 7 Cups specific help page for India: https://www.7cups.com/local/in/  

Your vice captain's struggles show you that everyone is having challenges right now. She could have been having a panic attack in addition to a medical issue. You are right to want to offer her compassion. 

I will get to the rest tomorrow. 

Ok, going to try to respond to everything tonight. 

As far as the sports speech - some like sports, some don't. It is okay if you don't. You don't have to follow everything you hear.

I am not much of an athlete myself except for daily walks. I began to realize during my long mental health journey that they really, really helped me to not get overwhelmed mentally. I was actually surprised because I don't really like physical activity. It is where I was most bullied when I was your age. But the walks have made healing possible for me.

I would love to try to help you come up with a schedule for your upcoming break. I would probably try for a 9 am wakeup time because it is later than when you wake up for school but not too late and I'd try for a 1 am bed time (or wind down time). Keep it close to your school time because then you aren't jumping back and forth. You seem to work better in the evening than in the morning, but I'd probably try a little each morning to see if that particular morning you are up to do some work then as well. If you can just do some mornings you are going to feel a bit better about homework if you don't wait until 6 pm each night to start. Your mother is also less likely to be cranky if she is helping you in the morning versus the evening. Try to aim to get any help you need from her when she appears least stressed out.

It sounds like a good "internship" plan. It isn't something they should really be pushing all that hard at your age anyway. I would think about it as an internship in photo arranging. The photo part could be something you might enjoy and might use. Maybe it is something that you can laugh about a bit with your father. I am still going to hope that you can get along okay when your mom is gone.

Ok, onto your most recent post. Part of depression is caring about everything. There are times that I wish I didn't have that part either. But I have slowly realized that caring and empathy are actually everything. They are what I offer to the world and make me feel good about myself because I know I am actively trying to make it better. You are too, but you are just at the beginning of your journey. I have seen you offer kindness in how you have described lots of situations. Don't focus just on that one friend. There are lots of others you are impacting less directly. Maybe it isn't smiling. Maybe it is opening a door or waiting your turn in line or a drink of water or a listening ear here on 7 Cups. Those interactions matter greatly both to the people that you share them with and in fighting back against all the depression demons.

Wandering around aimlessly right now is what most people your age are doing. You aren't supposed to know anything. That's okay. You have a better chance of doing something great in the future BECAUSE you care (even when you wish you don't). That's why I think you can really make a nice impact on the world. The world needs people that overthink things. It might not work out. That's always a chance. But that is no excuse not to try. Go for the unusual. That is where your heart is taking you. You already know that basic fact so you actually are less aimless than you think.

i have a problem. i skipped school today. my reason? nothing much of use has been happening in school lately. most of teacher have been giving free periods, so i got nothing to miss. maths is the first period on fridays and it was likely to get missed due to a special assembly in the amphitheatre for christmas. the maths teacher is the one teacher who will never give a free period. and we had physics notebook submission (and the physics teacher is another one who never gives a free period) and my notebook was completely incomplete. so i just skipped.

i thought my friend would tell me what was done in school, like she always does. but the just sent me a "why were you absent?" message and that's it. i dunno what to tell her. i made the mistake of kinda suggesting an absence yesterday. and she insisted that i be present so she doesn't feel lonely. (and i don't think it's my job to show up at school just because she feels lonely without me, i never stopped her from making other friends and also, she has made me not just feel lonely, but learn what loneliness is). so i don't know what to tell her now. i haven't responded to her message yet. i just read it from the notification. i asked my mother how i can respond and she told me to figure it out myself because it was my decision to skip and she wanted me to go.

also, another problem. lately i've been feeling so sleepy after dinner, every day. so it's hard to do anything after dinner. normally after dinner is the time of the day when i actually get the most work done. that's not working anymore. i dunno what's up with my body. whatever it is, it means if i procrastinated all day and thought i'd get stuff done at night, the entire day goes to waste and i hardly get anything done at night. help.

I think that I am only going to have time for a few sentences on the first post tonight, but I will try.

If you feel guilty about skipping then that is what you tell your friend. You shouldn't have done it and you are going to try to catch up. Just tell her that you needed a day. But I would avoid skipping school whenever possible at this point because you can do work during the free periods if studying at night is hard because you are exhausted.

For the beginning of the next message - try to go to bed by midnight if 8:30 is the wakeup time. Avoid naps so you can get solid, longer sleep. Do the best that you can. Work around when your mom might be best able to offer to help, but know that perfection really isn't possible. You are just going to try your best.

So depression is like a line that you can easily go over when you become overwhelmed. Then your brain starts shutting down. You have to worry less about what other people think of you and more about how you care about them. That's the part that you are still figuring out. Always remember that others are just as self-absorbed as you are. That means they literally don't really see what you look like or what your homework looks like. 

You also put too much pressure on you to be perfect and do everything. No one can do everything. Those little things like waiting or talking to even one person on 7 Cups matters. They are enough. You are enough.

People your age only look like they have their act together. Literally NO ONE does. This comes from me working with students like you for years. It is what I do in part for a living. Overthinking means not doing just what your parents think you should in terms of the future. Then you get 5-10 years into their program and realize you hate it. You are much more likely to end up with something you enjoy because you question things now. I love Robert Frost and he is a good way to be thinking.

I know how scary it all is. I like being settled too. But what it is is a really slow road that reveals itself step by step. Knowing that makes it easier. You literally can't know what that next step will look like exactly. But you can sort of know what tomorrow looks like. That is all you need to worry about. Focus on right now.

Ok, I only sort of got to the end of that. I will try to write a little more tomorrow. 

I am so sorry for not responding last night. I had two other people with some pretty bad medical issues on 7 Cups and it took me a while to respond to them.

I wasn't trying to make you feel guilty about skipping school or about staying up late in any way. I was more thinking about where you might feel happiest. I know that being home is a chore because of your parents and you just spent a long while there because you were so ill. I had a feeling being at school might make you feel more alive and active than being at home. It was the only reason that I urged it.

Missing school occasionally is okay. Staying up late occasionally is okay. You are ALWAYS ok. Yes, we all make mistakes that we regret. The key is that you can't change the past. You can only do better in the future. The worst thing to do is to beat yourself up. It is the emotional damage that you are causing yourself that makes me sad for you. You are a good person who struggles with motivation BECAUSE you have depression. You have to work hard to overcome that but I have never doubted that you can do it.

Really and truly, people are too self-absorbed to care what you look like overall. Do you really look closely at what other people are wearing? Can you remember from day to day? If someone does say something occasionally it is only to make them feel superior to you (which they aren't). They don't need that power over you. 

It is really great actually that your parents don't care too much what your future career might be. I know having lots of choice feels scary, but there is only one mistake you can make (and I literally tell this to my own students) - doing what someone else tells you to do rather than what is in your heart. You may not know what you want right now, but you know what you don't want. That is half of the battle. You are going to figure it out.

Please don't do something in the next few days. I am very serious about this. I would be devastated. Please use the list of resources that I gave you. You need help. Death is no gift. It is a punishment that the world around you will experience. 

If you continue to talk in this manner, I will have to report it. That will cut off all communication between us because people will look at our thread more closely. 

I have seen all of your messages. Because these are the two busiest days of the year in terms of my own family, I am going to have to wait to answer until tomorrow. 

I do care deeply that you are in pain. You have strength and can survive until your mom returns. Turn off your father and try to ignore his comments. Just sit in your room as much as you can and study. You control your emotions, not him. 

Focus on meditating when he gets you upset. Any studying is better than no studying. Deep breaths. You can do this. 

i noticed a pattern. last friday was a great day. saturday was awful. sunday was good. monday couldn't have been worse. tuesday was okay. wednesday was horrible. today was relatively fine. what the heck is going on? if the pattern continues, tomorrow will be bad. that terrifies me. but my mother's coming home tomorrow. so that's in a way really good.

and yeah, i stayed alive through these days. i don't feel too bad now so wont do anything tonight and wont have time tomorrow before she comes. i stayed because you and someone else wanted me. don't make me regret staying. every time i stop myself from doing something, i regret it later.