Individuality Shattered

Let me start out by saying this. I am not depressed.

However, it's true that I haven't been feeling like myself for a long time.

Sometimes there's a void within me and I'm not sure if it's supposed to be there. Sometimes, I feel like everything's okay and the future's something I have the power to change. Other times, I feel like the people around me have full control of me and dictate my every move. Is it just a part of growing up, something that's completely normal for a college student to feel, or is it a sign of something darker? It feels like the weight pressing down on me, crushing what's left of my fragile personality and self-confidence, and forcing me to become someone I'm not.

I feel like I'm being forced away from my individuality.

It's been going on for a long time, I've come to realize, but I never really rebelled against it. Even in high school, when I felt that I was being forced to plan huge life choices for myself about my education, I felt like I still had control of who I was as an individual. Maybe it's the perks of being in a smaller, rural school because I knew a lot of teachers on a more personal level and they encouraged me in all of my pursuits. Science, art, writing, music, you name it. No matter what it was, they were there for me through it and they showed me how to be the best person I could be. But being at this state university, I sometimes feel lost in the crowd. It's me and 25,000 other students, and its daunting to think that I'm just a number to this school after being an actual person to my high school.

It's hard to pay all of this money to go to this college just to feel like I'm being forced through, remodeled, and renewed to be this perfect employee for some big company that I'm just going to continue to be a number at. I don't want that at all. I hate seeing how messed up the system is and having no power to change it because I'm just one student.

Who would listen to just one voice calling for change?

And because of that, sometimes I feel down. I feel like I need to do something about this now before it's too late. I need to continue to feel like an individual, and to encourage others to be individuals as well, before we're miserable for the rest of our lives. But I have no clue how I'm going to go about this. I have hope, but no means of change. I have an idea, but no way to execute it.

For now, I guess I'll go back to holding onto the shattered fragments of who I used to be and try to mend them as much as I can. If I can't make a change, I'll endure this process until I graduate. Maybe then I can finally go back to feeling like myself again.

I just want to feel like I matter as one single person to the world around me and I want that for the others around me as well. I don't want any of us to be a number. We are so much more than that.