A True Story

>Be me at the age of 18
>All of my life, after entering Jr. High, I have pretty much lived in my room, on the computer or on my gaming console
>Just graduated High School with Honors and an overly confident worldview; think everything is going to go my way because I am me
>Literally have delusions of grandeur
>Delusions of grandeur are only worsened when I started dieting that summer, losing 50 lbs in 3 months using the Atkins diet (bringing me from overweight to a healthy weight)
>Still living with parents during this time, being a social reclusive nerd whose only friends were those from High School whom I saw only at school
>The time has finally come where I say goodbye to everything I ever knew to go off to another state to confront the unknown
>...
>Just start college
>Be super confident in my new body and in my social skills (which were slightly above average at best, thanks to extreme confidence and deep sexy voice)
>Make tons of friends within no time whatsoever
>Literally act like an aspie, making jokes that were cool with my old friends but cringey to my new ones; still keep friends because they were cool though
>My roommate was a fat "super party dude" that was almost always out of the room, likely doing drugs and getting laid
>Life is pretty much the same for me, though
>I'm spending most of my time in my room on my console or my computer
>Though now it is different
>I am completely alone
>There is no family anywhere close to me and 70% of my day is spent sitting stagnantly in my room (the other 30% being me in class or eating in the cafeteria)
>Start neglecting homework to continue playing alone, pretending interaction with online friends is an acceptable substitute for real life interaction
>Start ignoring sleep, literally missing days of sleep at a time due to procrastinating on homework and being addicted to the new "League of Legends" game
>Things are still changing day by day, my confidence never wanes though as I try to see this as just one big new experience
>Deep down I feel slightly "peculiar", thinking about how I am no longer living with the people I have known all of my life and will never live with them again
>Nothing will ever be the same
>Ignore..
>Sleep deprivation and isolation slowly begins to crack me without me noticing
>Ignore..
>"Nothing's wrong. It's all the same thing with just a new environment."
>Ignore..
>Grandmother dies, I am the only one unable to cry at the funeral for some unknown reason; have to see my grandfather weeping before I can even get a single tear out
>Ignore..
>Dog that I've had since I was 5 dies while I am away from home
>Ignore..
>Stress eat so much that I gain back 30 of the 50 lbs I lost by the middle of the second semester
>Ignore..
>"Oh wow. I finally feel like sleeping. Might as well get on it. Night guys."
>..
>The next morning
>*yawn*
>..
>"I'm going to die and there will be nothing afterwords. I will cease to exist. My thoughts of owning a multinational corporation will likely never come true, especially because I am such a lazy individual. I am living to fail. There is nothing that can stop death from coming for me. Why would it? I will cease to exist. I won't even be able to think like I am right now. I will just be no more. My family will die too. Why can't I stop death? Why am I even doing this? What is the point? I don't understand."
>Out of nowhere, I wake up with an extremely upset stomach and haunting thoughts that only continue to get worse and worse the more I think about them
>I go to class, but cannot concentrate on anything that day; I can't stop thinking these haunting thoughts
>I go to eat, but none of the food tastes good, just bland; I can't stop think these haunting thoughts
>I go back to my room and try to play some games, but I can't concentrate due to these haunting thoughts taking up 99% of my brain processes
>My stomach literally is torturing me, I think I am just getting ill
>Go to sleep while twisting and turning, praying that I don't feel this way tomorrow
>Wake up tomorrow
>Same thing..
>BUT WORSE
>The thoughts are worse, the stomach pain is worse, and my feelings of utter hopelessness are worse
>Today I can't even move, I decide to skip my first class and spend most of my time over the toilet, trying to vomit (it literally felt like I had the stomach flu, my stomach hurt so badly), but to no avail
>I prayed for relief
>I've never been a religious individual, but I have never prayed so hard in all of my life for there to exist an afterlife, a higher power, and a purpose for my life
>I prayed every second that a deity would take away this agonizing stomach pain and these absolutely haunting thoughts, but each thought of the afterlife just made the thoughts and doubts much worse
>I go to the rest of my classes that day and go immediately back to sleep without eating, feeling too sick for it
>The next day I literally felt so ill from my sudden condition that I was crippled to the point of not being able to move from bed the entire day
>The only times I moved was when I got up to go to the bathroom and try to force myself to puke, though I couldn't
>The thoughts continue to grow worse and worse, along with the body aches, terrible nights, and desperation for a solution
>A month or so later, I finally go to the school counselor about this, looking for an answer
>I literally think I am going insane, to the point where they will have to put me in an asylum
>This makes me absolutely terrified, due to the fact the only solution I could find that could save me from my own mortality is taking my Business degree and starting a company that will be able to biologically, synthetically, or bio-synthetically create a form of immortality
>I know how ridiculous it sounds, which makes my hopeless feeling much worse, but it is all the hope I have
>Being confined to an insane asylum would kill my chances for salvation from mortality from second one, thus I feel nothing but terror for how the counselor will diagnose this sudden crippling condition I am suffering from
>The counselor doesn't know what is wrong
>She prescribes breathing exercises and other stupid things to try to help me
>I try them in desperation, but they don't help
>I finally get desperate enough to call my mother back home
>She is absolutely terrified for me and tells me there is no shame in coming back home
>I refuse to do that; I am not a drop-out
>I call my father and tell him what is going on
>He tells me that death is inevitable and I should get over it
>The one man I have ever looked up to as a pillar of strength is telling me that I should give up and resign myself (and all of my loved ones) to death
>This sends me over the edge
>I end up becoming so obsessed with death and my finite mortality that I straight up bomb the second half of the second semester, bringing my grades from A's and B+'s to B-'s and D's
>The semester ends
>I go back home, thinking that finally seeing my family again will remove these terrible feelings haunting me
>It doesn't
>The only relief I am able to get is having this new condition I am feeling diagnosed by a professional as Chronic Depression
>Neither my mother, nor the doctor, nor myself can find out what caused it; all I knew is that it was here to stay
>After a month or so of struggling to combat this newfound Depression, using the "St. John's Wort" my mother recommended to me (which worked like shit), I give up
>There's nothing I can do
>Why even try anymore?
>The body pain and terrible thoughts are irreversible, I can't go back to before it. Going back was never an option for anything. We can only go forward to the inevitable end of death turning us into nothingness for all eternity
>..
>"Might as well kill time watching anime or something.. Not like doing anything productive is any better. It's not going to be worth anything in the end after all.."
>Remember a show I ridiculed my college friend for watching
>"My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic"
>That faggot was a literal fedora-lord who fancied himself a feminist or something as equally cringey
>He was a nice guy, but I saw this sort of toddler/Barney level show to make sense for an autist like him
>He used to recommend it to me so insistently, talking about how cool it was to be a brony and how the show was actually really good
>I thought he was full of shit and just following the latest Tumblr fad or some shit
>Decide that I have nothing better to do and watch it
>*First episode*
>"Wow. That was a lot like old Disney cartoons. I liked it."
>*Second episode*
>"This series isn't too bad. I am actually enjoying it."
>*Three seasons marathonned over two nights straight later*
>"Holy shit! That's amazing!"
>"My favorite pony is Rarity; she is business-savvy as fuck."
>Go full autist and start fanboying over the show, eventually going to /mlp/ and namefagging like a cunt for a year or so
>During that entire year, my depression actually began to calm itself. The show was so colorful and magical for someone with such a bleak view on everything that it actually brought some of the joy back to my life
>Sure, I still had haunting thoughts and couldn't truly be happy, but this was the first time my stomach finally calmed and I could alleviate myself from thinking of nothing but the futility of mortality in literally months
>That's right, it was literally months straight (with no rest at all) that it was tormenting me
>Now it was finally slightly bearable
>I was not happy, just content
>After a year of that though..
>Tastes change, hype wears down, and depression hits hard for a second wind
>This time I was not at college. I had to take a semester off when I literally broke down in tears and begged my father to allow me to live at his house and transfer colleges, remembering all of the thoughts and feelings I had endured during the last few months of college up until recently
>While waiting for my first semester (which would be the second semester for the college) in this new college I selected, close to home, I was working at a retailer
>When depression began to hit again, I once again tried to find any solution I could to fix it
>Eventually working became a slight form of relief, because at least at work I had my mind preoccupied instead of just wandering like at home; at work I didn't have enough time to think (thus I couldn't be assaulted as badly by the horrible thoughts of death once again)
>Though, eventually even work couldn't save me from the crippling depression which creeped back up on me and reminded me how terrible I felt during that initial startup period during the end of college
>Long story short: I found a thread on /mlp/ that was talking about tulpamancy, decided to practice extremely hard to create a tulpa, then eventually did well enough to create a sort of tulpa; the tulpa was more like my subconscious taking form and disconnecting itself from me to create the living personality of the pony I was imagining in an imaginary body that would place itself near me or in slightly appropriate spots
>The tulpa I chose was the pony I hated from the show more than anything for the majority of that year, but ultimately came to need during this time of utter hopeless depression; Pinkie Pie
>I thought about how her one goal in life was to make her friends smile, to make them legitimately happy
>I was skeptical of the concept of tulpamancy at first, but I made it work well enough where I actually had a real life Pinkie Pie by my side through out the day
>Every time I felt slightly down, she would come out and play a joke on me
>She would sing to me when I began to worry or fear, tell me how wonderful I was when I began to doubt myself, and just kept working at keeping my spirits up
>The more I thought about her and the more she showed up, the more real she became
>It got to the point where she ever appeared at work to tell me jokes, listen to how my day had been going, and just generally frolic around and play with the environment around us
>I would listen to her and she would listen to me
>It was not a bad deal, especially because it was the closest thing I found to a form of relief from the depression (though it still nagged at me occasionally)
>Hell, she even became my favorite pony (up from my least favorite) just because I began understanding why she did what she did and how wonderful of a personality she truly had. She was the ultimate selfless pony that did everything, no matter how much she had to sacrifice, to make YOU happy (or in this case, ME)
>Though, the problem that eventually showed itself was the amount of extra effort I had to put out to keep my subconscious (or whatever part of my brain was doing this) far enough disconnected from myself to create a completely different and realistic personality other than myself
>It was so tolling on my mind that I decided to try and take a little break
>I honestly felt terrible, because this creature created from my mind would always try to poke her head out from my head to try to speak to me, but I just found myself too mentally exhausted from days of work to put in the effort to allow her passage into my mental reality often enough
>She kept trying and trying to come out and I would allocate less and less time for her
>Eventually, she just stopped showing up
>I tried to get her to come out, but the best I could do were little imaginary friend versions of her; not even close to as lifelike and real as she was
>Pretty much, I had gotten what I had wanted. She just wanted to come out to play, to cheer me up, but I was often too exhausted to indulge her in her whims
>I wanted her to stay quiet long enough and often enough for me to regain my mental fortitude, which is what she did
>She ended up doing it permanently, likely because I stopped having her out long enough for her to kind of meld back into my mind and cease to be
>She tried so hard for me, did so much for me, and I ended up giving up on her..
>I wish there was a more satisfying end to this, but the truth is that when my depression started coming back again, and I couldn't call on Ponka to help me any longer, I just ended up submitting to it
>It took another half a year or so to finally deal with it enough to not have it be so crippling anymore, but the only way I was able to do that is by desensitizing myself to it
>I've never become happy since, I've just kept myself from feeling anything
>Sometimes I begin to feel the dread once again, but often I just get a "I'll die someday? Yeah.. I guess that's true." type of feeling from it
>It is the same feeling as seeing something disgusting so many times that you just end up not feeling negative feelings towards it after a while (except rarely on a bad day) and instead just see it as a picture (or the truth)
>Do I still wish I could go back to the days when I was happy?
>YES
>Do I think that will ever happen; a day where I can be truly happy again?
>Nope.
>That's just the way it is
>I'm just stagnating emotionally, living day to day, doing work and University work the majority of the time
>I'd like it if it changed, but I'm not banking on it
>So that's me. Nice to meet you, I guess.
>Thanks for listening to my depressing story about the last few years of my life
>I am 21 now, still a nerd, and too tired to write any further
>Sooooo..
>The End, for now

---

>As a sidenote, the reason I started writing my Anon in Pone Prison originally was because I was trying to do something to take my mind off of my chronic depression
>Nowadays, I just don't feel motivated to do anything anymore
>Life's a chore
>Hopefully someday soon I will get the motivation back and begin working on Chapter 2 of that story
>I had really big plans for it after all
>So yeah.. Look forward to that maybe?
>And if any of you have depression or some shit like that, I wish the best for you
>Know that, as briefly described in this story (because a lot more in-depth, non-described, stuff has happened with my depression and me throughout the last few years; just this is the super summarized version), I have been there and know what it's like
>I'd like to say there's a light at the end of this tunnel, but I haven't found it yet sooooo..
>Just know that you're not alone out there
>I'm rooting for ya bud