You Are Not Broken, Just Because These 22 Things Are Your Reality

1. You’re in love with something unobtainable. A place. A person. A career. Maybe a combination of all three.

2. You’re confused about so much. You can’t imagine how relaxing it must be to have your entire life figured out. You don’t have the first clue about what you want.

3. You experience pangs of pain, just by scrolling through social media. You wish you had that woman’s eyebrows. You wish you had that girl’s abs. You wish you had that boy’s heart.

4. Whenever you leave the safety of your house, you feel lost. Like the people around you all have something in common that you’re lacking. Like they’re only pretending to like you out of politeness.

5. You’re the definition of an emotional mess. If someone so much as raises their voice at you, the tears will start to fall. You’re trying hard to appear strong, but the truth is you’re fragile.

6. You’re unhappy with yourself, but you can’t pinpoint why. It’s a cliche, but when you look in the mirror, you don’t know who’s staring back at you. Your reflection feels like a stranger.

7. You feel like no one understands the severity of your pain. The movies and books with ‘relatable characters’ always get it wrong. The feeling isn’t poetic. It’s destructive. Depressing.

8. You yearn for the past, because it was a simpler time. A time when you had the highest grades in your class and had a happy family that was still intact. A time when your worries weren’t so worrying.

9. You have an anxious habit that seems unbreakable. Biting your nails. Twisting your earrings. Scratching your head. You do it whenever you’re nervous, which is all the time.

10. You run away from happiness. It’s because you know the feeling never lasts. If you bring something nice into your life, it’s eventually going to vanish, and then you’ll be more miserable than you were at the start.

11. You never stop texting. And Snapchatting. And Instagraming. You’re the most comfortable when you’re alone in your room, but it’s a lonely place to be. When you use social media, you feel like you have a connection to the world again.

12. You feel better with a beer in your hand. Or when someone’s pouring you another glass of white wine. You’re obsessed with the slight change in your personality that occurs when you’re tipsy. You only wish it wasn’t temporary.

13. You don’t fully open up — even to your friends. You want them to think you’re fun, so instead of telling depressing stories about your week, you switch into jokester mode. You let them think you’re perfectly fine.

14. Television is your savior. There’s that one special show that reminds you that life could be worse. Or that life will get better. Or that life sucks, but you’re not the only one it sucks for.

15. You’ve given your heart to someone that mistreated it and now you can’t quite figure out how to mend it.

16. You have the urge to hit snooze every morning when you wake, because you can never think of a good enough reason to start your day.

17. Deep down, you believe no one wants you around. Even the friends you’ve had for decades. You think they’re just being nice when they invite you out. That they feel sorry for you.

18. You wear all black. It’s not intentional. But whenever you look in your closet, the black outfits just feel right. They fit you better.

19. You cancel plans, even if you were originally excited about them. Sometimes, the thought of leaving the house becomes too much to cope with.

20. You aren’t convinced you deserve love. But you are convinced that you’re going to spend the rest of your life alone.

21. The thought that runs through your head the most often is: What the hell is wrong with me? But you can never come up with an acceptable answer.

22. You’re scared. Scared of people. Scared of the future. Scared of yourself.