I love to swim. On some days all I want to do is be around a pool and swim until I can no longer move. Some days the only thing I can think about is how nice it would be to feel the water, so I'll decide I'm going to go to practice that day and I will help teach swim lessons after, and for the day it will be wonderful. I'll get out of the water feeling exhausted and content, ready to do it again the next day. The days I want to swim, I have energy.

Then there are other days when the only reason I go to the pool is so my coach doesn't yell at me. I make it through the work out simply because I don't want to feel like a disappointment to my coaches or my team mates. I avoid them in the locker room on those days and usually go home with tears in my eyes, not wanting to see another pool for months. Sometimes I stay like that for a few days at a time, weeks even, until again I get the bright and strong desire to be near water and I gain motivation from a taxing work out instead of feeling destroyed.

I don't know why I can't find a median between the two. I don't understand why I can't love the pool everyday, or hate it everyday.

I have a problem with people. I'm shaking from writing this post currently because even though I write in a journal almost daily, I never write as an overview. I never share what I don't think people will understand or care about. When I'm with a group of people for more than an hour or so, I feel the need to leave the room. I don't necessarily get anxious, I just no longer want to be there. I've had times when I'm with four or five very good, friendly acquaintances, and I'll walk out without saying anything, without a cause besides wanting to be away from them. And not even to be away from them necessarily, because sometimes one will follow and that will be just fine. I thought I was just shy until I began realizing that these were good friends that I trusted perfectly fine when dealing with them one-on-one. Then suddenly mixing a few together and i feel fidgety and restless and uncomfortable.

Sometimes I feel like I'm manipulative. I can't describe how, but I know I am. I do things like crack over a situation that doesn't mean a thing. Example: My boyfriend forgets to call when he says he would. My Response: I feel a grudge against him as if him forgetting to call means he doesn't care about me, then will continually act sour against him for the remaining time I'm with him even after he apologizes profusely. When I think about it later, I think how stupid it was and how terrible I made him feel about such a little thing.

And I do things like this to everyone-- I'd like to believe I learned it from my dad and didn't just start doing it on my own. He has behaviors and periods where he behaves very similar to me. But just like with me, it's only on certain days. I still remember the time when he tipped our dinning room table over to clear it off just because my sister had been eating on the couch and spilled on her shirt. He didn't clean it up-- just told her and everyone else to sit at the table and eat. Other days he's charismatic and nice and I am so grateful to have him as a father. I have to wonder if other people feel the same way about me. And if they did, I'm pretty sure I'd deserve it because I do blow some things way out of proportion and make people feel terrible about something that doesn't matter.

I've come to realize that the days I get on everyone's case are also the days I don't have the energy to be near a pool. It's like I've created a coping mechanism; by criticizing everyone I see, I can avoid feeling pathetic about my own situation. I don't want to end up like my dad, diagnosed with Manic Depression at the age of 56. But I'm not sure what's wrong, so I don't know how to fix it. I keep telling myself, "You will go to the pool tomorrow no matter how You feel and You will enjoy it, dammit. Suck it up." But things like that only make me feel even more compelled to stay home.

How do I fix something when I don't know what's wrong?