Rightio, guys! Welcome to my world! It's great in here, albeit the landscapes may appear a little cerebral and neurotic sometimes. I lead the fine young life of an Irish student. Yes, student life is... well, chaotic. Effective organisation is always precluded by the necessities of student life (i.e. sleeping erratic hours, inconsistently meeting inconsistent deadlines, and an all-round simultaneous lack of planning and spontaneity). I am doing what I love (that's binge-reading on metaphysics and critical theory and writing highfalutin essays on it all), and even if it doesn't make me happy, that's okay, because I'm doing the right thing with my life right now. Clarity helps.

Happiness (whatever it is) is a thoroughly overused term these days. Why on earth should I be happy just because I have everything and my life is pretty darn good?! 'Erm... perhaps because you have everything and your life is pretty darn good...?' This is called circular reasoning, a logical fallacy. In fact, the entire pursuit of happiness in itself is both illogical and pointless. For a fact, nothing makes me happy. Ought I be stricken now by an avalanche of guilt? Not really. It's okay to feel whatever you feel and it is absolutely ridiculous to feel what someone else (or society, in fact) tells you to feel, because that's even more absurd that not feeling good, when life's good. In fact, the pursuit of happiness makes people depressed, because it's cheating logic and breaking down the faculties we rely on to make clear distinctions between things!

I like my life. I don't like my depression. I live life with depression. I do not live a depressed life. When I am really depressed I am not living my life, but this has nothing to do with my life and everything to do with my depression. It is important when I am very depressed to never wish my depression to end, because this would mean ending my life. And I like my life. It is much more likable than my depression. It only makes sense to say, then, that I like my life more than I can ever dislike my depression, because depression requires life in order to exist and wishing my life to end because it will end my depression is completely absurd, because it denies the origin of depression, which is not life, but absurdity. Yes, depression is absurd, but life is not and in order to affirm what is true and meaningful (i.e. the fact that depression is absurd) we must affirm life.

Of course, it may appear to be problematic when philosophers say that life is absurd and melancholia is a natural reaction to the absurdity of life. This may be true (and if it is it becomes difficult to distinguish depression from life), but even these philosophers find a way of affirming life, even if only in spite. For Camus, absurdity must be affirmed because our lucidity is the basis of all that we have. According to him, we must continue to push the boulder up the hill knowing it will fall back down, because acknowledging the pointlessness of this task liberates us to accept it. For Kierkegaard, it is defiance: rejection of help or escape which gives us strength to be our own and endure. For Nietzsche, life, suffering and all the tragedy in the world must be relished in order to rise above the adversity of slavery and become masters of ourselves through strength and creativity.

I'm in a long distance relationship for 8 months but we've known each other for 3 years. Recently my BF told me that he is confused about the relationship and he's not sure he wants to be in one. Everything was going very well. I would go visit him and he'd visit me. We talked everyday, texted all the time & Skype. He'd tell me he loved me all the time & that he missed me (when we were apart). Memorial Day weekend we went camping with friends of his and we had a good time. I came home and about 3 weeks after he went MIA. He was distant. Out of the blue on Wednesday he tells me he's not sure he wants a relationship or be in one. He still wants to talk. I started searching anxiety online and found there's a thing called relationship anxiety. He does suffer from anxiety. When I read the symptoms of this type of anxiety it fit him perfectly. My question is how do I handle the situation, how can I help him? Or should I let him be so he can decide wether or not he does want to be with me. I love this guy to death so I'm crushed about this. It's hard to let go.

so my boyfriend of a year and a half has bipolar disorder. We've broken up and fought many times over the past but everything always goes back to normal once he's done with that particular cycle. I know it sounds awful to go through but I am willing to and it is worth it to me. I'd never hold it against him because I've done my fair share of learning about the disorder and I know that he can't help it. I love him and I want to see him happy and I know I make him happy it's just when he gets moody it's always me. And I know that when he doesn't know what's wrong he's going to take it out on the person closest to him which is me, and I know I can't do anything about it, and that sucks. We've talked about his disorder before and he realized that I'm the only one who's there for him.

Now getting to what's going on right now, we hadn't fought in two months and everything was perfect and I knew that it was long overdue for him to go through a depressive, angry or manic cycle. Last Sunday I saw him and everything was fine, then that night when he was working he texted me and told me he was depressed, I know better than to ask him why or what's wrong so I just told him that if he needs me I'm here but if he needs his space I understand. He told me that he needed some space he just didn't want to have to say it, so we didn't talk because I wanted to respect that he needed space. On valentines day, that tuesday, I didn't want to waste my card so I drove the hour to see him and I put it on his doorstep and I left, as to not bother him. In the middle of the night he sent me a long text saying how he needs someone more mature and how I'm too negative and how he wants to break up. I'm neither of those things. He said he's on a path to self discovery as well. After we talked about that I asked if he got my card and he said yes and no, that he got it but he didn't read it, he hid it from himself in case he has a change of heart like he does other times with the things I give him when stuff like this happens.

We didn't talk all week and then today, Saturday, I don't know why but I had to say how I felt. So I sent him this long thing about how I felt and he was really nasty about it (which I was expecting). I just needed him to think about what he's doing. Also all week he has been tweeting all these sad song lyrics or he sounds happy. And in the past he's seemed happy and he would be out with his friends having a good time and not talking to me but that's expected and he'd always come back. The last time I told him how I felt and how his bipolar disorder was affecting me (because he knew he was bipolar he just had no idea what it meant) he got really angry at first but he called me later and told me that I was right and that he was sorry.

Everyone I've tried talking to about this just tells me I need to tell him to go on medication. He's tried it and doesn't like it and it's not my place to push him to do so. I know the real reasons he's upset are because he's a 20 year old boy who thinks his life is over because he hasn't started college yet, and I've been trying to help him to go to college, and I'm in no way trying to hold him back. I know he's just going through a cycle and he's not being himself right now and all of the other times he's always come back. It's just never lasted this long. I know it can't be the same every time but I just wanted to see some other opinions.

For now I just know I need to give him the space he needs and respect that and hopefully he'll come back sooner or later. I've been told I should leave him countless times by others but that's not what I want to do in the least bit.

Opinions? Advice?

I'm a 16 year old girl. I never bit anyone as a kid or anything like that. I have been diagnosed with OCD, Severe Clinical Depression, and a Generalized Anxiety Disorder. I am on medication for those things. But I have been having the urge to bite things lately. It doesn't matter what mood I'm in. I just randomly have the urge to bite things. I mostly bite myself; I could never bite another person. Yes, I have been self-harming for a little over 4 years, so maybe it's just another form of self-harm, but it's getting pretty bad. The bite marks last about a half hour. I've only broken through skin once. What is going on with me..why am I biting all of a sudden...

I have been wondering this for a while now. Ever since I was little, my Mom tried to fit in with her boy friend's life style. The guy could have been a raging alchoholic, who was a complete ass(most of them were) and she would stay with him, no matter what. Last year, I told my mom that my step brother had been sexually abusing me for a little over two years. When I told her, she at first seemed shocked and had called him in the room with my step dad. They kicked him out of the house for two days; during those two days, my mom didn't talk to me, yet alone speak to me. She began making me feel guilty for getting in trouble, and even tried bribing with my graduation dress for my 8th grade ceremony. I eventually gave in, and they moved him back in. I was forced to live with him for six months, until I ran away to my dad's house. The thing that I have had trouble coping with is how she could have just turned away from me. It hurts so much. I would have maybe understood if she was a dad, since they don't really go through the pregnancy and the pain mothers feel. I have just have had the hardest time grasping how my mom could have just left me like that. She told I could tell her anything. Why would she have done that? I'd like to assume she just has some mental illness that she had never told me about, but maybe she just didn't care what happened to me.