I'm back from the dead again - I often seem to say that every several month period. I've been struggling again with my mental health - even though it's not roommate-induced this time, or anyone else - mostly just self-induced now that I'm living on my own, further away from my partner and trying to re-figure things out.

I've learned that I have a very dependent personality. While I enjoy my time alone at times, and sometimes yearn for time and space away from people. And my roommate situation has especially flipped the script and pushed me even further from people - more misanthropic, as my goblin brother likes to say.

Although I've long been known as a huge extrovert and extremely social person, my identity has been undergoing a lot of changes with my latest experiences with other people. I now generally dislike people, when I used to generally like them. I look for negative qualities to stay away from people, when I used to only see the good and would say yes at any opportunity to hang out or help out or anything. I've been burning more bridges than making new ones, and I've really struggled to figure out where I lie now on this weird spectrum between introvert and extrovert. People tire me out when I'm around them, but when I'm alone, I can't function and become depressed.

And this is hurting my partner. My erratic mood changes, my dependency on his presence and how I can no longer operate when I'm not around him. I'm dysfunctional on my own and can't see a path forward when he's not around.

It's why I picked to study abroad in Norway and spend an extra year studying in college, instead of graduating in four years as originally planned. I want to develop myself as my own person, to figure out my own goals in life without letting myself let someone else lead the way. Even though my partner is a wonderful person, and I'm so lucky to be with him, I want to give myself a chance at the steering wheel, without constantly asking him to take over on my behalf.

I don't trust myself anymore to make decisions on my own, and I'm just so exhausted by who I've become. I feel like I'm an empty shell of a human, and I just want to go back to the person I feel like I used to be, the full human who had so much hope and dreams and just felt like I had a lot more of a solid grasp on reality and on life, instead of drifting through it as I've been doing lately after the trauma of 2022.

I Googled this recently, because even though I'm supposedly in a safer place now and away from people who could hurt me, I still feel unsettled in my own skin. I feel uncomfortable, even though this is everything I've been seeking.

I found this really neat quote from a book I've been reading (although I didn't quite get to this section, this is from a website), "Traumatized people chronically feel unsafe inside their bodies: the past is alive in the form of gnawing discomfort.... They learn to hide from their selves." -Bessel van der Kolk, The Body Keeps The Score

• Moqueca