Internalizing.

    I've been told often enough that I complain about life/the world/whatever, which at least to me, implies that I blame the world for sucking. I'd find this hilarious if it didn't piss me off so much. I keep hearing that depressives have an "external locus of control;" that is, they feel like their lives/selves are controlled by external forces. I can't be the only depressive who feels like this is wrong.
    I don't believe that the power to control my life is in external forces. I believe that the power is in my hands... however (from my depressive thinking), they are too weak to actually wield it. Moreover, every failure hits as proof of inherent worthlessness. For example, if I procrastinated on a major assignment yet again, my thinking hasn't been "oh, I need to figure out a system so I get better about how I do large assignments," it's "I'm such a horrible person, I fail at everything, *commence self-loathing word vomit.*"

    I don't externalize, I internalize. I take things too personally and too deeply.

    What got me thinking about this initially was it being pointed out to me that I legitimately have situational matters that would drag me down. I work a job that I have to work at to stay half-way positive, I don't have much in the way of emotional support (or even just human interaction), I'm broke enough that I can't do what I want to do, including having to keep scaling back the scale of my travels this semester off, I'm out of shape, I lack a lot of the skills I wanna have... these are all largely things I have control over changing, but at the same time, this is where I am here and now. And aspects of it suck.
   
     Point being: I see myself get down, and calling it failure to get past depression, and feeling like I'm a hopeless person because I'll never actually break out of it. But there are forces that I haven't stopped yet (though I potentially could, in theory) that keep trying to pull me down. So of course I'm not going to suddenly become a ray of sunshine. And yes, I need to keep working on things like neutralizing self-loathing thoughts... but  I also need to keep things in perspective. I need to keep certain flaws and negative situations as more surface issues instead of reflecting major character flaws, and start working on them.

    Flaws like the fact that I really need to work on how I organize these posts. .... It's meant to be stream of consciousness! That's my excuse, and I'm sticking to it! Until I get better and I can point back and laugh at myself.