Hi there...

For the last couple of months I have felt extremely down, upset, angry, drained, lonely and pretty much want to give up but i'm struggling to put my finger on why.

To give some background: I've just turned 21 and in my final year at university. I have lived with flatmates since year one and have genuinely loved it (and life) for the past three years. I have always been a very cheery and happy person with a real positive look on life. I consider myself to be extremely lucky and grateful for the family I have who love me including my boyfriend and best friend of 1.5 years.

However, over the course of 2017 I have felt myself fade completely and have now hit rock bottom. I don't fully know what to say as I haven't actually spoken to a single person about this issue through the whole year but I’ll try describe what's going on…

I studied in Canada aug-dec 2016 and fell in love with Toronto and think returning to a routine life in Jan hit hard. I was miserable after returning home but assumed I just missed the Canadian way however, looking back I can see now I never was the same.

Summer was stressful with my waitressing job, we were understaffed (we're talking 1 waitress to about 70 customers) and lacked management and the place was not a nice environment. Anyways, I was struggling and would spend most nights awake, crying and unable to turn-off from the stress of work.

Even with a new job (which I enjoy) I have found myself increasingly distant from my peers, loosing friends and arguing with my boyfriend over ridiculous issues that I think my feelings blow out of proportion. I picked a current and exciting topic for my dissertation however, my advisor is an over-confident, arrogant, and just quite nasty man who has totally knocked my confidence since scrutinizing and laughing at my work on many occasions.

Since this, I have become completely disengaged with my uni work, unable to even read a whole passage, too nervous to write coursework and feeling completely overwhelmed with it all. This is showing in my grades and I am struggling to keep my head above the water with the workload and pressure from my advisor. I can’t bring myself to tell my parents as they'll just worry and my boyfriend has enough things to stress about without this weight on his shoulders also…what 21 year old wants a miserable girlfriend? I’m stressed about failing my final year and disappointing so many people, I’ve put on weight and can’t bare to even look at myself some days which has ruined my social life as I don’t have the confidence to leave my flat sometimes. I struggle to sleep and so have turned to cannabis however, I am fatigued and drained throughout the days. I cry most days however no one would know as I smile and continue to be there for everyone else's problems, they're all clueless about mines...

I have not yet been diagnosed with depression, I don’t even know if this is what depression is? I’ve never felt this low and I did just contact the uni about counselling as I have been dealing with this completely alone for months now however, they say there’s a waiting list of at least 6-8 weeks just for the assessment. I just don’t know what to do anymore as am on the brink of dropping out of uni but I feel like I cannot burden anyone in my life with these worries.

I'm sorry for the ridiculously long post but feel like everything in my life is an issue at the moment and I worry about when i'm going to burst.