How Strange is it to be Anything at all

Chapter 1

(3rd-Person)

Feelings are things that have always been a struggle for Samuel. Sometimes his problem was not being able to find the right feeling to mirror how he interpreted events from the outside world. Most of the time, however, the problem was that he had trouble expressing how he felt to others. A happy feeling might be shown as a normal person's day-to-day "okay." An excited might sometimes even get a smile. Most concerningly though, Samuel's sadness didn't manifest in him physically. Sometimes even Samuel forgot he was sad, although that was quite difficult for him, as he had been severely depressed for years. Looking back on it, some times were more difficult than others, but now, as a Junior in college, he had learned somewhat to cope with his feelings, or at least to conceal those feelings of hopelessness and all the other depressing "nesses" from other people. To Samuel, it was draining, the act of keeping one's feelings away from other people, but that was his life. He never wanted to inconvenience another person, get in their way, or take away from them.

To many, being an inconvenience can be upsetting or even sometimes embarrassing. To Samuel though, it was one of the biggest factors of his anxiety and depression. Even breathing in the air around other people made him feel like an inconvenience. Samuel had thought that this could be the root of his problems. Everything he did for himself, while the list would be short, had a negative and depressing aura to Samuel. An example of this would be the apartment he was living in now. While not big, consisting of a cramped kitchenette, a mattress on the floor, a cabinet, and a small bathroom off to the side of the main room, it had sent Samuel into a spiraling depression.

Before his freshman year at Redwood University, he needed to start renting an apartment. The school, a small private school in Northern California, and the only school that Samuel had applied to, on the basis that the application fee was waived, required him to either rent a small apartment or pay out of pocket for student dormitory housing. Redwood University's scholarship, granted in full to Samuel, had covered everything, from tuition to other minor expenses, except for his housing. In a lucky accident of spilling tea on a middle-aged woman in a coffee shop, Samuel had found his apartment. The woman was in her mid-fifties and had been trying to rent out the space for years, but no one would take the space as it was "too small," or "not well-lit enough." When seeing the apartment for the first time, Samuel didn't mind the space, especially as Donna, the woman who owned the apartment room, had offered the space to him for just a little more than five hundred dollars a month. A month and a half later Samuel was moving into the apartment and getting ready for school, being able to afford the space by saving up from working his last two years of high school. Unfortunately, shortly after moving, feelings of dread crept into Samuel, feelings of worthlessness, and undeserving. He felt as if someone else should have been able to live in the apartment or take his place at Redwood University. He thought he didn't deserve any of what he had worked so hard for. This, of course, was due to his years of living with a major depressive disorder. Now two years later and a few weeks into his Junior year, Samuel still felt as worthless, hopeless, and undeserving as ever.

The alarm on his phone went off at nine-thirty am, something Samuel had become accustomed to, although he had already been up for hours. Recently, Samuel had been going to bed early, and waking early. It wasn't something that he particularly liked, but no matter how much sleep Samual got the night before, he was always tired, both mentally and physically. Slowly, Samuel reached for his phone, turned off the alarm, and sat up to stretch. Instead of stretching he sat slumped for another five minutes before truly starting his day. As he did every morning, Samuel got out of bed and went to the bathroom where he brushed his teeth, took a shower, changed, and on some mornings, shaved. After turning on the bathroom light and looking over his facial features, it happened to be one of those mornings when Samuel needed to shave. With normal facial razors scaring him, Samuel resorted to using more feminine facial razors. The sharp end of the razor still unnerved him, however. Not because the razor itself would accidentally nick him or cut off a piece of skin, but more of himself and what he might do with the razor. In the past, somewhat recently too, Samuel had utilized self-harm as a coping method for his depression. Samuel told himself that if he could feel the pain physically, it would help him not have to feel the pain emotionally. Sometimes though, if his depression manifested in a more self-destructive manner, it would become a reminder, one of not being good enough when compared to other people, and a way to show that he didn't deserve what he had. Still looking at himself, Samuel glimpsed over to look at his facial razors and then back at his face and sighed. It was becoming fuzzy, and Samuel hated the look on him. At the moment, Samuel wasn't inclined on his self-harm tendencies, not having been in a deep depressive episode for a while now, picked up the necessary items to shave and got on with it. Looking himself over again in the mirror Samuel decided to finish getting ready by brushing his teeth and taking a shower. After getting changed, Samuel frowned at his small collection of skin care products and skipped the process, something he decided to or not to do daily.