Essentially, I’m looking for some advice. If anyone has gone through anything similar or can see things from a different perspective than I can, I would be really grateful if you could share your thoughts.

I will try not to go into too much detail as I have a tendency to feel like every little thing is important and should be included! Sorry if this is very long, I haven’t got anyone to talk to about this and it’s just been stored up for so long.

So, a brief backstory: I had a big friendship group in secondary school, but we eventually got split up and I only had 2 friends who then left me for a different friendship group I had issues with. I was by myself for the last year of secondary school, except for my boyfriend who is a year younger than me. I found it very hard to be ‘abandoned’ by my friends but I got through it because all I thought about was getting to uni, which everyone told me would be perfect for me and full of open-minded people just like me who all wanted to make friends. For a variety of reasons (anxiety, lack of motivation, money, my chronic migraines) my whole life had become about my academic performance. I used to write, read, and be a good swimmer and horse-rider but I had stopped doing all these things. I was a high achiever and didn’t have to try very hard to get good grades.

Anyway, I got into uni and was pretty happy. I had, as expressed, high expectations of the kind of experience I would have. My first year was ok, but I made a lot of effort to meet people and make friends and I found people were surprisingly difficult. My confidence was knocked as my two previous friends had ‘left’ me but I did try to make a real effort, and found no one made an effort back, which knocked my confidence even more so I stopped trying. Despite this, I made two friends who I didn’t really get on with very well but I just hung out with them so I wouldn’t be alone. We decided to move in together in second year and find a fourth person to live with to make it cheaper – they then out-voted me and decided this fourth person would be a very awkward, rude and socially difficult guy who I didn’t know. I resolved I would just make a big effort with him, but then one of the girls had a melt down, decided she didn’t like him and was horribly rude to him (when it was too late to get out of living together.)

We separated for summer and I hardly heard from them, but they live 10 minutes from each other so socialised a lot. I sort of put uni out of my mind over summer, and when I came back it was a real shock. To summarise: my bedroom was separate from where all the others were, and I got left out a lot. I tried to speak to my friends about it but they did nothing. I started getting migraines all the time so I got left out even more. I hated my course, my tutors and the other students on my course who were all very quiet, withdrawn and difficult to talk to. I started spending all my time indoors with my boyfriend (which further messed up the dynamics in the house)doing nothing and feeling horrible. I got quite severely depressed. The university was terrible at supporting me and some of my tutors actually made things worse and put me in the position where I found out they’d told me the wrong information about exams two days before I sat them. I tried to complain but was told the complaint would not change my situation and could only lead to procedural reviews if it even went through.

So I withdrew from my uni and started a distance learning course, continuing my degree in Literature. I am still living in the same area, this time with my boyfriend and a flat mate from my first year who I sort of get on with, since he is still attending the uni and I had signed the lease for the house already.

I’ve worked on pulling myself out of depression, and some days I am ok. I find my living environment very unsatisfactory and I dislike living in this area. But I am just finding it ‘impossible’ to make a lot of changes.

I know what would be good for me: I know I need to start waking up earlier, eating better, learn to drive, go to a yoga class or something to meet people, write and read, study for my course, exercise, get tasks done, look for a job.

I constantly feel panicky like everything is getting out of control, so I will make a plan of when to do everything, feel calm, and then ignore the plan. It’s like I’ve got into the routine of panicking, planning, not following the plan, panicking, planning etc. and I guess I’ve taught myself that it’s not very important to get the things on the plan done because I can ‘fix’ it later with a new plan.

But in reality, I’m feeling terrible about myself. I can’t find the motivation to do anything. I’ll sometimes look at my plan and see I have work or something to do and I’ll just be like ‘yeah, I can fit that in later though’ and I’ll just watch tv – then instead of working later I’ll avoid looking at the plan and I’ll just hang out with my boyfriend and watch tv. I am so lonely – but I can’t seem to make friends. I feel like I’m a friendly person, and I just want someone I can spend some time with and talk about life. I’ve tried making friends online, but I can’t find anyone actually just looking for friendship. I know I need to get out and do things to make friends, but then I get so anxious about joining a club by myself or something that I just put it off and put it off – it’s on the next plan or the one after, but I never do it.

My boyfriend is very laid back and doesn’t have a lot of drive to do things. He is happy to stay inside, play games and learn about his interests. A lot of the things he enjoys are solitary: guitar, technology, producing music. He is amazing in lots of ways, very supportive and we get on great. But since we’ve moved in together, I have started blaming a lot of my situation on him since he likes to sleep in late, eat bad things, not exercise, not work etc. – he has his own issues he’s working through. I associated him being there all the time with all the bad things that have happened and the habits that have been created now. But I’ve come to realise really he is just holding a mirror up to me. I allow myself to under perform because I know he won’t judge me or push me. But even knowing that, I still find it’s even more difficult to do things when he doesn’t. I find it hard to wake up in the morning, but because he doesn’t it feels literally impossible to get up when he’s there. When he makes bad diet choices I feel like it’s okay. I say that when I’m by myself I’m much more motivated to do things, and that is true to some extent, but I feel like that is more down to habit and what I subconsciously feel is acceptable when he is or isn’t there. We have been struggling a lot over the past year or so because I feel like he is a negative force in my life, but I’m coming to feel that it’s not him and it’s about what kind of force I let him be in my life.

I hate living the way I am living – I’ll make choices to watch tv, eat rubbish, do nothing with my days. And then I’ll look over what I’ve done and feel horrible about everything, feel like I’ve let myself down and I hate my meaningless life. And then I’ll make the same choices the next day.

I literally can’t understand what to do. I want to make these changes, but for some reason I just -don’t- and that doesn’t make sense to me, I feel like I’m missing something or I’m doing it wrong but I don’t know what to do about any of it. I can’t understand myself or what I’m doing.

Please, if you have any advice please help reply… Thank you.