The one in which I dwell on dwelling.

I think with depression comes a certain kind of paranoia. (Well, maybe this is just me, I'm not an expert.)

It's like this: Your best friend makes a comment about not wanting to date a guy because he isn't a virgin. She doesn't know about particular things in your past, but you immediately feel if she did, she would drop you.

I know depression is as much biological as it is mental. Biologically, there are certain chemicals that do not work properly or don't get produced enough, or whatever it is, that makes people predisposed to feelings of depression. But mentally, there's the dwelling on things. For me, those things are generally my past. So finding out that something I've done is so undesirable to someone I care about leads me to take this thing I've been dwelling on and bottle it up. Out of fear of them leaving, out of fear of humiliation, out of fear of ridicule, out of fear of damnation. And even if they've never given any inclination that something I may have done in my past is despicable to them, the fears are still there. I was willing to do this and I find it awful. How will they react?! I tell myself.

Sometimes, I seek out people who will excuse the things I've done merely because they have also done them. Which is just probably just as bad for me as feeling pre-judged by my peers because these people also tend to encourage my badness.

So that's the thing I'm struggling with at the moment. It's almost ridiculous because I understand that my friends will love me, even if they don't condone what I do. But it's like my brain doesn't want to get with that. It takes willpower that I don't have right now to overcome those nagging fears.