How accurate, Snow Patrol.  I don't quite know how to say how I feel, either.

But my behavior is going past being sick and wanting to be curled up, alone in my bed.  I'm being pushed and pulled away from my friends.

It goes beyond the bad days that I had in the beginning of the week, or the bad experiences and conversations that made them so bad in the first place.  It's not the first time this has happened.

It shouldn't be like this.  I shouldn't have to have my friends explode on me on numerous occasions, pointing out every personality flaw and negative idiosyncrasy that makes me a bad friend.  Do I have a right to be hurt, even though there's truth in it?  Should I appreciate that my friends are honest with me or wonder if it's even worth the effort of ever pursuing a friendship, if who I am is not going to be good enough?

A part of me, and maybe it's the bad part, doesn't want to be around them.  I feel heavy judgment in their eyes, as they take my silence as stubbornness, arrogance, or distaste.  Is the fact that my friends think I don't want to be around them a testament to my physical withdrawal, or are they unconsciously trying to push me away?  Do they just tell themselves they're giving me space because secretly they feel I'm not worth the effort?

I don't know.  Maybe this isn't even me talking right now.  I hate to bring this up and never use it as an explanation for my behavior, but I feel that I at least owe whomever reads this a quick description.

I have Seasonal Affective Disorder, a seasonal depression that usually takes hold during winter and is dispelled in early spring (in my case).  It has something to do with the lack of light; my doctor described it to me once, but I hardly paid attention.  My mother has it, as do I.  There are special lamps that you can buy and sitting under them for 15 minutes a day lightens the depression or something.  I've never bothered with those things.

Although my SAD has gotten exponentially lighter since I was first diagnosed in high school, it's still obvious, some days more than others.

Some symptoms, according to the National Center for Biotechnology Information, are:

• Afternoon slumps with decreased energy and concentration
• Increased appetite with weight gain (weight loss is more typical of other forms of depression)
• Increased sleep and excessive daytime sleepiness (problems sleeping are more typical of other forms of depression)
• Lack of energy and loss of interest in work or other activities
• Slow, sluggish, lethargic movement
• Social withdrawal
• Unhappiness and irritability

Like I said, I don't like to use it as an excuse for my behavior, and often times I forget I was ever diagnosed with it.  For someone that's never had depression, it can seem silly.  I know, I've been there before.  But from the inside, it's like a transformation.  You're no longer in total control of yourself.  Something, whether a shift in hormones or drop in body temperature, is sitting inside of you and sometimes it gets a hold on you and takes control.  I'm lucky.  For me, the enslavement lifts once the world gets brighter.  Others don't get off so easy.

Anyway, this isn't about that.  Or, you know what, maybe it is.  But I still feel that I shouldn't have to feel guilty about wanting to make new friends every once in a while.  I shouldn't have to feel like every choice is between keeping my friends or making new ones.  Why can't I do both?  It's not wrong to make friends, and I know that to be a truth.  I hate that all of my choices lately seem to be forced into extremes.  Wrestle or lose my friends.  Be happy or lose my friends.  Stop being who I am or lose my friends.

The truth is that I'm trying every day to be a better person.  I really am.  The more that I try, the more that I find needs to be improved.  I know that I'll never be perfect, or even close, but I wish that for once I could be good enough for someone else.  That my faults weren't so huge that they angered my friends to bursting. 

...Happy Saint Patrick's Day.