anger and regret.

I'm angry with myself.

That is the single biggest reason for my all of my troubles. Most days I can bury it, blaming sickness and anxiety and the poor economy. But I'm angry.

Angry that I wasted all of my potential. I used to be intelligent and hard-working, in gifted and talented classes throughout my elementary school years and in the highest honors class through high school. But even in high school, I got lazy. The game of school was boring to me, a waste of my time. Why study things that didn't matter, only to be tested on how well I can remember them? I never studied in high school; I relied on how well I knew the material overall and the review sessions my peers had during free period.

College was a disaster. I was studying something I wasn't even sure I liked and having to play another game. In my major, they basically set you on a track and you either succeeded the whole way through or fell off. I fell off before I had even started. My grades were terrible because I simply didn't care. It wasn't what I wanted. And besides that, it was the stupidity of school again. We were studying things we'd never need to know, only to be given incredibly difficult tests to see how many hours of our lives we'd wasted remembering and understanding something that didn't matter.

We were set up to get an internship after junior year and a job offer for after graduation. I showed no interest in getting an internship. By senior year, I was struggling to apply half-heartedly for jobs, knowing my GPA wasn't what it should be (or could be) and that in my heart, I didn't want it. Another silly ruse, these interviews were. "Tell us what you know about our company." You're just another accounting firm, with offices here and customers in this sector. That's always what I told them, in so many words, because I really didn't know what else I was supposed to say. I never had any questions, either, because it's all meaningless; I don't really care about what your program for women is about or why you won this award, I just want a job.

But now, I'm just angry and annoyed with myself. I had it easy, so very easy. All I needed to do was show up to class, study this nonsense and push out A's. I know I was absolutely, 100% capable of doing so. Even if I still hadn't been interested in an internship, I'd at least have had a solid academic background for when I interviewed for jobs. I could easily have had a job and at least that part of my life would be under control.

Everyone tells me the past is the past, that I should move on and continue with life. It's simply not that easy. Every day I have to deal with the fact that everyone around me is moving forward, that my accounting classmates are "successful" because they walked down the pre-determined path with ease. Whenever I look for jobs, I'm all too aware of how my past failures are hurting me. Combine that with the fact that I can barely leave this house to spend time with friends, never mind go on interviews, and I am just filled to the brim with regret.

And throughout this whole thing, I've found it's incredibly hard to forgive myself. I spend all my forgiveness on those around me, trying to avoid arguments and swallowing my opinions on things. I have none left for myself.