I'm pretending not to know that I'm going to start my professional life several thousand dollars in the hole. It really depresses me.

This is the norm for collage students. Look at it as an investment, it will be worth it over the long run. Do you think you'll ever buy a house? Probably right, so you'll borrow money for that also right, but you'll think to yourself at least I am saving rent and over the long run I will make money on the house plus it's MY house and I can do with it what I want. So all in all owing and paying off the mortgage will seem worth the debt, right.

So look at your student loans as a mortgage that will pay off over time, it sucks to be in debt but being in debt for value adding items like education and your home is a whole lot better than being in debt for TV, cars, and other material items that just lose value over time (no offence to you free senders out there!)

AS an example and I will not mention some actual dollar amount here but someone I know, a great looking and funny guy by the way, got kicked out of school at 16, worked full time and learnt a trade made reasonable money for the area but at 25 decided to head off to University as a mature student (he hated that term, 25.... mature!!!!????). Probably racked up $40,000 in loans. It's now only less than 6 years since he graduated and all the loans are paid, he makes 4 times what he did in the job he quit to go to Uni and it would be a lot easier for him to find another job if her was laid off. Does he think it's worth it. HELL YEAH!

(Now the job doesn't necessarily make him happy as such but that's a whole other thread)

Thank you. I hope so to. I love that man more than anything in this world, can't and don't want to imagine a world without him in it.

Is your dad ok? What kind of chemicals?

I'm pretending not to know that I just ate waaaay over my calories for the day, even though I ate tons of veggies.

I'm pretending not to know that I'm probably overly excited and look like a dork because I finally made a cool friend in this little stink-town!  It has been so long since I've had any real friends.

I'm pretending not to know that I want to know more about that, like how slippery and how far the drop?

Well you are not alone as you have all your veg web friends, many who have gone through the same experiences as you and have survived and are still here. I find for myself looking back at some things I have gone through they always seem so serious when I was going through them and so silly after they have passed. So I would just try to get through one day at a time. The best solution I found was to see how I could help someone else who was having troubles as this would tend to cause me forget my own. I would be so depressed that I would have to force myself to get off my butt and do this but it always was a relief. Maybe you could start by sharing with some of the people who are having troubles here at veg web. There seems to be many here who would be benefitted by your experiences.

I know what it's like, without the added posh school pressure.  I was completely surprised upon graduation that things worked out.  There are other people here who have been there or are still there in a similar place.  The common demoninator is that they're fiesty.  You might be many time zones away from family, but vegwebbers are from a wide range of time zones.  I think yabbitgirl is close to yours.  I don't think that there's anything that I can say to make it better, but I can say that I look forward to your posts and I'm happy you're here.

I'm pretending not to know that almost all of this applies to me and that I'm just now fully realizing it:

Wassernixe - don't let it get you down. Learning disabilities make life harder, but it's not insurmountable. My sister has dyslexia - she's an actress and a drama teacher, with an abiding love of Shakespeare. I have dyscalculia, which makes it nigh impossible for me to learn to read music, and I still manage to do classical singing.

Think of it this way: You have to work a little... a lot... harder than some people, but that just makes the rewards even better in the end.

Thanks for the support. I don't know what it could be though. And I'm a senior in college with a relatively decent GPA. It must be minor, because the only things that I have SERIOUS problems with are spelling, reversing letters, reversing numbers, being unable to do simple math, having a horrible time understanding directions like "normal" people, understanding the concept of time, telling R from L and organization (even though I am weirdly organized in my own 'special'  disorganized way). The first few are solved by me never writing anything by hand, thank you spell check, I'm an English major so no math, I stay after class and get my professors to explain the directions to me, the rest I just live with, and the way I approach things totally different than everyone else makes me really good a interpreting texts in unique ways. So maybe I'm just worrying about this for no reason.

I'm just probably being a silly hypochondriac again.