My friend Aaron thinks that everything is cyclical. Some people have bad weeks, a bad month; others have bad years. Maybe this is because he doesn’t really believe in karma. In any case, it’s a decent explanation, a better one at least than anything else I’ve come up with.

 I’ve been digging through old journal entries and it scares me how similar I sound from year to year. Take for example, this excerpt from September 16, 2005 at the beginning of my freshman year:

“I’m 18 years old. I got accepted to the best university in the world. And having to go to sleep on my bed in my dorm room - sober and alone - is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do.

It is approaching 3am. I am waking up at 8.

And I’m buying time by writing this entry.

I am *this* close to running Jason’s. And if Grays wasn’t across the Yard, I probably would.

I can’t believe I’m doing this.

Okay, I really need to get my Eeyore back.”

I feel more or less the same way right now, except I have my Eeyore (which my best friend from home, Joanna, gave me right before my departure).

Don’t get me wrong — I’ve changed plenty. But when depression hits, when the going gets tough, I pretty much revert to the same prose. Everything I write is so familiar, everything I feel I’ve already felt before. It makes me wonder how long I’m doomed to repeat this cycle. If Aaron’s right, do I have to wait out the decade? Because I’d really prefer for my bad series of years to not completely ruin college.