Frustration and Depression

They always say that life is all about ups and downs, good days and bad days. There might come a day in which you feel like you are on the top of the world, and there might come a day in which you feel like everything is going so wrong. But sometimes, both can happen in the same day. Sounds bad, no?

I have always believed that everything in this world happens for a reason, and that god is wise enough to know the best for you. You might face an extreme frustration when you do not achieve something you have been working hard on, or having the thing you have worked hard on taken away.

I have always believed that god knows your future and knows what is the best for you, and nothing is taken away from you unless it has a bad reflection on your future. You might be depressed for a day, two, or even for a week. But at the end, you will realise that god has taken this specific thing you wanted or had for a reason, because if it happened or stayed, then it would have harmed you later on.

I am speaking from experience and from a recent frustration. What happened with me? I am a teenager programmer and I have worked hard and practiced for such a long time to enter the biggest programming contest in my country. I have entered the contest and got qualified to compete in the finals. The top four winners in the finals are chosen to join the international championship and compete worldwidely, and which is a dream for any programmer.

Everything sounds so good until now, right? Anyway, I have continued practicing and worked really hard to achieve what I thought is impossible months ago. The final contest came and the 3-hour duration clock started ticking. Within the first hour, I was able to solve all the questions and I got the 1st place out of all.

Getting the 1st place out of professionals and people who are older than me and have a wider experience, is an outstanding achievement. My feeling in that moment could be described as one of the best feelings in the world. But not until I made one little mistake that caused me a lot. I have sent the answers of two questions to a friend of mine in order to submit them and at least get a better ranking.

Not too much until I have refreshed the scoreboard (standings) and I have noticed that I have been dismissed from the contest and banned from the rankings. They checked the submissions and noticed that my submission is the same as my friend's. So bad, I know.

At that time, I tried every possible way to contact the administrator to explain my situation and try with him to get back into the contest, but with no success. He accused me of cheating and illegally assisting a contestant. There was nothing to do but to feel really terrible, frustrated, disappointed, and depressed.

I have never had such feeling since a very long time, and even though it was just a contest, an non-important activity as some may call, but it was somewhat really important for me because I worked hard on it and I felt pretty oppressed. I felt angry at my friend because he was the one who kept begging me to send him the answers, and disgusted from myself because I did not think of such a thing that could happen, or maybe because I thought of it for a second but did not care much.

I consider what happened to me as a lesson, and I truly believe that this lesson is for me for some reason. Maybe if I was qualified then something bad would have happened to me, or maybe something else would have got ruined. But after all, I believe that god is very wise and everything that he does is for a reason.

In my case, I have not lost anything but I felt this bad because I was on the top and then to the bottom in a very short period and suddenly. Maybe if I was not doing well in the contest and then this happened, then I might have not cared about it at all.

Hopefully you have learnt something from my experience. I am at the moment much better and I am positive that better things are coming soon. If there was only one thing to take from this story, is that your future has been written since the day you have been born. If you want to regret what happened in the past, then remember that you can not change it. If you want to worry about the future, then remember that you can not know it. What you can do, is enjoy the moment and not worry or be upset about anything.

Have a wonderful life and keep smiling :)

Author's Note

I am a non-native English speaker, so please ignore any grammar problems (if any occurs).