For once, you're going to have an instantaneous answer to your comment. The reason is that, right now, I'm videoconferencing with some American people for a big freelancing project. When I say "big", I really mean it; it's the kind of project that could pay for all my studies and another five years of good living after that. It's just... Whoa.
That's pretty much all that happened during the holidays; I helped a webradio with their website, then their hoster told me they liked my style, asked me if I could do a small script for them; I did the script, and suddenly I received an email in my mailbox saying "Hey, I heard you were an awesome PHP programmer. Would you like to take part in a wonderfully complex project within a short deadline?". I, of course, said yes. I like challenges. And I hadn't done a freelancing contract for six months, so it'd be a good start back on the rails of professional programming.

Apart form that, I'm revising for my exams as well. And I'm going to France tomorrow evening to see my grandparents & father. That's pretty much all my holidays. Pretty boring, eh? The great side is, I'm getting paid to work.

For maths, I'm sure you can manage. You're certainly bright enough to manage De Moivre and Vectors? You don't mean vectorial translations in complex planes, surely. Not that it's hard, mind you; it's just loads and loads of calculations.
Either way, as usual, if you need help on anything, let me know. I'm good when it comes to explaining maths, partly because I'm one of the moderators on a french maths forum

As for Apocalyptica, their songs are so... strange. You can't exactly say why, it's just different. Atypical. Innovative. And it's not just because they use cellos. When you hear Quutamo or Path, or even No Education, there's a kind of thing behind the music. It's weird; music is stronger than words.

There are two songs that I'd like you to listen to. A new band for you to discover, too: within temptation. The song from them is very sad, though; it related quite well to something that happened recently. Someone deceived me again, recently. I might've mentionned something earlier on about someone who tried to use me to gain an edge in programming; well, it's that same person. And this time, I won't forgive. The song is called Angels. Plus, it fits so well with the rest of my life, it's incredible.
The second one is, unfortunately, not that happier. More of a mix between happy and sad, really. It immediately came to mind about six hours ago, when I was working on that project (4 hour visioconference to discuss one of the mess that a team-member made. The guy got fired on the spot for it, too), and some of the other guys seem to think that I'm a genius, that I'm hyper-smart, hyper-intelligent, and a very nice guy, apparently. It troubles me to hear that, simply because I'm not used to such compliments; and it makes me feel that some people really killed me, a few years ago, right up to the point of not knowing what I'm worth, or how I should feel about some of the things I do (I coded a website. Alone. In six hours. A massive website. And that's just freaking insane, even with 8 years of PHP experience). It's just... I don't know; as though I fell in the wrong kind of circle.
The song is All the Clowns, by Edguy. And as for the lyrics, they're pretty self-explanatory.

As for university stuff, I've got an excellent piece of advice for you: aim high. Don't think "they won't accept me" before you try, seriously. I got this advice from my philosophy teacher at my old school, and it never failed me when it came to uni. I would be in Aberdeen, if it wasn't for that piece of advice.
And just so that you know:
- Aberdeen: #117 in the country for physics (400 years of experience)
- Bristol: #2 in the country for physics (110 years of experience).

I'm pretty pissed off, I just lost half of the comment I wanted to write. Nevertheless, I'll try to remember it all.

Complex numbers are not that hard once you get your head round the two-dimension bit. I'd go as far as to say that I do not see why people have problems with complex numbers, yet can cope with vectors very easily. They're both the same thing: matrices. The rules are always the same, yet, somehow, complex numbers bug people a lot more.
Since you probably have not seen this, let me tell you something which might help you a lot (or hinder you, depending on whether you know what I am talking about or not): a complex number behaves like an exponential. That's Euler's theorem, by the way: e^(ia) = cos(a) + isin(a). Which can then be used to write complex numbers, using a very short-hand method. All the properties apply. For example, e^(ia) * e^(ib) = e^(i(a+). (e^(ia))^b = e^(iab) (De Moivre's theorem). And others. It's really, really useful, especially when dealing with physical problems (phasors, tensors and oscillators are all expressed using complex numbers - or, should I say, complex matrices).
By the way, you know, maths pretty much is indoctrination anyway. When you get down to multivariable calculus, you'll see how painful it is to just learn stuff. People will start telling you "Yeah, grad = (d/dx, d/dy, d/dz)", get used to it, but will mention that the laplacien (grad squared) is not (d^2/dx^2,d^2/dy^2,d^2/dz^2) without proving it. Nor will they mention the fact that anti-grad is a line integral. Life isn't much better at uni, trust me! Overall, if you're intelligent enough, you start to understand maths stuff on average 6 months after having learnt them. Sometimes less, sometimes more. The easiest to understand is actually integration; it's so freaking easy. The hardest to understand was (at least for me) the vectorial cross-product, until I actually saw where it came from - it's a matrix scalar product.
(Trig laws are fun! Well, once you have a context for them, anyway)

You know, you're talking to someone who has cut all ties to his former acquaintances (I won't ever dare call them friends) when going to uni. However, when I think about it, university just is a different kind of prison. Different people, same atmosphere. You'll see, it's not much better in the higher stratas of education.
By the way, which universities are you thinking of applying to? Will you stay in the USA or go elsewhere?

As for the discovery, it's not a discovery as such, more of a correlation. Whatever people told you about the radius of an electron, it's bullshit. The radius of an electron is not static; it's variable. We cannot know a value for it because of dear old Heisenberg (which seems to pop up in random places). Heisenberg stated that if an entity possesses different properties, then the error in measurement of one increases as the error in measurement of the other decreases; in other words, there's a threshold in the measurement accuracy of the radius of a particle, with regard to its wavelength. An electron might have zero radius (which is my assumption, since a photon has zero radius), or it might have as much as the accepted value. If it has zero radius, the whole of the world is built on void. Electrostatic contact (tactile feelings, in other words) are made by repulsions from electrons. If an electron is zero-dimensional, then this tactile feeling is made virtual. The world is, therefore, virtual, since light shares the same property. Weird, isn't it?

...Now I am seriously amazed. Out of the billions of songs out in the real world, you picked my favorite classical piece of music. Either it is just an insane coincidence, or there's something behind the choice. Need I say more about my liking of Moonlight Sonata?
(I discovered this sonata by accident. I'm not generally a fan of classical music - or rather, was not. I tend to prefer baroque. This piece, along with the one piece that is known by everyone but at the same time alien to most: Ravel's Bolero)

You know, university work might sound daunting - it isn't. I'm doing a joint honours, and one of the hardest, yet I am only overworked every three or four weeks. It's due to formal reports, mostly; those nightmare-of-a-homework entropic beasts. We have to spend five hours in the labs each week, doing an experiment. And every month, we have to do a formal write-up of the whole experiment, of at least 5000 words. So far, I never got below a first when it comes to marks in them, though. And most of the experiments actually worked - with the exception of a slight hiccup in proving the Black-body radiation law.

On that note, I think I will have to go. It's already 1am and I'm supposed to be on holiday!
But first... yet another song. One that you might like, for all its complexity and style: En Vie (it's based off another track, named Quutamo). And another one, which might not replace the Moonlight Sonata, but still hold some musical strength: What kind of love, by Avantasia.

Actually, talking about classical music, have you ever listened to Apocalyptica? I'm sure you'd like it. It's neoclassical (some people even think it's metal, but it's much more than that): a band that originally started by covering Metallica using four cellos. And then, they changed (for the better): they started making their own songs. Three of their most magnificent songs are Path (vol. 1, because the singer's voice in vol. 2 doesn't match the cellos), Hope (vol. 2, with the singer this time), and No Education.

The famous De Moivre's theorem? You're already doing complex numbers? I'm impressed. Honestly impressed. I thought that kind of stuff was for the year above, in the American system. If it's the de Moivre theorem I'm thinking about (e^iab = (cos(ab)+isin(ab)) where e^iab is a complex number), then you're not far away from having all the necessary knowledge in maths to understand much more complex stuff - heck, you could even follow some of the stuff I'm doing right now with a bit of patience. Most of physics is based on complex numbers, anyway; well, complex numbers and fun differential equations.
And you said you were doing de Moivre's theorem as though it was a joke; it's just...pah, I give up trying to put words on my thoughts. All you have to get from this part of the comment is that I'm highly impressed. As usual, might you say; however, very few people impress me, normally.
On a side note, have you tried proving De Moivre's theorem from the ground up? It's fun, and if you do prove it, you'll never forget it. It's just like Fourier transforms, once you know where the theorem comes from, it never goes away.

You know, when you talk about making a mark on people, it's the same thing I was referring to. However, it's a bit more complex than that. At the same time, I want to be as unnoticeable as possible - hence the habit not to stare at people in the streets, or to always look out for weird details in life - but, on the other hand, it strikes me as very depressing when I know that even if I suddenly go missing tomorrow, very few people will notice. I could almost be sure to say that only my tutor in physics will realize that I'd have gone missing; the others wouldn't care. Such is the world, in a way.
Don't pay too much attention to the unhappy tones in this comment, by the way. I'm in one of those "the world might very well not exist and it bugs me" mood; and it's all due to a discovery in physics. I could explain to you what it is, and I'm certain you'll understand, but I don't want to trouble you with yet another doubt on the world. It'd be unfair on my part.

You know, you don't have to add songs to comments. I just do so because the songs actually have a link with what I said. In all honesty, I don't trust words; words can lie, words can be twisted, and words can be destroyed. However, the tune of a symphony is often as clear as water. And today, I would like you to discover a band named Avantasia, along with another unknown band, named... Within temptation. The song I just linked is one of the most beautiful songs I've ever heard; there's a story behind it, too. But... now is not the time for stories.

P.S: holidays? Do you want to see what I call holidays? I have a total of 12 books to master for the exams, an electronics project to finish, and a dissertation to write. I'll manage, though; I always do. You'll see, when you get to uni, life'll seem to be mostly work, but you'll always pull through that work with flying colours, no matter which work it is. It's just... it's not adapted for people like us; university is dumbed down for most of the real population to actually manage. Sometimes, though, I'm caught on the bad side of this dumbing-down: pure coursework questions. Those are the things I hate, and it's why I hate thermodynamics.
That said, I think I will have to go now. I haven't had any food for the whole day, and if I don't hurry, the Hiatt Baker UBU shop will close, which means I will not have any kind of food for tomorrow or today.

Happy birthday, by the way. A bit late, I know, and I hope you're not too angry about it. I tend to forget important dates

Things? I'm stuck doing a thermodynamics problem sheet at 2 in the morning, and it's not looking good. I still hate parts of that subject because it's all about repeating lecture notes.

As for the rest, life's awful, as usual. Life hates me at the moment, but that's only because I'm an idiot. I should really know better than to trust on the honesty of people; one of my only friends at Bristol turned out to be a self-centered hypocrit, once again. It seems as though I'm a real hypocrit-magnet. And all this because she needed help in computer programming.
Again, on another side of life, I get the weird impression of non-existence. I'm not sure if you've ever felt as though, if you suddenly disappeared, it wouldn't make a difference. Not a good feeling, not good at all, in fact.
It's also almost the end of term, and, like all holidays, I will have to stay in the hall of residence over the holidays. Simple reason: my mother tried to blackmail me, and I don't want to ever go back home again. It has its consequences, though.

You know, if it's a computer problem you have, I can probably find a solution for it. After all, I am an IT technician in my spare time. I'm sure I could help in some way. And yes, it's been a long time; I almost missed the usual two-in-the-morning realistic comment
If you have some time, listen to those two songs. They're marvels, and they're so true at this point in time. Don't pay attention to the music video of the first, however: The Banishment, and a marvellous orchestra live by Indochine (you'll need a translation to understand this one, I'm afraid. But even without understanding the lyrics, the music is amazing)

Forget what I said last time. It seems as though even the most rational and logical of us can make mistakes; it also seems as though mistakes cause even more uncertainty than the normal decisions in life.
Maybe I should, too, give up in making decisions. It seems as though every time I do make a decision, it goes wrong. Overall, this week, the only good thing that happened is the fact that the robot AI I've been programming has finally proved to work.

Hm. Pardon my usual cynicism, but... I don't believe in any organizations, voluntary or not, being able to promote world peace and friendship. The goal of the UN was this, at the start, on an international level. Look at what happened; NATO and SEATO were formed, had a little war, then the UN lost all its power as a mediator. Before, it could actually block ultraliberalism. Now, it's just there as a scarecrow. And big countries are not afraid of scarecrows.
On a more local level, it still doesn't work, because once again of what destroyed the UN: greed. As much as people would like, it is impossible to have only nice people in a charity. There will always be a sucker (there's no other word for it, really) who will try to turn the thing into some organization turned solely for him to gain some things. The telethon and pieces jaunes in France are the best example; I mean, come on. Last year, the owner of the Pieces Jaunes organization pulled 15 MILLION EUROS out of the funds normally reserved to help children suffering from leukaemia. So much for the well-being of some people in the population, eh?
The same goes for friendship. There'll always be someone who will throw away all good intentions and cause chaos because he/she can gain something from that chaos. Remember, without wars in the world, there would be no arms trade. No arms trade, 35% of the GDP of America disappears.

Don't quit school; honestly, it's the wrong thing to do, and it would be a true shame for the world not to have someone as intelligent as you continuing your studies. As a matter of fact, continuing any kind of studies will give you the best possible means to get out of society altogether. One of the things I am really considering for my future is to get into education as a job. Teachers do not need to worry about financial things, much less than other professions. The world of education doesn't revolve around money, either. And even better, education shapes the next generations; it's the best way to actually attempt to change the world, even on a local scale.
You've outlined the biggest paradox about capitalism, by the way. It's impossible to get out of the system, unless you are too embedded in the system not to want to get out of it. That's why that system has been around for so long. And, if you are missing some big secret about the world that makes everyone else happy, think otherwise: I must be missing that big secret as well. Unfortunately, it seems that very few people are missing that secret, because so far I only knew a total of two different beings to have thought this one out: you, and my philosophy tutor.

Hey, you know, people actually gave money in exchange for indulgences (17th century Europe). You wouldn't think the church would act as a mafia, would you? Yet, it did.
A church is just a group of normal men. As soon as there are normal men around, any institution becomes a business. Heck, even helping homeless people becomes lucrative these days! What kind of world do we live in, I wonder.

The fact that you are shy and not comfortable in social situations is yet another coincidence, because I've had that problem all my life. I just am not at ease when it comes to being with people, I don't know why; it's not fear, and it certainly isn't arrogance. I just am not a social being, that's all. Plus, I've always had a small problem, which was much more obvious when I was a lot younger. When I was a kid (or so my parents say, anyway), you could never predict whether I'd react like an adult or like a 3-year-old children. I'm still unpredictable like this in that I am often very serious, but sometimes, for no reason, I just shift from being serious to not serious at all.
The social unease was amplified during the past 4 years, though. As I become more and more of an IT programmer, all the stereotypes started to have an effect on my self-confidence. You know, the kind of stereotypes that label people as "geeks". it might seem silly, but at some point, these labels had an effect on my self-confidence. Add to this all the insults people threw at me over the years, and you get an unnaturally big shy nature. Self-confidence was never my strength; it has good points, though. I am not dependent on anyone else, this way.
P.S: arrogance is not the opposite of shyness, you know

I'm glad that you like my taste in music; very few people think so. Apparently, "Eeeeeew, metal" should be banned from the face of Earth and replaced with dance music. But hey, there's a freedom of expression, right?
It's the same for your compliment; I know that very few people like me for who I am. Some like me for what I know (because they can benefit from it, mostly. Or rather, could. I can't be manipulated anymore); others like me because they're curious about why I'm always silent. Finally, the rest of Earth hates me because they have an inferiority complex, or because they just do not need a reason to hate someone.
It feels weird to be appreciated, though. It's something I hadn't experienced for a year; genuine appreciation, that is. Because, honestly, people who like me for what I know are quite...ephemeral.
As I was writing this comment, three songs immediately sprung to mind: Haunted and Out in the real world (you probably know the second one), by Stream of Passion (especially for the chorus, but also for all the rest), and Shy, by Sonata Arctica.

There was a website failure on smosh; it seems as though your last comment came before the backup. Nevertheless, I read it before Smosh went down. Here's the reply:

Ohhh, but maths in general doesn't give me a headache. To be honest, physics gives me more of a headache than maths. I had a web-based test to do for uni, 8 long questions. I ended up answering in the box of the last one "Why should I care?". They asked for such pointless questions.
You'll see, I keep saying this, but maths gets incredibly easy after a while. It's always, always the same thing. And all the stuff you've "learnt" can finally be proven. However, it does lead to quite a lot of draft paper being used. Poor trees.

Pardon my ignorance, but... what are the Peace Corps? I might know what it is under another name, since it might not be specific to the USA. I suppose it is something similar to a charity.
And as for the big dreams, everyone has. The problem with big dreams is that they rarely get fulilled - I noticed that a short while ago. As a rule of thumb, everything that you never dreamt of always happens. Let me take a simple example: I wanted to make a career in science. Guess what happened, in the end? I programmed two tools that are used for computers to calculate a few maths things. In the end, for both tools, I won PHP innovation awards. They're one of the highest distinctions based on innovative ideas and not just pure programming, and at the time, I was the only under-18 to have two of them. Now, unfortunately, there are two other people like me.
This caught the attention of my old school; I work for them during the holidays, now. And I get paid £15/hour to sit at a desk and "think" of how to optimize the school's IT network.
All this is fine and dandy, but I wanted to be happy, not to be a buisnessman. Earning money is not my thing; spending it isn't, either.

Oh, don't get me started on essays. I had three good essays so far: "Prove that you know nothing.", "Will the sun rise tomorrow?" and "Discuss Thrasymachus' arguments in the book 1 of the republic, along with their implications". The first two were just... epic.
I totally agree with you for everything related to faith, but... I hope you take religion (theism) as the pure subject and not as the human incarnation of it. Because I strongly despise all kinds of churches.

Aaaaah! Another self-conscious person! Help! Help! Help! I thought I was the only one in that situation!
On a more serious note (serious? Me? At 5 in the morning? Right.), you can let your self-consciousness show once in a while. It's not as though hiding it helps, anyway, since people will always pick on either someone concealing part of their personality, or self-consciousness. The world is a twisted place, I know. But hey, life can a twisted place to start with. Just be yourself, be whoever you want to be, and you'll bend reality to that standard. Hope, faith in oneself and the will to be yourself can create miracles.

What song-concealing talents? I just concealed another one. The first song you gave me was... different. Something that is almost a capella is unusual; it kinda reminds me of some other songs, though, and the lyrics were meaningful (to say the least).
The second song proved to be yet another delight in pop music (for once). Although, with the music you already gave me... I can't say that pop music is entirely horrible anymore
There are two songs I want to give you. Both of them are marvellous displays of creativity. The first one is My Selene, by Sonata Arctica. The second one is Northern Sky, by Axenstar. Both of them are quite quiet songs, but they all carry a message.

Uh oh.
Although, on my part, I've had so much maths work to do today. To give you an idea, I wasted 20 pages of draft paper just answering one very tough question. I was asked to study the four-dimensional function f(x,y,z,t)=2sinh(x)cosh(4y)tanh(2z)e^(-xyt). That's the kind of things you will probably never do in the next two years, and it is a guaranteed headache.
There are (fortunately) ways to simplify the function. And I was able to discard the exponential because I know what impact it has on the function. But still, finding the gradients took me a good 10 minutes.
Fortunately, I'll be off to bed soon. No more maths to do apart from one easy question.

Don't mention the number and type of relationships - I've only ever been in a relationship once, and it ended up being a female abusive influence, who also used me, and managed to do what I despise over anything: lying. Polyandry, in fact, when you come to think of it.
The only thing you can do is hope. Hope for the world to change, some day. Hope for someone nice to come around, someday. I know, it's utterly unbelievable (At least to me. The only few people I thought were sincere, and who I knew outside the internet, always turned out to be pragmatically-interested fakes.), but it's the only thing that is left. In the end, it is surely better to still hope for change than to be a pure cynic. (Yeah, I know, I can talk. I'm the purely cynical person around here)

You'll see philosophy has some boring bits; however, most of it is absolutely tremendous. No-one would think that philosophy shapes the world in an infinite different ways. Maths is governed by formal logic; science by the philosophy of science; world politics by ethics and political philosophy; economics by political philosophy; psychology by the philosophy of mind and language. All subjects are governed by epistemology.
And philosophy, by metaphilosophy.
Overall, the statement "The radius of philosophy is everything, and its center is nowhere" is quite true.
One thing you might like to learn along with philosophy is formal logic. With it, you can demolish arguments, instead of creating them. It's the best possible weapon in a debate, and it makes people angry. The world naturally thinks illogically - they hate formal logic for that.

You know, whether or not you are happy (perpetually or temporarily), you've succeeded in some things. For a start, you're more intelligent than the majority of people (don't get an IQ test, it'd ruin all the fun. Thinking "OH MY GOD! I'VE GOT AN IQ OF 150!" isn't a nice thing; it makes you arrogant for some time, until you realize that such a high IQ actually prevents you from doing what most of the people out there are doing). Should I add to this that you're interested by a subject which normally repels people? Even people studying philosophy often hate it because of the presence of utilitarianism. And finally, you've certainly succeeded in being honest, and trusting someone.
Does that count as succeeding?
Have hope (yes, I know, I'm so good at concealing song links in a comment). The world is not always full of bad people; there are some outcasts everywhere.

Do you have any examples of what you're struggling with? Because I'm getting the impression (again) that you're having exactly the same difficulties as I di a few years ago. Struggling when it comes to silly formulae such as the link between derivatives and the shape of a function, or all those planar geometry issues (about planes and lines). If yes, what happened for me is, I discovered complex numbers. With that set of numbers (which is added to the real set as another dimension), you can prove every formula related to geometry and calculus. The basis of it is, any number can be expressed in the form of a+ib, where a and b are real numbers. i is the imaginary constant; when squared, it equals minus 1.
In an Argand diagram (a 2d representation of complex numbers), the number itself takes the form of a vector of coordinates (a,b ), or a point of coordinates (a,b ). This allows some people to prove all kinds of formulae using basic identities. Even the identity of cos q + cos p = 2cos((p+q)/2) cos((p-q)/2), which I can never remember, can be proved by complex numbers.
If you understand trig, I can guarantee you that complex numbers will be understood seamlessly. And complex numbers are the base of the universe, despite what other people might like to say. Time is complex, for example (that is why, in the spacetime continuum formula - x^2 + y^2 + z^2 - t^2 = constant, you end up having the minus for t^2).
You'll see soon, in maths, there are far more interesting things than trigonometry - but that are based on trig. And even then, trig can help. (By the way, trigonometry is not always used in a triangle )

Ah, abusive relationships. I can say I've been through that, too, although it didn't start in this way at the start. It is quite intriguing how that kind of relationships always come at the wrong time; although, I have to say, for my part, that the person I loved pretty much knew how to lie constantly. I never suspected that she'd two-time anyone. And it had quite an effect as well; partly because it was a one-way true love relationship and doesn't just "grow away", but also because my self-esteem and general impression of humanity took a very severe dip. Such a dip that I never ever fully trusted anyone else until I left school.

Just with some people? I'd be inclined to say "with most people". Rare are those who do not suddenly generalize, omit details in their reasoning, place judgements or anything else. See, that's one of the reason why the majority still thinks communism is a bad thing and immediately name Soviet Russia. It is named Soviet for one reason: it never was communist. It borrowed some things from Marx's manifesto, but communism is not supposed to have a dictatorial State. The same goes for Maoist China.
As for the "philosophy is for idiots" statement, I've been told this for the past three years. People immediately associate philosophy with "pointless waffling, books written for nothing, by utopians". An economist made a critic of philosophy that ran along those lines: "How can a philosopher, who has never been close to the real world enough to know love, write about this very subject? All they write is dissociated from what is important.". And that economist was entirely wrong; it is not because philosophers are absolutely immersed in books and pure thoughts (why would I deny that? I spend half of my time reading books) that none of them has known what love was. Nor is anything that "should be" be useless.
If it wasn't for philosophy, we'd still be stuck in tyranny. But hey, people give the privilege of being the Hero in this situation to the military/militia leaders, and never to the person who thought about the plan in the first place. There is a wonderful critique of historical events in Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil, on that very subject. There is also one in the Prince, by Machiavel.
But, hey, philosophy is often quoted as "Does the table really exist?", the high ground of metaphysics. What people forget is that metaphysics is just one area of philosophy. I could go around criticizing chemistry by taking statistical chemistry as a generalization; physics by taking theoretical physics. Et cetera, et cetera...

Don't worry about happiness; did you even need to explain it in such details? I know exactly what you mean. In all honesty, I've rarely been happy in my life. Starting with all the family problems, the constant comments by my mother on how "I was just like my father" (which isn't true. I'm much less of a slacker), the endless insults in class (people in my class thought that because I gave answers in class, I was deemed worthy of being insulted every time I gave a single answer), a few blackmail attempts, the perpetual homesickness (a Stockholm syndrom, you might think; my mother actually blackmailed me into never coming back home. Basically, apparently you have to pay if you want to see your own family), relationship problems, lack of friendship, lack of love (but that's just a society-made image that I'll never follow. Add to that the fact that I have very sudden and unexplained mood-swings, due to a personality disorder. It ruins every short-lived feeling of happiness. And all the ideals about people around here that eventually end up in a cruel delusion of society.
For example, I knew someone who was also french around here. She did her best to convince me that she wasn't like the others, which I never believed. I always doubted of that. Guess what? Last week, she asked me to help her with some programming for one of the projects in her degree (engineering). I gave her the algorithm for it, and never heard of her again.
My only source of happiness might come as a real shock, it's the pleasure of solving complex mathematical problems. And succeeding in whatever I try to do. Fortunately, I succeed in things pretty easily. Unfortunately, I restrain that success to computer programming.
You mentionned "if this is all life is"; I know where that thought leads; never, ever submit to such reasoning. Trust me, I've been down that road. It isn't nice; in fact, it makes life feel even worse, gradually. And it leads to something taboo in society - destruction of one's self.
After some thought, it seems as though I am (finally) not the only stoic around. People in society aim for pleasure - they're mostly hedonists, or at least epicurians. That is, they indulge in happiness and pleasure, and seek it. Stoics tend to seek truth before happiness; or at least, tended to seek truth. Stoicism is incompatible with capitalism.

You'll see, in the Apology, if you do not know the story, Socrates gets condemned to death because he tried to make people see the truth. Isn't that a great analogy for what happens these days? People would rather die than see the truth. It is the tough reign of politico-economism, or the way to brainwash the masses efficiently. Although, even without his, very few people would want the real truth about anything.
There are three songs that you absolutely have to listen to, in conjunction with this comment. The artist actually made the three songs in a long story. One of them tells the present, the other the future, and the last in the serie tells the past. In order: Past, Present, Future.
It is a real shame, they cut a bit of the last song for their single. It coins in just before the solo, when the singer says "Ashes to ashes, dust to dust". It goes along those lines:

(Deep voice) Short is the path of this little starling
Love sounds familiar, but the emotion escapes me
I will carpe the diem, while it's still here
And see how the fear of death becomes her

We had it all so sweet
Made for me, you indeed
Big secret, small the lie
Don't cry for me, oh argentite
No word you say tonight
Can make this seem alright
I'll help you follow through
Remember this? Pacta sunt servanda

The wounds are too deep
I need to keep the scars
To prove there was a time
When I loved something more than life
Unlike the last time here
I have the means and a will sincere
Your knight is nowhere near
Unfortunate, this makes me your God...

And then the solo kicks in. Truly, they cut the most brilliant bit of the song. That particular song still is a very strong song in my opinion, partly because I discovered it straight after I got two-timed. And in the song, there is a clear mention of blue eyes, a strawberry blonde, and the word argentite (which means someone with fair hair). How could I not feel as though the song was a mirror of what happened, when the only person I loved (and got two-timed by) had blue eyes, and blonde hair?

yeah i definetly do