Teen Angst, a Decade Too Late?

Two posts right in a row--I'm really full of it today. I wonder if maybe I'm experiencing teen angst in my mid-twenties. Is that even possible? I mean, honestly: I'm going to be 26 in a few months. Am I seriously supposed to be feeling like a depressed teenager every day, worried about what people think about me and why people don't talk to me and how I could possibly even go on living this way? Is that normal? Am I not supposed to grow out of that when I'm, like, 16?

Thinking back, my teenage years weren't that bad. I mean, they weren't great by any definition of word, but I had a lot of friends, my parents loved me, I did well in school (for the most part), and I took part in a lot of fun afterschool activities. I may have been mopey from time-to-time back then, but, in hindsight, I had it pretty sweet. That feeling extended into community college, and for my first stint here. I mean, I never had very many friends here, but I was a fringe-member of a pretty tight-knit bunch here for my first three semesters and I did a lot of fun things and I wasn't all worried that they thought I was weird or awkward or creepy or anything like that.

Then I went home, took a little break from school, for two years. And, you know what? I wasn't miserable then, either. I hung out with my girlfriend most every day, I had a 9-to-5-five-day-a-week job that kept me busy and (somewhat) decently paid, and I didn't have too much to worry about because I was living with my parents. Life was simple, and simple was good.

Since I've been here again, though, man, it's just a mess. First off, my lack of friends this time around is startling. Again, I don't mean to imply that people don't like me--I have plenty of acquaintances through classes with whom I get along very well. But good friends, real friends, are very few and very far between; and I wish they weren't. I get so lonely sometimes, and I feel like I drive those few friends I do have away with neediness and, therefore, patheticness. The social aspect of my life is, to say the least, not impressive.

Second, I find myself arguing with my girlfriend on the phone quite often. She's stressed out because I'm not around, and that leads to her expecting me to call her and talk to her every spare moment I get, and some days I just don't feel like it. I don't do anything interesting; I hate talking about most of the things I do; and I don't really care to bore her with what I do have to talk about. So we fight because "I don't care about her" and "I don't miss her", and I balk at those statements, and the fight escalates, and it's one more stress I don't need in my life two, three, four nights a week. Romantically, things are often not on the up-and-up.

Third, I just plain have a lot of crap to do. Five graduate courses, three jobs (although I did finally stop working that weekend overnight shift at the gas station, thank God), not to mention all this self-pity in which I partake. All those things take up a ton of time. Juggling all those balls without dropping any of them is a horrible burden on my shoulders, and there are many days (today included, obviously) when I'd just rather lay in bed all day, stare at the ceiling, and drown myself in my thoughts. Not pleasant. Workload-wise, things are slipping out of my fingers and spiraling out of control.

So with all these factors converging simultaneously, you might be able to see why I feel the way I feel as much as I do. But is it teen woe-is-me angst? Or is it just an inability to suck it up, grab life by the horns, and ride it for all that it's worth: good and bad? I'm still working that one out, but, either way, I need to turn things around.