Sorrow and Depression

It's been 8 years since I left everything I knew, I left family and friends, and made the life-changing decision of coming to live and study long-term in China. It was a choice I made very resolutely and responsibly. It was a brave thing to do. And I have achieved most of my goals.
It will undoubtedly have great impact on my life.
I have learned a lot, and many things have happened. I have changed a lot.
Recently I'm looking back to this part of my life and think very deeply about what I have found and experienced, what I have seen and felt,
what I am going to leave behind...For several reasons my life in China in the past 3-4 years has not been happy. Actually those of you who know me know well that I was extremely unhappy and sad. There are things that are beyond my power to positively change no matter how hard I try. I feel incredibly broken hearted, saddened, vulnerable, dejected...Each day I wake up and the day feels broken…

I regret very much staying in China the past 3 years. I should have left. Even though I had no "plan". I should have left. I stayed because I felt helpless to make a choice for change. I lacked courage and strength to move on.
I stayed because I was hoping with all of my heart for a positive change, I tried hard, but instead things got worse.
Now with each day closing in on my departure (which for the moment I decided will be somewhere in the end of August) my feeling of helpless sadness and loneliness increases each day and crushes me relentlessly.
Some days the burden of empty and joyless lonely days is unbearable. I feel lost.
It is true that 8 years ago I made a conscious choice to leave everything and come to such a far away country, in a way it is a sort of an "exile".
But being alone in a completely foreign country can be a devastating experience.
I am bearing the toll of my own decisions and choices.
I have no one to blame.

I'm trying to positively look forward to the change that will happen in my life with leaving China, but at this moment it is very hard to imagine that I will find joy and happiness in my life.
Unfortunately for many reasons China has had a damaging impact on most of my dreams, illusions, hopes. I feel much more bitter, much more cynical and negative compared to my usual pessimism, thoughtfulness and oversensitivity...
China was a mysterious place to which I traveled with a wide open heart hoping for enlightenment, knowledge, self-development. For some time I could cope with my loneliness, because there was so many new and different things to discover and experience. But from one point on disillusionments and disappointments just kept on piling up. I lost my sense of purpose.
I feel so utterly disillusioned now that it is hard to imagine that even such an
idealist like me will ever find courage to believe and hope and once again some day find the courage to open my heart to anything or anyone ever again.

These days I feel the burden of all this even more acutely.
It’s so hard to find again courage and strength and hope.

The hardest thing.