Glad you posted...it's a good place to get one's thoughts out for others to read and/or comment on.

I understand exactly how you feel about trying to be what you want to be. It seems people with depression are actors and are afraid to show who they really are. We don't want the "secret" of our disorder to be apparent so we hide behind a facade to please others.

I don't know who I am anymore. All I have tried to do my whole life was to please others and put myself last. I have lost myself with all the masks I wore throughout the years.

I hope you can find yourself or make yourself what you want to be...good luck.

I was doing ok for a few days...didn't last though. I turn 48 years old today and I have nothing to look back on with any pride. I also have nothing to look forward to as my life is pretty much etched in stone. I don't have the resources to make a major change where I can have some sort of contentment.

People tell me my happiness is up to me. I believe that is true for most everyone else, but in my case I have lost the ability to make my own happiness. Everything seems so bleak and hopeless I don't know where or how to achieve happiness or in my case, just plain contentment.

I do believe if I found someone to love me it would propel me to that feeling of contentment. I feel so lost without someone...I have never really had someone in my life for a significant amount of time. I feel I have let God, myself and family down by not getting married and having kids. I feel like I have wasted and thrown away a gift from God....my life. Women on dating sites pass me by when they hear I am bipolar. They want to meet me and get to know me, but my honesty and being up front scares them off. That is so depressing by itself...just a vicious cycle of having hope, then it is dashed by the disorder that has ruined my life.

The bipolar is so severe I didn't have a chance to begin with. This makes me very angry but I am coping with that ok. Moreso, I feel empty of what I could have had in my life. With my life winding down to the years where my body will join my mind in breaking down, I feel like I cannot go on much longer like this. Things look so dark and morose.

I just don't know what to do...maybe I need hospitalization but that in itself is very traumatizing. I don't know in the long run it would help. I am a totally lost soul with such pain and agony it is unbearable. Happy birthday to me.

I will forgo your message, not by lack of interest but because there is something important that must be said...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY mbcasey

Rejoice you are still young...and you are ALIVE

A classic, we spend most of our youth destroying our health trying to prepare for the future thinking we don't have enough, and then spend the rest of our life trying to get our youth back and wondering about what we could have done.

Be careful, I talk a lot but am no better, been depressed since I was 7, realized it at 26, started taking care of it at 33, so it's a struggle, but it's worth it, I'm worth it.

The hardest is fighting off negative thoughts which are stimulated by all the aggression in life, but I'm going to win.

Did I kill the topic ?
I'm sorry !

I just wanna curl up in a ball and die. Don't get me wrong, I'm not suicidal. I just don't see the point in breathing any longer. I know I'll come out of this funk eventually, but for right now I just don't know what to do to motivate myself at all. I spent a beautiful weekend in front of the tv flipping channels, I don't even think I really watched anything. Except Arsenic and Old Lace on PBS, gotta love Carey Grant, at least he made me laugh. I just don't have anyone to love or anything to look forward to.

Good movie. I have seen Arsenic and Old Lace. I like where in one movie Carey Grant kept saying Judy, Judy, Judy. Or was Julie? I have experienced the funk. Wanting to get back on my room project so I am doing overtime at work.

Sometimes watching tv all weekend is just what the doctor ordered. I try not to fight depression because that takes a lot of energy. Instead I just accept that I'm a lofer and try not to let anyone see me. I've been watching tv and daydreaming professionally for 5 years. No point getting more sick trying to integrate a disfunctional work environment. So I've found a chill job that let's me ...chill. I know something great is going to happen...it's a law of probability....you're very attractive by the way

Ok......who let this thread slide while i was in and out of the psych hopsital last year?????

I know I hit a level of depression during the holiday season...and I came close to attempting suicide again Christmas night. The only thing that stopped me was the fact that my dad and I found that my stepmom passed in her sleep the night I came down to see them for Christmas. It was hard as hell for me to see my dad cry like that. I didn't want to put him through that crap again.

I know that must have been hard on you and I am glad you were there for him. Holidays are hard on some people and that can make it worse. I was just creeping through the snow covered back road trying to make home okay. Its good to be home now with my dog who came to the door.

Well sweetie, the holidays have been hard for me since I lost custody of Eileen. What really got my dad tore up was that Fay (stepmama) wanted a white Christmas sooooo bad and it started snowing Christmas night. It was mostly gone by the day of Fay's funeral tho, and that was the hardest day I've ever had. When we were leaving the cemetery I nearly fell to my knees I was so distraught. I was in a daze until then, thinking that she wasn't really gone. And when the reality of it hit me, it hit me hard.

drink, that will cheer you up

good luck w/ rondoobie btw!

No one knows this in my family but every day I wake I wish I was dead I have tired to kill myself and just don't want live anymore because I get picked on because I am big so I think if I am dead no one will care if I am gone

But that was the past

Honey...you are beautiful!!

Thank you and you are too amberdee