Your post hit me hard my friend. It took a lot of guts to be so honest. So many of the words I could have written myself just yesterday for then I felt just as you feel now. I looked at your profile and researched the conditions you deal with. Serious stuff. Do you give yourself even a tiny break considering the fact that you have been disabled to a large degree by conditions you didn't choose and that are not your fault? Do you really think the poster boys of success would have achieved their triumphs had they been hindered by all you have been saddled with? Do you think maybe, just maybe you are not the best judge of your worth? Is any of us objective about ourselves when we are depressed? The God I know doesn't judge as people judge. He takes all things into consideration. He is like a judge at the Special Olympics who cheers us on with eyes full of love though our pace is faltering and slow for he knows we are seriously disabled. Would you call one of them a failure and a loser or tell them they should just die? No you wouldn't, yet you mercilessly condemn yourself. My wife said to me tonight--I wish you could see yourself through my eyes because I think you are wonderful, with great potential. What was I doing earlier today? Saying--word for word--what you are saying now. As a result of her support and some healing writing my depression snapped and I experienced happiness. I hope it will last for I haven't known it in a long while, but even if it doesn't I hope I remember the good things I am seeing come to the fore in me. I see now a little of what she sees. The problems that utterly overwhelmed me I am not vexed by. All I am saying is that if the cloud you have had to carry would lift the world would see the intelligent and articulate and deep person I see you to be by your writing. We carry a cross we didn't choose. Yours has been heavy and the way long and discouraging. I don't care what you say I SEE UNREALIZED POTENTIAL AND I BARELY KNOW ANYTHING OF YOU. Please don't end it. God chooses the weak ones, the broken ones, the despised ones, the ones others call nothing and He chooses you and I. There is a race we must run, tasks we could never imagine that only we can do, and the very things we felt disqualified us in life will prove to be the wellspring of our strength.
Praying for you bro.

Steve said it best! It's true. When in the midst of terrible darkness, we tend to forget that we are people who deserve the resources you spoke of and that we deserve to be happy and healthy. I promise that nothing was wasted on you, you just feel like it right now. As Steve said, you have potential you probably don't even know about. You are here for a reason. Don't give up now! It would not have been a better world without you. Keep going and when this is all over, and this WILL end eventually, you'll realize that you are great person who was suffering and you deserve happiness! You deserve life. Choose life.

Steve, I honestly wish your words could give me comfort. Unfortunately, my disorder is the type where I'm immune to praise and encouragement, while criticism and ridicule hit like a punch to the gut. Yes, some people have point out how I'm smart or somewhat a good writer as I can research and write a paper quickly for all the good it does me. Whenever someone tells me those things, I wonder to myself wherever I'm a good actor and fooling them or they are just naive and don't really know me. When people say they couldn't have done something without the love and support of their friends and family, I truly wish I could experience that. At least then I could cope with my problems. Just today, the sole of my shoe started coming off. Just another thing that wrong in my life.

(( Jormungander ))

In my childhood I learned resentment. I resented the person who spent hundreds of hours trying to shame me for things they imagined I did, for things I did do, and things they did but wanted to blame me for. I didn't learn shame. I learned resentment.

As I grew older I noticed that I'm *not* motivated by the things others around me are. This made it hard because all the things I *should* want and all the things other people wanted did not bring me any joy or any peace. It certainly didn't put money in my pocket. (I won't go into how I frustrated my bosses without trying. What do you do with an employee you can't motivate?) I was a buffet for more people like my childhood abuser. And it made me very, very aware even more that I was a jumbo peg person in a pinhole peg world.

I can go for hours about how different I was from everyone else. How my 'friends' weren't really my friends. (Not imagined, but true per the number of conversations I overheard when they didn't know I was there.) And how often I got screwed. I got screwed a lot. Adding to it was the rounds of small, simple things falling apart. Especially in those times it felt like the universe was once more out to get me.

(I once heard someone say that there are people even the outcasts don't notice. That was me!)

A few years ago the resentment I felt at every one else for their triumphs, successes and joys turned on myself. It bought a huge wave of anger with it. Because it was obvious that the only person to blame for having such a screwed up life was me. There was something in me broken.

As it turns out, no. There wasn't something in me fundamentally broken. There is nothing in me fundamentally broken. I'm simply *not* motivated by what other people want. Once I accepted that about myself it put a huge chink in the self resentment/anger/hate that had swallowed me up.

We have a very homogenized society. If you don't fit with whatever the in-thing is now, if you don't want that latest toy, than the automatic assumption is that there is something wrong and you're at fault, you're to blame. Reality is the exact opposite is true. It's an easy thing to understand in print, but a whole different ballgame when I began to apply that understanding to myself.

So I could go on for hours and hours about things that can be done and perspectives and all that stuff. I won't. Jormungandr, I'll save that for later for when we know each other more and you don't get bored with my novel writing. I look forward to reading through your future posts and getting to know you better. Maybe I can be of help to you on some things. Or maybe I can be a friend.

:)