Depression Support Group
Depression is a real and debilitating condition that is often misunderstood by family and friends. Its meaning can range from a prolonged period of sadness to an actual mental illness with specific symptoms. Find and share experiences with others who are going through the same struggles.
I've been up since 3am (didn't technically sleep at all..) worrying about going into class at 8am. I'm NOT a morning person at all. My biological clock has never been set to rise in the morning and get in bed before the sun is down. The worst part about all that is, I have to fight my own body to fit into the schedules laid out for me. This makes me restless any time I have to get up at an uncomfortable hour. It's so bad that I usually don't even sleep, just stay up for 2-3 days in a row because it's more comfortable than trying to force myself into sleeping only to toss and turn for hours without ever actually getting quality rest.
On top of all of that, usually when I force myself to lay in bed, because 'I'm supposed to be in bed at that hour', I end up thinking about a lot of issues I have. Today it's the emptiness in everything I do. I go to school because someone else tells me to, I study what I am because someone else tells me to, I get up when someone else tells me to, I do everything in my life to satisfy what others expect me to do as a white male at age 27. I've been living like this pretty much my entire life, never going after what I want because it isn't what I'm 'allowed' to do/be.
I'm trying to make myself look like I'm worthy of life to the people around me by doing what they think I should be doing. I don't hang out with any of my friends, I don't do any drugs except smoke a little pot every now and then, I quit drinking and cigarettes.. And I still feel like dying every single day of my life. I don't care how much of a 'good man' I become, it's not satisfying to me. I feel like every second I spend doing anything I do now is a complete waste of time. Unfortunately I'll never be able to escape it. I'll have to spend years on years working and getting an education before I can even start to think about doing what I want with my life. What is the point of that? So I can finally start being myself and enjoying the things I want to enjoy when I'm 40? or 50? How long do I have to suffer through this false life until I get to the one that I want? Will I even be able to get what I want out of life or is it already to late?
I used to just get high and drunk, play video games and roleplay online to pass the time and keep my mind from drifting into thoughts like these but lately none of that satisfies me either.. It just all seems like a waste of time.
I grew up poor in a prejudice southern-style family who hated and still hates each other to this day. Even when I was 5 years old I knew I was different.. I had to grow up listening to family and friends talk about hating homosexuals and people who are different colors or religions, Ect. These are the same people who think they know what I should be doing with my life better than I do. The same people who had years to plan for my future and instead fed their own selfishness. I stayed depressed for so long and I wish I had known better so I could have started to become independent back then instead of figuring everything out.. 20 years to late?
I hate being this age and just now getting a clue. I can't stand how screwed up I am at this point. I'm supposed to be a 'man' now and I still feel like I was never a child. I was having sex before I even know what the word sex meant. I was doing drugs before I even knew what the D.A.R.E. program was really about. That's how clueless I was during my childhood. My teen years when I should have been doing fun things and developing into an adult, I spent doing drug and trying to OD without any parental supervision at all. Pretty much after age 12 I had no parents watching over me or caring for me at all. Once my mom left I literately had no parent, my dad was just there paying bills and putting food in the fridge (The cheapest of cheap). The first time I came to stay with my mom my entire family said I looked like I was about to die. It's true.. I was 15 or 16 and weighed less than 100lbs. I was in horrible health and had no idea. I didn't weigh over 120lbs until I was.. 23 or 24. I've never had any money or any hope for a successful future. My upbringing engraved the idea that I was just ghetto trash and would never amount to anything into my head. I don't remember having a single person in my life that really made me feel like I was valuable or wanted. I know my parents love me but even they make me feel very unwanted all the time, and have since I was a small child. They constantly threatened to throw me out of the house or send me away to an orphanage. It's an awful thing to grow up feeling like your parents will toss you out like trash at any moment if you don't get their full approval.
So now I'm 27 and just realizing how bad off I am. I stay super depressed all the time. I can't hold a job. I'm just now starting on a college education and really am clueless to what I want to do. I have zero time to think about anything, constantly rushed into the next disaster..
I feel like I was never really raised. My parents didn't help me grow into an adult or teach me any skills. They were never around or caring enough to do any of that. Now that I'm a total life failure, I get all the blame too. I've been thinking a lot about suicide again lately. I just think I'm too screwed up to be successful and to poor to fix my issues. There's literately nothing I can do except force myself through a life that I don't want to reach a goal of someone else. Sometimes I feel like my life is just a loan from the bank of mom and dad. That once I can repay the debt I'm in I'll be free to end it. Even that's really screwed up to me, my life is just a financial burden and the only reason I live is the obligation to repay the investment of wealth my parents put into me, even if it was done horrible wrong and left me broken as an adult. I feel like even writing this makes me ungrateful, and I better not be ungrateful!!!! That's how it is, every thought I have is countered instantly inside my head by what my parents or someone else would say. I can't stop it.
Every time I think about achieving my dream life, I realize just how pointless it is. I'm fantasizing about something that will never be. Daydreaming is just as pointless as playing a video game to distract my mind. When I think about it I hear all the voices of all the people who have brought me down, the disapproval of my parents, the laughter of others, everyone looking down on me like I'm some creature and my suffering is entertainment.. What's the point of living if you'll never be in the life you desire? Am I just supposed to go on pretending that I'm happy and these things I do are meaningful to me when they are not? I should never think what would make me truly happy is pointless or will never happen, but that's just how I am because of my life experience. I can't simply switch it off or on to something else.
What's the answer to all this? See a doctor that costs way to much and doesn't help me at all? I sit here with an hour before class and all my mind wants to think about is running away and dying in the woods somewhere. A day doesn't go by where I don't freak out mentally thinking:
"I have to get out of here, this isn't right. I'm not making enough money. I don't want to be here, I want to be different. How can I be me and get away with it? Why should I need to get away with it? Why do I hate being here with my family so much? Where will I go? How will I pay for any of this?" - This happens repeatedly in my thoughts for hours and hours while I pace and act OCD. It's awful.
Hours and hours on end I think like that, I can't control it. I spin in circles mentally trying to find some solution to my issues but there isn't one. The more I think, the worst I get. The worst I get the more I want to think of a way out. It's horrible and it drives me crazy. I wish I could find real professional help and I wish I could afford it, but I can't do either.
Every single step I take to try and better myself and get over my depression is a step deeper into depression that makes me feel like I'm wasting my life doing things I hate being a person I don't want to be for a small sliver of a hope to maybe possibly start considering my own goals on day in the next 10-20 years. It's like saying "You want happiness? Make yourself even more miserable than you are now and maybe you will be slightly happy for a few seconds before you die."
I really don't even know why I cling to hope. I don't. I just can't get it into my head that if I were dead, I wouldn't care about the future anymore, much less the tiny hope that I can have the future I want. I really think it's to late to even bother with, I'd be better off wishing for a short life than hoping to achieve a happy one.
I just don't know anymore.. I'm stuck in this trap with no escape.
On top of all of that, usually when I force myself to lay in bed, because 'I'm supposed to be in bed at that hour', I end up thinking about a lot of issues I have. Today it's the emptiness in everything I do. I go to school because someone else tells me to, I study what I am because someone else tells me to, I get up when someone else tells me to, I do everything in my life to satisfy what others expect me to do as a white male at age 27. I've been living like this pretty much my entire life, never going after what I want because it isn't what I'm 'allowed' to do/be.
I'm trying to make myself look like I'm worthy of life to the people around me by doing what they think I should be doing. I don't hang out with any of my friends, I don't do any drugs except smoke a little pot every now and then, I quit drinking and cigarettes.. And I still feel like dying every single day of my life. I don't care how much of a 'good man' I become, it's not satisfying to me. I feel like every second I spend doing anything I do now is a complete waste of time. Unfortunately I'll never be able to escape it. I'll have to spend years on years working and getting an education before I can even start to think about doing what I want with my life. What is the point of that? So I can finally start being myself and enjoying the things I want to enjoy when I'm 40? or 50? How long do I have to suffer through this false life until I get to the one that I want? Will I even be able to get what I want out of life or is it already to late?
I used to just get high and drunk, play video games and roleplay online to pass the time and keep my mind from drifting into thoughts like these but lately none of that satisfies me either.. It just all seems like a waste of time.
I grew up poor in a prejudice southern-style family who hated and still hates each other to this day. Even when I was 5 years old I knew I was different.. I had to grow up listening to family and friends talk about hating homosexuals and people who are different colors or religions, Ect. These are the same people who think they know what I should be doing with my life better than I do. The same people who had years to plan for my future and instead fed their own selfishness. I stayed depressed for so long and I wish I had known better so I could have started to become independent back then instead of figuring everything out.. 20 years to late?
I hate being this age and just now getting a clue. I can't stand how screwed up I am at this point. I'm supposed to be a 'man' now and I still feel like I was never a child. I was having sex before I even know what the word sex meant. I was doing drugs before I even knew what the D.A.R.E. program was really about. That's how clueless I was during my childhood. My teen years when I should have been doing fun things and developing into an adult, I spent doing drug and trying to OD without any parental supervision at all. Pretty much after age 12 I had no parents watching over me or caring for me at all. Once my mom left I literately had no parent, my dad was just there paying bills and putting food in the fridge (The cheapest of cheap). The first time I came to stay with my mom my entire family said I looked like I was about to die. It's true.. I was 15 or 16 and weighed less than 100lbs. I was in horrible health and had no idea. I didn't weigh over 120lbs until I was.. 23 or 24. I've never had any money or any hope for a successful future. My upbringing engraved the idea that I was just ghetto trash and would never amount to anything into my head. I don't remember having a single person in my life that really made me feel like I was valuable or wanted. I know my parents love me but even they make me feel very unwanted all the time, and have since I was a small child. They constantly threatened to throw me out of the house or send me away to an orphanage. It's an awful thing to grow up feeling like your parents will toss you out like trash at any moment if you don't get their full approval.
So now I'm 27 and just realizing how bad off I am. I stay super depressed all the time. I can't hold a job. I'm just now starting on a college education and really am clueless to what I want to do. I have zero time to think about anything, constantly rushed into the next disaster..
I feel like I was never really raised. My parents didn't help me grow into an adult or teach me any skills. They were never around or caring enough to do any of that. Now that I'm a total life failure, I get all the blame too. I've been thinking a lot about suicide again lately. I just think I'm too screwed up to be successful and to poor to fix my issues. There's literately nothing I can do except force myself through a life that I don't want to reach a goal of someone else. Sometimes I feel like my life is just a loan from the bank of mom and dad. That once I can repay the debt I'm in I'll be free to end it. Even that's really screwed up to me, my life is just a financial burden and the only reason I live is the obligation to repay the investment of wealth my parents put into me, even if it was done horrible wrong and left me broken as an adult. I feel like even writing this makes me ungrateful, and I better not be ungrateful!!!! That's how it is, every thought I have is countered instantly inside my head by what my parents or someone else would say. I can't stop it.
Every time I think about achieving my dream life, I realize just how pointless it is. I'm fantasizing about something that will never be. Daydreaming is just as pointless as playing a video game to distract my mind. When I think about it I hear all the voices of all the people who have brought me down, the disapproval of my parents, the laughter of others, everyone looking down on me like I'm some creature and my suffering is entertainment.. What's the point of living if you'll never be in the life you desire? Am I just supposed to go on pretending that I'm happy and these things I do are meaningful to me when they are not? I should never think what would make me truly happy is pointless or will never happen, but that's just how I am because of my life experience. I can't simply switch it off or on to something else.
What's the answer to all this? See a doctor that costs way to much and doesn't help me at all? I sit here with an hour before class and all my mind wants to think about is running away and dying in the woods somewhere. A day doesn't go by where I don't freak out mentally thinking:
"I have to get out of here, this isn't right. I'm not making enough money. I don't want to be here, I want to be different. How can I be me and get away with it? Why should I need to get away with it? Why do I hate being here with my family so much? Where will I go? How will I pay for any of this?" - This happens repeatedly in my thoughts for hours and hours while I pace and act OCD. It's awful.
Hours and hours on end I think like that, I can't control it. I spin in circles mentally trying to find some solution to my issues but there isn't one. The more I think, the worst I get. The worst I get the more I want to think of a way out. It's horrible and it drives me crazy. I wish I could find real professional help and I wish I could afford it, but I can't do either.
Every single step I take to try and better myself and get over my depression is a step deeper into depression that makes me feel like I'm wasting my life doing things I hate being a person I don't want to be for a small sliver of a hope to maybe possibly start considering my own goals on day in the next 10-20 years. It's like saying "You want happiness? Make yourself even more miserable than you are now and maybe you will be slightly happy for a few seconds before you die."
I really don't even know why I cling to hope. I don't. I just can't get it into my head that if I were dead, I wouldn't care about the future anymore, much less the tiny hope that I can have the future I want. I really think it's to late to even bother with, I'd be better off wishing for a short life than hoping to achieve a happy one.
I just don't know anymore.. I'm stuck in this trap with no escape.
I can relate to a lot of your story, left alone all the time, getting into drugs and sex at a young age. Being told I had to be perfect or I would be given up. They even called the cops to take me to a foster home, because they didn't want to deal with me anymore. I really wasn't that bad of a kid at that point, but they convinced me I was.. My brother sobbed and begged them to keep me, so they changed their minds. But yes, I have to say that experience really impacted me and made me feel so worthless, unwanted, & abandoned. Even though they didn't actually abandon me. I can understand why you feel like running away from your life, it sounds painful. I couldn't tolerate the pain and abuse and I ran away at 15 and didn't return home until my dad had left when I was almost 18. Maybe you need to separate from them, get out from under their control and find out what you want and who you are.
I'm a runner though, so of course I say run. If you want to stay, I suggest you spend your time in your fantasy, write down what you wish your life could be. What do you want to do, what kind of relationship would you like, where would you want to move. Spend some time on the internet looking up cities and towns. Don't limit yourself, its a great big world and you aren't trapped. Only by the limitations you place in your mind. This is easier said than done, believe me I have A LOT of limitations in my head/way too.
The good news is, you are making progress. Keep going to school, get your generals out of the way. I have so much I could say, that I prob should be saying to myself too. I'll stop cuz it feels like a rant, but I hope something I said helped. Message me anytime. Hugs!