Hi everyone, I just last night came across this site and decided to join up. I'm struggling coming to terms with what I am going through and really forcing myself to face reality. I'm not sure if I've even truly been 100% honest with anyone really in my whole life including myself, I'm definately up there as a contender for the title of Queen of Denial :-( So in the hope that this helps me face my issues and take ownership of them instead of suppressing them here's a bit about me... and I'm giving the whole truth that I feel I can do here which I can't seem to do among people that "know" me...
I suffer from depression and have just recently had a big relapse, I have bottomed out and started making baby steps back up but I still kow there's a fair lot of work ahead of me, I can't pretend nothing happened and just sweep it under the rug like I have always done up until now. I also suffer terribly from social anxiety, there I admitted it, I've never admitted that before to anyone, ever. A part of the condition is that you are so fearful of other people's judgements so admitting that it is a problem to someone in the first place I'm hoping will be a stepping stone to learning how to manage it or hopefully cure it- if its possible. I guess the other really big thing for me is my weight. I weigh 231 pounds, I'm reasonably tall so I try to carry it off the best I can but my weight just makes me hate myself. Horrible scary thing to admit and I hate, hate, hate being superficial but I just truly hate being as big as I am. I'm always so self conscious and avoid going out because I feel so terrible and that just adds sooo much to the social anxiety.
I just turned 30 about 2 weeks ago. It wasn't the reason for my depression relapse, my b'day happened right in the middle of a really awful 3 week rock bottom period. I always thought wow at 30 I would be in the prime of my life and its so scary to stop denying the truth and face the reality that I am so far from it.

It makes so much of a difference finding this site and seeing everyone's stories and realising that I'm not alone in my own private hell and no-one understands, I mean I am alone and hate to admit I really am loney but I know there's people on here that will understand what I'm going through because there's so many people out there dealing with these things.

Wow, sorry for such a long post. If you got to the bottom thank you so much for reading. I hope I meet people on here and we can have honest conversations and for the first time in my life I can get my head out of the sand and start facing the truth and then start dealing with it.