Thank you all for your replies to my email. Yall seem very nice.. and understanding.. which is a huge thing in my world. I appreciate all of you. I think that i will get alot of good things from this site. It is also helpful to me to read others thoughts. Thank you again, Janet

hi janet you sound very frustrated. i think many of us can relate to your feelings. i don't think that there truly exists a quick solution to your problems. you might help yourself with small steps and small peices of success. i think you are fotunate to have a good relationship with your mother and a loving husband. i think its important that you focus on your husband. think about how you can make him feel better. look for opportunities. exercise can positively impact depression. try to figure out how you can motivate yourself to exercise. try to find a support group in your area. writing to this site is ceratainly a good beginning. you can also keep a journal documenting your thoughts. write about what you might do to feel better. write down a prayer, asking God for help, not necessarily to cure you, but ask Him to help you bear the pain of depression. tell Him your problems. you can try this no matter what your faith or your degree of faith. if you read the postings on this site you will find many useful ways of looking at depression. you will find actions that might help you. your husband and your mother love you. God loves you. you are an important person. don't feel guilty because of your problems. many people are in a better space than you are. many others are much worse off. if we can accept who we are and what we are, we will focus not on hating ourselves, but on improving our lot in life. there are of course people on this site who are much more knowledgeble about therapy than i am. perhaps your med plan offers mental health support...or there may be community support groups for you. possibly you also have to deal with some of the baggage you carry around from the past. in the final analysis, you are responsible for yourself, though others can help you understand what has happened and what is happening to you. in writing i am perhaps shedding a bit of a positive light on your situation. i hope you will write more on this site. don't hesitate to let your feelings and frustrations flow, as you did in this posting. i think its a good thing to just communicate. we will listen to you and support you as best we can. we are all different, but to some degree we all suffer from problems similar to yours. you have my heartfel

hello Janet- I am not bi-polar so i don't know exactly how you feel but i have suffered from depression for as long as i can remember. i know how frustrating it is to have people tell you to just snap out of it- like you want to be feeling like this right? glad you found us here- even though we don't all suffer from the same problems we do understand how it can be. as far as meds go- if you have them now, maybe you should take them and see if they help you. they do take a while to make a difference, at least two weeks and sometimes up to six weeks so you will have to give them a chance. i know they can be expensive. is there a chance your doc can give you samples? when i was first put on meds i felt like you did about having to be on them for the rest of my life but once i was on them and they started to make a difference in how i was feeling i realized that taking them for my depression was no different than if i was taking meds for high blood pressure. this is an illness after all and it can be treated just like any other. i have often wondered how my husband puts up with me, especially during my deep depression periods. i can barely stand myself. i end up feeling guilty for the way i treat him but he tells me that he understands that it is just the "beast" and not me doing it. guess i am just lucky. please keep coming back and expressing yourself here Janet. we care about you.

Hi Janet, I found this site out of desperation too. Writing about my feelings and experiences has helped a little, and reading posts from others helps too when I can see that I am not alone. I also know about the insurance thing. I also stopped my medication because I couldn’t afford the co-pay anymore. I don’t recommend that, but in my case the medication wasn’t helping much anyway and I didn’t see the point in continuing to throw my money away on it. If there was something that really helped, I would do anything I could to pay for it because I hate feeling like this. If your medications do help, you should be grateful that there is something to make you feel better and not hate the fact that you have to take them. My Grandmother had to take pills for her heart every day for many years…this is not any different than that. The medicine just works on a different part of the body. Did you ask your doctor about sleeping pills? Maybe he could give you some samples to try and if that helps, there must be a generic kind that doesn’t cost so much. I know how it is with people saying to snap out of it. They have not experienced anything like this and they don’t understand it’s not that easy. I wish I could just snap out of it. I think of all the things I could do with my life if I didn’t feel like my body is made of lead and I can’t move, among other problems. I think most of us here have heard that before, you are definitely not the only one!

This is the first time that I have ever done something like this. I am so lost. I found this site really out of desperation I suppose. My name is Janet. I live in Jacksonville Beach FL. I am 26 years old, and will be married to a great guy for a year on May 15th. I am bi-polar. I was told by drs that I am bi polar about 4 years ago. I have been depressed most of my life.. well for my life that I can remember. I had a really ****py childhood, and dont remember much of anything from the time that I was 9-12 yrs old. I was "tourtured" as my drs in the past has told me. I was abused mentally and psychically by my grandfather. Every single day I would get hit, told that I am nothing ,and would amount to nothing. I would go days w/out eating b/c i was being "punished" .. i have two younger brothers who he would make eat and laugh at me b/c i was not able to eat. I would get beaten for things that my brothers did b/c i was not "watching" them. It was horrible. My grandfather died when i was 15 (i think?) .. It really sucks b/c i know that these things happened, but i have no memory whatsoever. My husband asked that I go to the dr about 4 years ago. I am not normal.. I am always sad and in a "bad" mood. I hate who I am more than anything. I have considered suicide in the past, attempted it a few times, but bc of my family I won't. It would kill my mom (whom i am extremely close with) and the rest of my immediate family. However, if I died of natural causes, i would not care. I feel that I dotn really have anythign to live for. I odnt have children or anything like that. Anyway, I am suppose to be on medication.. obviously. I work for a company that has five employees - and is a small business. I had decent insurance, but just recently, they chaged our policy and made it to where my co-pays for drs visits are $50 adn my meds are $100 each for ONE MONTH. I had a breakdown the other day. My husband was crying and asking me what was wrong. I guess he loves me very much. He always tells me that he does, but I dont understand how someone can love someone like me! I am horrible. Ooh another fun thing that is wrong w/me is that I have these night terrors. I wake up in the middle of the night and gasp for air or call for my mom. I dont understand them. Well my husband is a