sorry that my reply wasn't satisfactory to you or in the format that you'd prefer.

I'll avoid commenting on your posts in the future.

You talk of your experience with depression and getting older. Do you find as you get older, do you get any angrier? I will turn 40 in August. I've been living with depression my entire life after sexual and mental abuse in my childhood. I've been medicated for 15 years. I thought I was over alot of my mental torment but for the last year or so, i've noticed how angry I seem to be at the world. I can barely stand to be in public anymore because everyone makes me crazy!! I feel bad because people aren't necessarily doing anything wrong. However, inside i would just love to scream at them regardless. What is the matter with me? Am I just going to turn into an old lady that stays in her house and yells at the kids that throw their baseball in my yard??

oh god, bobbilaugh, me too! me too!!! my hope has been through the meat grinder, and as i've gotten older, the years of abuse have depleted my hope reserves. so i am a lot angrier. also, as i get older, i see more and more just how much my old styles of coping aren't working, and i'm unable to really manufacture any other coping styles; sure, i manage to sort of limp along on fumes, sort of make it look like i'm coping, but i'm really not. the stress of pretending takes a lot out of me too. i am exhausted. and it's this exhaustion that has lowered my patience. it's this exhaustion that has made me sensitve to outbursts of rage and bitterness. and, as i get older, the real world, reality, seeps in, because real life has been shoved further and further down my throat. reality, my reality, is replete with heartbreaking, no-win situations. they frustrate me because there is nothing i can do, no way to make my painful situation any better. it's goddamn depressing. there's only so long a person can cry and complain before she gets used to it and begins to "put up and shut up." i've gone under ground. i see no reason to speak much about it, because there's nothing me or anybody else can do, the doctors made that abundantly clear.

scrolling back, hopeliveson said "anger won't get you anywhere."
anger is all i have. anger is what's keeping me alive.
true, if i had other choices, i would not stay angry.
if i had money to pay for treatment for my physical pain, or money to pay for a home health aid; if i had family or friends to support me; if i wasn't constantly harrassed by hallucinations and delusions and parania, if i wasn't schizophrenic, then maybe things could be different. if i wasn't so trapped in such a mess, maybe i could actually figure out a way to get to a better place. i'm no slacker, and i'm a creative, resourceful problem solver. sometimes i wonder why other people have such a hard time hearing and supporting victims. i am a true victim. i did not invite these people to hurt me, and i've been working hard for years in therapy to undo what shouldn't have been pressed upon me in the first place. it disgusts me that our culture still blames victims for what somebody else did to them. why do we blame victims? my guess is that inside all of us is a fear of being vulnerable, and rather than face our own fear, we project it on to a limited agreed scapegoat. it's not right and it's not fair. though we feel better, safer, what about that poor person, that poor person who's been appointed "evil" or "bad"? they have been tortured, basically sacrified, for no reason. is someone else's life less worthy than our own? how can we be okay with that? how can you be okay with killing an innocent person?????????

So i'm not alone after all. I think i know what you are saying. I talk and talk and analyze everything with the ones I love. My husband is so road worn with my depression problems that i just try to tell my brain to shut the hell up. of course it won't. You are right, it's so exhausting to pretend you're normal that i can only be with people for short burst of time. About 5 years ago i realized that this was it. I'm always going to have very little money, i'm always going to have depression, i'm never going to be famous or have some fantastical moment in time.

weirdly, i've always had this sort of hope gene running through me.
maybe not "always" but i always knew i was going to "be somebody."
a very famous University "discovered" me, and now I am writing for them; they want to publish everything i send them! i was featured on TV last year. it's strange, because when i review my past, i was clearly a nobody, clearly a "loser," yet i never saw myself that way.

it's only recently, since i've entered "recovery" from my mental illness, that if began to feel different from others in a bad way. i notice that i am different, with different language, different humor, much more intelligent then the average. in addition to acknowledging i am very different, i also know that my difference is only bad because other people are afraid of it; I AM NOT BAD. That's the big switch. I used to swallow other peoples' bullshit, and believe the hipe, believe i was bad. Now, I know just how smart and good and kind I truly am, so when people want to be hateful towards me, i know it's them and not me. BUT IT IS STILL PAINFUL TO BE EXCLUDED. knowing that i am excluded for stupid reasons, for reasons i can't control, has made me feel so powerless, so at the mercy of others, that i am lost in an ocean of despair. Recovery, for me, has been pretty horrible, because i am aware of the horrible things that have happened to me, the horrible things that are currently happening to me. psychosis and giving in to illness was my protection, was my buffer, from awareness; from being aware of just how powerless i am, from being aware of pain.
i am not sure whether i like recovery or not. i thought recovery was 100% positive; i'm finding that recovery is 10% positive and 90% negative. i'm finding that recovery is the most depressing thing i've ever experienced.

I'm sorry you're so down Hootspa. I hope your recovery comes to a positive in the end.

Life is depressing a lot of the time. The rate of technology advancements is far quicker than evolution. I'm pretty sure that for the 90,000 years when we were hunter gathers depression didn't exist- or at least nowhere near to the extent today. We just have so many things to be depressed about along with the endless list of societies expectations on how to live, look, dress, eat etc. However at the same time things can be more amazing than they've ever been.

Yes, life is full of ups and downs so we have be patient and not greedy... But what do you think lucky, beautiful and rich people? Are their lives also full of disappointments? I can't believe they are so. So I don't believe in "look in the positive, bright side" thing... =/ I know this makes my situation even worse but I can't make myself believe it.

actually it was quite good analogy :)