Anyone else feel like the future just isn't worth seeing?

I'm so frustrated by the decisions I made in the past. Trying to "fight" the depression with a "positive attitude" and "compassion" just exhausts me. I don't have a lot of hope for the future anymore. Every day just feels like mud. There's no light to be seen. I'm so alone all the time but don't really want to go out, to talk to anyone. Peoples well-intentioned advice only seems to make me angrier. If only it were as simple as just going out, getting some exercise, talking to someone, getting a job or volunteering. Part of the reason why I'm depressed is because I suck at these things with the exception of exercise. I've been this way my whole life. I'm not optimistic that it's going to change. I've always been the outsider, the weird one. I've been a hard worker but when it comes to jobs I can't handle the stress of being around other people. Everyone my age is in a good career making lots of money and going out and doing fun things with other fun people and here I am in the same place I've always been my whole life - sitting in my bedroom going nowhere and not even wanting to bother most days. If it wasn't for my dog and husband I'd have probably ended up somewhere not good. I worry that my problems will eventually push him away too, just like they do everyone else.

I have no hope. I really don't.

You do have hope Wing, you just need to dig deeper to find it...you're right though, depression can easily push people you love away from you and imagine where you'll be if that happens? That's why I decided to take a new approach with my perspective, of course I still struggle daily but that's my choice (as it is yours) so as soon as I start feeling down or angry I stop and remember what good I do have (you have good too) and I focus on that and I remind myself that I'm doing it for my guts (my emotional stress and anger are affecting my IBS negatively so I have no choice unless I want to keep running to the toilet all day and night) it's not easy to stop myself and turn things in my head around, but I am doing it, I can do it, and so can you.

You have reasons in your life to take a new perspective but especially for yourself, not just for your husband. You have to decide if you want to be happy, I was so sick and tired of bouncing back and forth between angry and sad and thought what the hell am I wasting my time doing this for, lots of people have been through worse things than me and they fight not to let it bring their life down and keep it down (as you and I have been doing---letting how we feel keep us down).

We're not going to live forever, and I use that as a reminder, when I'm angry or sad I remind myself, it's all just temporary and one day none of this will matter but as long as you're here now you can control how you feel and control getting yourself out of the huge slump you're in and have probably been in for a long time.

There's lots of reading material on beating depression, consider getting some to push start yourself into changing your perspective because if YOU don't no one else can, so decide, do you want to keep feeling the way you are feeling or have you finally had enough and are ready to stomp out the crap feeling you've been feeling?

ARE YOU GOING TO LET THE crap FEELINGS RULE YOUR LIFE OR ARE YOU GOING TO RULE YOUR LIFE?

That's the magic to get out of the funk you're feeling and it's just a funk, don't make your depression bigger than you as a person or it will keep eating you up, chewing you up and won't spit you out til the last day you have in this world. You get to decide, not the depression.

Sometimes we label ourselves and it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy.

Fear and anxiety will kill the will to try or change before we even have a chance. And then attempts are half baked at best because we're already convinced we will fail so we look for any excuse to quit and call it "trying".

The only way to atone within yourself for the decisions you made in the past, is to make better, smarter decisions in the future. You can't go back so focusing on it is just wasted energy.

It sounds like you need a momentum swing in the positive direction, but I don't know if you're wanting or asking for advice or just venting so I'll leave it as is.

If everything in the world is energy, and like energy attracts like energy, then it stands to reason that negativity within oneself will attract negativity beyond.

If I sit and dwell on the fact that I have brain damage, that I have physical pain day after day that will never go away, that there's nothing I can do to change it etc...then that's where I live...in this horrible awful neverending loop of despair.

But I CANT do that...because then, whats the point? And there HAS to be a point because I REFUSE to be in awful pain every day for NOTHING.

So instead I've decided that my big "f you" to my circumstances is to live my life DESPITE them. Drag myself out of bed every day and try and be more than a walking mass of uselessness.

It all starts with you, no matter what "it" is.

nothing for me to add- except change is apart of life, your mindset can change too. work on the here and now.

Wing,

Perhaps, you are unique.

We are made differently for a reason. Remember, no set of fingerprints are the same, just like no two snow flakes are the same. Doesn't that just boggle your mind?

Right now you are stuck marinating in your muck! Heee Heee I know it ryhmes,, didn't mean to do that.

But it is true. We all are allowed to do that from time to time, it is even therapuetic to a point. You can not let the other side win though. Never give UP! You are what you make of your self.

Check out our resource thread at the top of the forum for some books, you might find them helpful.

Where there is breath there is plenty of hope.!

Peace
Trina

Tuesday's Child and the others are all correct Wing,

This life that we each uniquely have is all we have and we only have it for so much time, once that time is up we won't have any choices to make, so make your choices now. I feel the same as you, I dreadfully regret every decision I've ever made in my life since I was a kid knowing I was struggling in school...I gave up on myself at a very young age and when I reflect back I see the reasons why I made the choices I made that I deeply regret, but I made them and I have to live with them but I don't have to dwell on them because that is meaningless and pointless energy.

Terrible things happen to good people everyday, all day and many of those things can change your life in the blink of an eye, it's how you handle/perceive them that matters, how you cope, how you deal how you get yourself through it that counts, not so much what happened in the past, the past purpose is to learn from not dwell on. Learning, accepting, realization are the tools, use them, if you're tired of feeling the way you've been feeling for many many years (as I am) then it's taking your energy, you need your energy to live now, the past is gone, the lessons are still here, take the knowledge from your past mistakes and use them to learn for today and the rest of your days. Don't risk losing what good you do have, realize and recognize and focus on the good you have today no matter how small the good might feel to you, but letting the past swallow up what ever amount of good you have today is the worst thing we can do to ourselves.

You get to decide when you've had enough of feeling so down, when you're sick of it enough you will know and that's when you get to pull up your socks, take a good deep breath and let it go so you can move to a better place in your mind or your health will continue to pay for things that happened in the past that you cannot change. Take your life back stop letting the past eat through you, it's over, focus on today and each day at a time.

(((HUGS)))