Hi.

No one can actually tell you to SNAP OUT OF IT. It's not realistic to tell someone who is suffering from depression to SNAP OUT OF ANYTHING. It's your mind, your pain, and your feelings most definitely. You mention how this is affecting your parents. At least you are able to address that.

Let me ask you one thing.

What interests you? What one thing (that you might have done in the past), or that you have never done, but might consider doing, well is there ONE thing that gets your mind off of your mental pain?

We all need to keep busy, to find that one hobby that makes us once again interested in LIFE. It took me a while, but I found a great hobby. And for ME, this works out just fine.

Some people collect stamps, coins, butterfly collections, music collections, movie collections, some people go dancing, they can dance all by themselves to their WII, or their Playstations, some people like to go out for coffee and an egg on a roll and socialize in the morning (that's my thing, too).

But the point I'm trying to make is that each of us has a purpose but we might not have realized that purpose yet. Sometimes we get it at 20, sometimes we get it at 60. If I had one wish it would be that, when I was 20, I had the brain function that I now have.

Ah, they say youth is wasted on the young. How true. I would have turned left, when I turned right, I would have made MUCH BETTER CHOICES.

But alas, we cannot go back in time and change the past.

But we CAN change what we do RIGHT NOW.

I made so many changes in the last 5 years, I can't even begin to tell you.

I have a different mental outlook now than I did 8 years ago, when our son left home and never came back.

Try getting up in the morning and knowing you will never see your child again. Think about mental pain, think about speaking over and over to social workers, psychologists, Board and Care facilities, and the topper to all this was getting on the phone with the suicide hotline every single night for 4 nights or so trying to send a suicide team to my son's house only to find him perfectly fine and laughing his head off.

Believe me, I know depression and mental pain. But I had to get my head in a different direction, or I would have died myself.

And I don't want to die. I want to live, and breath the fresh air when I get up in the morning. I don't care if my back aches, if I can't straighten up. I know that if I start walking, it will get the kinks out. I know that if I go out of my house and pass someone who is older and all bent up and I just smile at them and I say "How are you doing today?" well, it makes THEIR day, so it makes MY day!!

Sometimes, life sucks, it just does. But it doesn't mean that it has to suck 24 hours a day.

If you can't sleep and you are qualified, take something to sleep. I don't know if you have had any problems with meds in the past, but I was an insomniac all my life. Never slept through the night.

Believe me, when I take a melatonin, and I drift off, and I get my 8 hours, it's like a gift.

When one doesn't get a good nights sleep, it messes with the circadian rhythm and it sets you up for a tired feeling all day long.

When I first found out I was getting a full nights sleep, well, it was like a gift.

So if you have been NOT sleeping, have you tried talking to your doctor? Maybe he can give you something.?

See, I don't know your situation, if you are on any meds that prevent you from sleeping....??

But it messes with your brain function, your metabolism and everything else.

We all need to sleep.

So think about that hobby that you might be interested in.

My hobby is sprouting. Best thing I ever discovered.

Maybe you can find something that YOU are interested in??

Take care,

Melody