its good to know you didn't come to rely on drugs happened to my friend, and i think she came out of it.
drugs are unforunately a quick way to fall out of a depression, until u ahve that postdepression .. and that's when you keep doing it over and over ..

tx for sharing man !

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The soul is the energy within us,
the music is the sound we hear,
the beat is what we feel,
the trance is the resulting state of mind which one achieves
once the soul, the sound,
and the beat become one.

you have contributed to this community once again..
thanks a whole bunch...

good work, keep it up

Glad that things worked out for ya... I'll have to have a read of that document and say if it might shed any light on my present state of self-contempt... big thanks in advance, this kind of thing is heartwarming to see in a world were most people couldn't give a shit about anyone but number one. Good on you mate!

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has anyone tried out Meditation? I've always heard about how meditation can help you with develop tranquility, reduce stress etc but never took it seriously or bothered trying it until last week. A new employee at my workplace who is a member of a Zen Center here in Toronto invited me to the center last weekend where I ended up meditating with the sensei and a few others. I was having a really bad week (words can't describe) and really stressed out as usual. As of last week I'm still in disbelief how 5 minutes of meditation made me feel the complete opposite of what I was feeling prior to the meditation session...like someone just took away all the problems from my shoulders. All of a sudden I felt a sense of calmness/a relaxed state.

I CAN'T RECOMMEND IT ENOUGH if you haven't given it a try.


djslain I read your previous thread a while back. glad to hear everything is going well for you.

Nice one

djSlain, that was one of the most incredible things I've read in awhile.

I'm currently 17, in grade 11. Your story is quite similar to mine in many ways. I used to be social, funny, etc. but something changed way back when. Grade 4-5ish. I found myself not as social, and constantly questioning my every action. At this time, I was enrolled in the gifted program, and I started going to special schools for enrichment. These classes are not exactly social events, and is foccused almost entirely on self-initiated studies. There were few group projects and little discussion took place. I hated it. For grades 4,5, and 6, I was enrolled in part-time gifted, meaning I went to another school one day a week. I slowly began to drift apart from my non-gifted friends, because I was studying so much, and my gifted friends, I hardly saw out of school, because we came to that class from all over the city (Toronto, which is pretty big). In grade 7 I switched to full-time gifted. It was at the same Junior High school that most of my friends went to, which was nice. But, I wasn't the same social person I was. I felt as though I hardly knew my childhood friends, and I was once again questioning myself constantly. It was during this time I would have panic attacks, and have complete mental breakdowns that would last weeks... and I brokedown over things as stupid as homework I couldn't finish, or bad weather that prevented me from going out with friends. Half way through the year, my parents told me we would be moving north once school was finished. Part of me was relieved, and part of me was deeply saddened. I loved Toronto. I still do. This is a beautiful city with lots to see and do. I looked forward to being able to start my social lift over again, and I thought I would go back to being my old self. Then, I really started to drift away from the few Toronto friends I had left. Since I moved, I have only maintained contact with my best friend Sam, whom I've known forever.

After I moved, I had the whole summer to pass by in a new town (Collingwood). I was still shy and quiet, so I spent most of my time at home, in front of the computer. When school started, I met some nice people, and I thought I was finally becoming smart and social again. I was in the "cool" group and all that jazz.... but I still felt like I was faking it. And then the lot of them got pissed at me over something stupid, and I found myself going to high school in 4 months with no friends. This destroyed me. I fell into deep depression, and the mental breakdowns came about again. I got in fights, and now I've got suspensions on my record. I was deeply depressed for the first year of high school. Towards the end of the year, I discovered trance. This helped a lot. I didn't get so deeply depressed because trance made me feel good. It didn't make me social, or funny. It didn't cure my shyness or anything, but it made me forget about my problems. My parents persuaded me to start taking drama, and I eventually did, even though I was reluctant. I eventually became a quiet, but successful drama student. Two months ago I was invited to join the troop for the Sears Drama Festival. I won't go into detail, but those two weeks were the greatest of my life. I felt so good, and I was social like I used to be. Now, I am going out with one of the girls from the troop, and she is incredible. She's one of the only people to ever listen to my problems seriously. I thought I had defeated my depression, but it only got worse over the last two months. When I wasn't seeing her I became depressed. And the other day she said she would be switching schools because our school's drama program wasn't good enough. I know this is about her future, but I am still having a mental breakdown over it. I feel like crap right now. I could barely drag myself to work this afternoon.

I want things to change. I don't want to feel this again. But I don't know where to start....

I know my story isn't quite as sad as Slain's, or anyone else's, but thats not what depression is about. Depression is depression no matter what the reason. It still hurts.

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//..

Wow... reading this almost makes me feel guilty about being depressed, my own story is a day at the zoo in comparison, but I'm pretty screwed up all the same.

My life story:

*quit reading here if you don't like long lumps of text written by some whiney fuck like myself*

Born 1986 in Gothenburg, Sweden to a Swedish mother and an English father. Lived there (here) until I was 4, was then uprooted when my parents moved to the UK. Started school at the age of five, as you do. Hadn't quite settled in to the environment, so didn't make very many friends, (although one of the friends I still have contact with to this day.) Was subjected to bullying in school at an early age, and pretty much lived with it all through primary school. (thats 1st to 6th grade for all you Americans) Life at home wasn't always the best, as my father was always working late and my mother was (and still is) sick.

I had a reasonably good relationship with my parents despite this, but the lack of contact with my father for most of the week screwed me up somewhat. In fifth grade I had a brief bout with delinquency, which included stealing from my parents and shoplifting, was never caught by the cops luckily. Managed to get over this thanks to some strict discipline from loving parents.

Come 6th grade, my family was up the creek financially, so I had to move back to Sweden and stay with my grandmother. Went to school in Sweden for a year, it was fairly uneventful but for the odd fight, and my rather under-nourished body got back into good shape thanks to good food and care from grandma.

Returned home to my parents and 7th grade in the UK, went to a school which I quickly grew to hate due to bullies and several teachers I wouldn't hesitate to call evil. Got into fights frequently and was pretty severely bullied, sometimes so badly I couldn't face going to school, and ended up missing a lot and getting messed up grades because of it. 8th and 9th grades were pretty much more of the same. 9th grade also broke my heart: sent this girl a valentines, but after a brief cuddle after school one day she totally ignored me. This screwed me up even more, grades became worse, even tried to kill myself once or twice. (Still thinking about that same girl to this day.) Once the well needed summer break comes along, I flee to Sweden for the whole summer, managing to get the rest and recovery needed to be able to tackle the 10th grade.

10th grade starts off pretty well, even managed to talk to the girl I loved, still getting into the odd fight though. Along comes the Easter holiday and the event that threw my already screwy life totally off track. Came to Sweden as I usually did on the holidays, but when I was supposed to go back, I had a massive last-minute breakdown at the airport, couldn't move, could barely breathe and just sat there crying my eyes out for half an hour. This was the consequence of 10 years of bullying at school, poor conditions at home, a broken heart and exam stress. All coming back at once.

So, stayed in Sweden for the next few months to recover my strength.
Was offered therapy, but stupidly refused it a I "thought" everything was all better. Still couldn't face going to school in the UK again however, so decided to start studying at an IT-college in Gothenburg.
This went reasonably well for most of the first year, although I begun to neglect myself, and lost quite a bit of weight, being already rather skinny. Noone noticed this however. I was slowly becoming more and more unhappy with everything, missed my parents like hell, and was going around worrying that I'd made a huge mistake.

Despite this, I went around wearing a happy face, and still managed to do reasonably well at school for the last couple of months of the first year, despite increased absence. Summer break, visited my parents in the UK. Came back for the second year, that wa last autumn. Was now feeling bad both mentally and physically. Managed to pick upp pretty much every bug that went around, which led to even more absence and sharply dropping grades, I was pretty much back in the same rut as when I was in the UK. No bullying however, but not many friends either as I had become shy and withdrawn and was coonstantly isolating myself in my room on my spare time. (I still do :/) Close to Christmas, everyone was woried about my progress, finally beginning to notice something was wrong. I kept wearing the brave face and just said time and time again "I'm gonna improve, I promise" to every teacher and to my grandma and even to myself. No such improvement came though.

New year 2003, back to school. But I didn't go back to school. I stayed at home for two months, faking illness. School kept calling and asking what was up, in the end we ended up having a meeting where we struck a deal that I should only go to school two days a week, and work a job the rest of the week. Sounded great.

But I couldn't even do that. Was by now too tired to do anything useful at all, couldn't sleep properly at night, spent all my time at home in front of the computer and hardly even spoke to friends. Started seeing a social worker who tried to get me active, took me to the gym and took me bowling a few times, and also spoke to me about my problems. Hasn't helped much though. And now recently I have started to cut myself, stay up all night crying and/or moping and once again neglect myself, haven't been eating much the last couple of weeks.

And at the moment I am INCREDIBLY pissed off.

Just the other day (Thursday I think) I went to see a psychiatrist at my local hospital. Total bitch. She asks me a few routine questions, doesn't even give me half a chance to speak freely about my problems and then just says "There is nothing wrong with you" and pretty much proceeded to call me a lazy teenager!

So yeah... there is my life story. A walk in the park compared with DjSlain and several others, but still, I'm sick of not being taken seriously, sick of being told "you aren't depressed, you're just lazy".

Pretty fucked up at the moment, just feel worse and worse with every passing day. Suicidal thoughts crop up constantly but (luckily I guess) I'm too much of a wuss to go through with it.

*sigh*

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Last edited by XLA on Apr-27-2003 at 03:21

For me, I have mood swings all too often. Currently, I'm in a sort of depressed state. When I was a kid, my parents were always critical about everything I did (being first time parents and not knowing how to do it that well I guess). I think this is the reason why, in general, I tend to have low self-esteem. I question a lot of things before I do them, especially in public, in fear that it will look stupid or out-of-line. It's also been ruining my academic career in that I don't honestly believe studying or working hard at anything will yield any positive results. I don't bother trying hard at school, and therefore have performed poorly after grade 10, going from a 90+ average to much lower...

Right now I'm just sitting in my room, listening to trance, and looking for an escape somehow. That's why I waste my time so much on boards like this, in hopes of getting the hell out.

I don't have very many friends here at all. For my whole life, I've moved every 2-4 years. I haven't stayed in one place long enough to get to be good friends with anyone. It really sucks in that theres no one to talk to in that respect, except for my parents. And even then, they rarely understand me fully.

I just wish I had some good friends around here who had the same interests as me or whatever; some people I could talk to when I'm feeling a bit edgy. There's pretty much nobody here that even listens to trance or has the same mind-set that I have. Everyone here is an asshole as far as I'm concerned, teachers and peers. On top of that, they either listen to Pink Floyd or hip-hop strictly. I'm just sick of it. I just hate this.

I also have some obsessive compulsive tendencies that just tire me out mentally. They're nothing major, just little things. And I also have this weird problem where if I see a helicopter blade spinning (like on a tv screen, whatever), I basically go berserk. I feel like the blades are right in front of my eyes and are going to go straight into them. I've had this feeling since I was a child. You know how when you walk through a store aisle (like in the dollar store say) and they have all those metal rods jutting out of the aisles where they hang stuff... just imagine one of those right in front of your eye, like 1mm or something. You get an uncomfortable feeling (or maybe it's just me) - mine is a big time amplified version of that uncomfortable feeling. Except that mine happens with both those AND helicopter blades. It's crazy, I know, but I can't control it. Whenever this happens, I close my eyes and cover them with my hands etc., and try to think of something else. It's crazy. Sometimes when I'm trying to fall asleep at night, I'll think of a helicopter, and I won't be able to fall asleep for either another 10 minutes, or 2 hours... Just by typing this and thinking abotu it, I'm getting the feeling, though very slightly. I've been blinking a lot becuase of it as I type...

Another weirdness, I also get the weird eye-feeling if I close my eyes and walk around. I feel like I'm going to run into something, mainly into my eyes. Even if I know the room is absolutely empty, I walk really slowly, waving my hands in front just to make sure - I still get that weird eye feeling (at times accompanied with am irregular, tense breathing pattern). Something's wrong with my brain, like wtf.

I don't know if anything I've said makes any sense, but whatever. Just had to say something. How screwed up would I be if I did drugs, smoked shit, and drank?

i been late to respond to these threads to do my share of help, i just been busy with lots of great events in my life, i'll have time over the next few days to respond. as crystal method puts it: Keep Hope Alive

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Thank You and Goodnight

it just boggles my mind how people can be so dependent on our social lives. As time goes on and on, people are resorting to leaps in technology to stay home and live care free. Going to school online, ordering groceries online, having an internet girlfriend ( !) When we have friends early in on our life, we are happy and so joyous to join the outside world. practically everyone in the class is friends with one another.
but as time goes on and people start maturing, we constantly judge ourselves as the image we portray to others. We can't do anything embarrassing, we have to have nice clohes, we have to talk and walk all the jive.
we love it when we have it.

but it never crosses the mind until u lose it. We seclude, we retract, we run away from our fears. That's when it matters most, because some people have had to make that choice to end their lives.

"today i am a loner. suicide"

we must always look at it a different way.
"today i am a loner. now what have i done to make it stop"

it took a lot of guts to me to make my first attempt at a conversation. and who was it with? i was sad, i was alone, i was in the mental hospital. i saw this cute lil girl in the hospital. guess wat? we're going out! what did i do to make it happen?

it all started with:

"hi"

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Thank You and Goodnight

As most of the people who has posted on this site, is going through depression, or has beaten it, i am not one of them. I come from a loving family, where we all are friends lol and we care for each other. We are close nit, as different circumstances has made it that way (things like sister being so ill - disabled - and my mum and dad both having bad childhoods so no grandparents or anything).

I though still have something to seek help for. About 2 years ago, i met a girl online called Jessica. I had just split with my girlfriend, and i was in peices. I found someone i confided in and after one year of talking i met up with her. (dont know if anyone remembers the thread? lol). Well she is everything i looked for a girl and more. Now she means the world to me. There still is a problem - apart from the fact she lives in the usa

Her life is something that i just cant help her with, filled with shit that i just cant even comprehend, but i will try and let u in on it. Her mum has been seriously ill since jessica was born (17 years ago). She has bowell cancer and allot of other things. This means that her mum is weak, unable to do general things in everday life. She is on mountains of medication and this makes her moody all of the time.

Her dad is a truck driver. He sees jessica about 4 times a month, if that. He suffered from brain tumour about 7 years ago (when jessica was 10) and was, well he was "stupid" for 2 years. He left the navy from this, and because of his tumour he got large.

Her sister is, well she is a slut. She left home at 16 to live with a lad because she could not live with arguing with her mum. SHe now has a son (2) and is single. She is extremely selfish and lives off her mums money.

Jesssica herself has also been through shit. She got raped last year by her best friend back in utah. It shattered her self esteem and confidence. She questioned everything.

She hates her mum because she is sick all the time. They are always fighting, generally because she is giving her sister money. She has been beaten up by her sister, yet her mum still gives her sister money for her rent and stuff. She lends their car to her sister. Generally, jessica feels that her sister is put before her, and she feels at the bottom of the family.

She loves me with all her heart, as i love her. But when she has a problem, sometimes i am blanked on what to say to her. Its good that she talks to someone, and in a way i am glad its me, but i dont have the answers, and i feel useless nether the less when she tells me things.

I have talked to her about seeing a psychologist of some sort, and she says things like ur saying im mad. She did also once talk to her school councilor and he said that she is over reacting and she should be thinking about her mum rather than herself. She feels she is the reason her mum is ill (because she 'ripped' her when she was born) and she hates her mum dying on her so many times - about 6 times she has had near death experiences. Not so long ago her mum tried to kill herself. Jessica did CPR on her and called for an ambulance. That day she phoned me up and was crying her eyes out. She is my best friend but i had no clue what the hell to say to her. I look at her and admire that she is still with us, because i know, if it was me, id have just given up. Feeling lonely and alone, id have topped myself. She says i give her strength, and im all for that, but i just hate being so dependant on. I love her to bits but im at a corner on what to say to her when she has problems. She is so perfect and she is coming over here in 3 weeks for a whole month. She had a anxiouty attack from stress after her sister beat up her mum, and she needed to go to the hospital.

Iv talked to her today to read this, but in general, she wants to get away from her home. She wants to start anew, but she is only 17. SHe is more mature than i ever will, lol.

I just need general help myself sometimes, i cant tell my mum because my mum will be meeting her soon and i dont want her to think she is some screwed up girl who sees me as a way out for her life. I know this is not the case because she is very genuine. I love her to bits.
Anyway help me?

Many thanks,

Matt