Ask Emily: 12-30-2002

Hey Saddy,You start out your letter with "Last year, everything was going great," but follow it up with a bunch of stuff that points to a lifelong battle with depression. To put it simply, I think that people can't fight depression by themselves but that with the help of therapy and maybe (in a lot of cases) medication, they can be ok and lead relatively normal lives. You need to get some help because it's obvious that you're having a tougher and tougher time dealing with everything by yourself, and the thing is, it just gets worse the longer you put it off. I wish that I could tell you that you could hide inside and be pissed off at the world forever and that eventually everything would be ok, but it just doesn't work that way and before you know it your life will be cruising by you at a relatively high speed and you'll be more unhappy than ever.What you need to do is take things one small step at a time. It's hard to get out of bed when you feel like your life is shit and that you will never be able to do anything right or that everything is pissing you off and DAMMIT YOU ARE ABOUT TO BREAK, but you have to do it. Get out of bed and look around for someone in your area who does depression counseling. Maybe ask your doctor to recommend you someone if you have a close relationship with him or her, but make an appointment to go talk to someone. Do this as soon as you get done reading my reply to you! I guarantee you that once you start putting one foot in front of the other and make one small decision after another about what you want your life to be you will feel better and better about things. But you can't delay on this or you will just continue to wallow in your own misery, and that's just no fun for anyone.You can't possibly expect to hold down a stable relationship or even function in society when you feel overwhelmed by life and it seems like all of the bad things that go on are steadily outweighing the good. You need to take all of your anger and frustration and (bury it down inside lol j/k) deal with it and move past it so that you can start to live a healthy and happy life. You are in complete control of what happens next for yourself. Take action and make the call and help yourself out of the rut you obviously have fallen into. Everything will be ok if you just kick yourself in the ass and get a move on with making yourself better.

Poor sad guy.

Hi,Never write to me again.

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