YOU ARE NOT ALONE - A companion online community discussion board for The Mental Illness Happy Hour podcast with Paul Gilmartin

I only just started listening to the podcast but I really feel like I need somewhere to go where maybe I can be understood better.

I'm 26, female, bisexual, living in the US. The thing is, I feel like I shouldn't complain because I have it pretty good. My parents divorced when I was younger and my dad wasn't around, but my mom has always been a great parent. She remarried and I had some issues with my step-dad, but that's more because he came into the family when I was going through the rebellious-slash-depressed pre-teen phase. And teen phase. But he and I get along better now that I have my own place.

I have a large family, and I have a job, a car, a place to live. So what's the issue?

The only thing I've been officially diagnosed with is depression, and while I'm being medicated (prozac) and going through therapy, I still struggle a lot. I mean I cry for no reason (sometimes at work, ugh that's the worst).

Oh, and I am in a long-distance relationship of sorts. She lives in Europe and I live in the US and we are actually getting ready for our first in-person meeting in like 11 days (okay I have a countdown on my phone for it, bah). I'm taking a two week vacation and we're going to spend two weeks together and I'm excited but I'm also scared as fuck because I know I've been going through a depressive phase lately and it's making me feel like I'm difficult to handle.

She also has her own MI and stuff she is getting sorted on, but I look at her and I see somebody who knows how to have her life together, and I look at me and I wonder why the fuck I am still alive because I clearly can't handle being an adult.

There's a very big part of me that wants to be a child, to be cared for and loved and snuggled. I used to think it was some sort of kink I have, that maybe I needed to be in some sort of sexual relationship with an older man as my "daddy" and me as the baby girl. But I don't like that as much as I thought I would. I don't like being condescended to, and most of the men I came across in that lifestyle were that way.

My girlfriend does indulge that side of me. I mean she bought me plushies for my birthday & christmas, and she can treat me like the little kid I want to be while still treating me like the adult I am. Does that make sense? ugh IDK.

I worry that people don't want to put up with me. That I'm too much of a burden because I apologize all the time, because I hate myself, because I'm too needy and childish, because I'm just annoying.

Okay I don't know if I make sense here, but I'm going to shoot this out into the world and see what happens.

You're on medication and going through therapy.

Personally I think that's the adult way of handling depression.

Job, car, and a place to live sadly isn't a depression force-field :S. But it seems to me that having all those things and dealing with depression in a mature way means that at some level you have handled being an adult... right? You struggle, but you use that term in the present tense, which means you're still going... right?

My parents are great. They've been married for 30+ years now. I went to a good school and I was very sharp. I had no reason to be depressed in a certain sense. But my mind seemed to disagree with me on that note.

and one day in april I went into a mental hospital and was there for a week.

I hope meeting your long-distance-relationship-of-sorts-other-person goes very well.