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

I seriously am starting to believe this. It makes me incredibly sad but just seems so much safer because the minute I feel anything for anyone I fall apart. I guess I prefer just playing it safe and staying put together but it makes me so sad (read depression fuel) to think I will never love someone passionately "that way" again.

unfortunately I know what you mean. but I refuse to let my disease limit my future. i don't know if I have the energy or spirit or desire to even leave the house tomorrow, much less date, much less let myself fall in love again. but I think we have to keep telling ourselves we will.

If you failed, it is a "failure" in sense of a hoped-for outcome not matching reality. Failure is an event, an outcome, and you are a person

I feel the same way you feel right now.

I can tell you now, because I just happen to be having a moment of reprieve from the onslaught of negative thoughts---
You're not better off alone. I'm not better off alone. I look at every other girl and see her face; every other couple and get sick. Do I think I'll ever love someone as passionately again?

Right now it's painful, but so was a broken nose before it healed.

Dumb as that sounds, I'm telling you as much as I'm telling me that time helps; doesn't heal, but helps.

The poster who said you are a person, not an event, was so right. Nor was your relationship an event but a journey. It is human nature to remember the last event and let it color the prior ones and right now you feel the rupture of the pain. If you are mourning the relationship and the loss of the person, that shows right there you got something from it, so treasure the good and learn to release the bad, because frankly, we have no choice. Easier said than done, but it does happen eventually.

Many people are happy alone, some never can be. I don't think its depression that determines that or the disease because many depressed people have had long satisfying marriages or unions. If you want to be alone, okay. That may be a better path for your life. But that is your choice, don't hide behind the disease because that can discourage other readers struggling right now with being depressed and alone.

What depression might be doing is compounding that global sense of loss a lost relationship brings and it sounds like it hurts a lot. Hugs to you. Nurture yourself.

Hadn't opened this thread in a while and came across it tonight when I really needed it. Thanks! Down tonight. Feeling the loneliness and mad at myself for still being mad at the ex. For still harboring resentment (and sometimes missing him) 4 years later. Pathetic.