Yeah, totally.

At 30 I realised I was utterly depressed and had been most of my life. Was so used to it that I didn’t realise I could be any different.

Started a long long journey to sort that. Started trying things. Scary as it was, it was less scary than living the rest of my life without ever having lived.

Tried new relationships, new religions, tried new experiences. Again, pushing myself out of my comfort zone a lot but then if I didn’t, I was heading towards an early grave and what could be worse than dying?

Most definitely. I have autoimmune problems and a genetic heart condition. I went from working a decent job and having some financial security to being unemployed for 2.5+ years and taking money from my family so I could keep living - certainly not living well.

It got to a point where my chronic pain and other problems weighed on me so badly that I would immediately curse my existence the very moment I awoke in the morning. I hated that I didn’t die in my sleep.

Of course doctors weren’t helpful - under their care and instruction I actually got worse. The cost of this care also largely wiped out the savings I had. The rest of my savings were used to just stay alive because in no way was I fit for employment.

It is a years-long battle to get any kind of public assistance (yay USA!) because my problems are not typically classified as a disability even though they totally are.

A few specific things kept me alive and fighting:

• My dog was basically my child, and as long as she was with me, I would stay alive and take care of her. I had a very deep bond with her. She was family. I’m not exaggerating when I say I wouldn’t be here today to type this message to you if not for her loving presence. I had her for 11 years. She died on New Years Day this year. Had I still been suffering the way I used to, I probably would’ve killed myself on the 2nd. Being without her this month has been awful, and I owe her my life.
• I finally found a decent endocrinologist who helped me stabilize my hormonal problems. The others I went to actually made things worse and seemed not to have any understanding of why.
• I discovered that responsibly taking kratom leaf powder drastically cut down on my chronic pain and helped in a lot of other ways. I have been taking it a couple times a day for over 3 years now (with some breaks here and there ). I’m no longer dependent on it just to function, but it’s still tremendously helpful.
• I read a book by a back surgeon who also went through something similar with chronic pain and being unable to do anything about it. Changing the way I was reacting to my circumstances based on his advice was very, very impactful. I still had pain, but it wasn’t crushing my spirit anymore.
• I discovered that a huge portion of my pain, tension and anxiety stemmed from eating gluten and corn. I don’t present classic food intolerance symptoms, so it took a lot of trial and error to figure this out.

After around a year of struggling through bad jobs (the only ones that I could get due to a long unemployment period), I’m now working a decent office job again and my pain has improved enough that I can at least work full time again without wanting to die.

It wasn’t an easy road, and I’m not sure I would have the fortitude to go through it again - definitely not without my dog to keep me motivated. Life isn’t grand, but I sorta get by. This is still way better than I was a few years ago, which I didn’t think was possible.

I’m 30. Just recently started living. The past few months have been a blur of excitement, happiness, sadness, jealousy, anger, frustration, fear, and basically every other emotion imaginable. I have been in shock multiple times; and I have experienced overwhelming euphoria too. Things are turning around, and it’s slow, painful and scary as fuck, but they’re turning around.

My friends aren’t abusive.

My friends actually love and care about me.

I feel like I have a functional family (even if I still have to live with my bio family)

I feel like I have a home (even if I’m still stuck in my parents house)

I’ve also become aware of how lonely I am. How broken I am. How my parents did a great job of cratering any chance I had of being a functioning, successful person. How my parents terrible advice regarding dating and socializing meant I missed out on some of the best years of my life.

Yet, the thing that’s been the most encouraging is that I haven’t been told to leave all my baggage at the door. No, they (my friends) let me bring my baggage with me and start unpacking in front of them. I have never felt so supported and cared about, and while I wish they could do more, I wouldn’t trade them for anyone. They’re slowly teaching me how to be a person and it makes me so happy. I love them very much <3

Nope. Almost 40 and things just get progressively worse. Not privileged enough where I live

25yo meet the person I thought I would settle down with, 28 get a job I felt I wasn’t good enough for. Partner seems like she’s cheating but gas lighting made me feel awful for having such a notion. Gran passes, I can’t cry, then a month later partner tells me its over as she doesn’t feel the same anymore and again I couldn’t cry. Role on another month friends say she was cheating and show receipts, at this point my mind is fucked and I lose my job. Put on anti depressants, do lots of therapy, discover I have mental health issues from a shit childhood. I got to my lowest and discovered more about myself then I ever had known, things are on the up now.

I now have a level of honesty I had never afforded myself.

As to how my mental health journey went, I moved in with my mum, I went unemployed for a few years. Getting help has been an on going battle with the NHS but really I came from a privileged position where my previous employment had a therapy programme which gave me a leg up for 6 sessions. But thats not to say there weren’t months of nothing.

Whats important is acceptance.

I’m 50 and have severe IBS. That, combined with a hernia I didn’t know I had, almost killed me.

I spent a decade back living with my parents in my 30s trying to figure it out, get healthy, and rebuild my life again.

Then my job became taking care of my mom while she died.

I kept myself sane with gaming, and did a favor for a local on the game Kingdom of Loathing. Didn’t know he was a local at the time, but as thanks he gifted me some pot plants.

That gave me a stake. My dad and I raised and sold those and pulled ourselves away from financial ruin.

At the same time a woman on that game took an interest in me and it got very serious very fast… because I was desperate and she was insane.

Once I pulled myself away from that I looked to dating sites and met my now wife.

As her sister has IBS, she was able to recognize that my condition was worse than just IBS alone. Because I was on public assistance at that time I was able to get the surgery and start recovering.

Problem is that I’d spent a decade training myself to panic when I needed to shit. And I’ve largely dialed that back, helping my other anxieties in the process.

We’ve been married a decade. I have a crappy corporate job that’s WFH so I love that. My own toilet and food makes my daily anxieties easier to cope with, and I hang out with my pets all day.

Absolutely.

I spent my 20’s and early 30’s trudging in a job where I was mistreated, vastly underpaid and struggling. I also have mental health problems and visual impairment that persist to this day, so I’m exceedingly fortunate that I was able to find a better path in life.

I landed a better job in my late 30’s and in the years since I’ve paid off my car, my student loans, bought a condo, and saved a fair amount of money.

Being poor for so long taught me to live cheaply, which I still do even though I could spend more if I wanted to.

The major turning point was March 2020. When some oil stocks dropped below a dollar in value I took every spare dollar I had, bought shares between 30 and 75 cents, and then a few years later sold them for $12 a share. That paid off my student loans and funded the down payment on my home.

But even when I was poor I never didn’t save. It was better to be eating mac-and-cheese and have money in the bank if I needed it than to be surrounded by the latest stuff and have nothing to fall back on.

got diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis a year ago, at 21 years old. combined with severe burnout from my senior design project, I realized all my prior methods of motivation were ultimately unsustainable and meaningless.

I’ve been reading so many books and they’ve honestly saved my life. zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance totally shifted my perspective on what actually matters–honorary mention here for dune: chapterhouse as well. stone butch blues made me, as a gender queer individual, feel seen in a way that I’ve never felt before. and lord valentine’s castle showed me a path out of the darkness.

slowly I’ve been piecing together the various parts of my life. the most important thing for me recently has been avoiding excessive phone time. I realized our society is severely addicted and it’s slowly killing our communities. I’ve been replacing my phone time with hobbies and crafts. I got into model making recently and I’ve been making miniatures of all of my furniture!! and I’ve been embroidering my clothes! felt lonely the other day so I added a little cardinal to my favorite shirt :) I highly recommend picking up some acrylics, brushes, and mini canvases and following a bob ross tutorial!

yes there is no inherent meaning in anything, but all that means is you get to create your own meaning and no one can tell you you’re wrong!!! stop commodifying your life and start living it!

I’m probably not exactly what you’re looking for, but I went from considering suicide after I was diagnosed with an incurable disability that turned my life into an existence of pain, with next to no medical support or advice beyond “do yoga about it” to doing suprisingly well in life. I was also depressed before all of that, a shitty person and still trying to escape a really awful person in my life.

I turned it around gradually, but the two biggest things were getting the right meds (and being absurdly lucky to be one of the rare few who respond to it at all) and starting with a psychologist. Years of dealing with trauma and learning to accept and change the bad parts of myself eventually led to reading leftist theory, becoming an anarchist and meeting some incredible people. At some point in that journey I got on HRT and that did wonders for the worst of my depression too.

I’m at a point where I don’t think I resemble the person I was two or three years ago one bit. I used to deal with all the bad shit going on in the world by just trying to ignore it and only caring about myself and those close to me, but actively trying to improve the world is infinitely better.

Read a book called Being Peace by Thich Naht Hahn. It changed my entire outlook on life. It’s the basics of Buddhism. It doesn’t matter who you are or what your background is, life is suffering. You choose how to react to it.

That sounds harder than it is. Sometimes just smiling at the pain is all we can do.

My story isn’t old enough to know the ending or trajectory yet, but I’m hoping good things for both of us OP

I haven’t had that issue, but my best friends have. We all have different medical conditions, but it was really mainly an issue of theirs, and they had to go off the societal radar in order to have a family (the child safety agencies are ruthless here). They ended up clandestinely “adopting” four kids who were ten years younger than they are, who are now 20 years old and live on Long Island and who me and my BF have always been acquainted with, along with the best friends.

My life can mostly be described by the opposite; authorities sympathize with me but laypeople (intensely) don’t. I navigate this well, though from my experience, it seems to not be a cure, if anything it has been like an ice pack for my issue. It helps I don’t have high life goals like the aforementioned friends; I’m afraid of becoming a mom and am just happy to have three “step-step-kids” (BF’s ex’s kids with another guy) I can call my own (despite actually being my age due to the escalating age gap along the exes) if someone tells me it’s 11:00 and asks if I know where my children are.

Not me, but my wife.

She trained and worked as an optometrist. She absolutely loved it, but she started having health problems and after about 10-15 years in practice she had to give it up.

It’s been very slow in developing, but it’s starting to look like a progressive neurological disorder. She can’t work, and she can’t drive anywhere. She can still walk around the house, or down to the corner, but the more she does the more pain she feels, and if she does too much, then she won’t be able to move.

Medical appointments are almost the only thing she leaves the house for, and it’s starting to affect her memory and ability to communicate (difficulty coming up with words).

She’s feels disconnected from the world. After our last child moved out for college, we got a could guinea pigs and she takes care of them for the most part.

She also feels guilty since she can’t earn money. She had private disability insurance which covers her until 65, and she gets social security, but it all amounts to a fraction of what she could be making as an eye doctor.

She also has trouble staying involved in conversations, and I think she’s more sensitive to that than she used to be.