Well, I have problems, but Ive always considered them less important than others Ive seen here, but since it looks like you wont mind here I guess I can spill out whatever Im feeling; Currently kinda depressed because the girl I have had a crush on since January and never had the nerve to ask out/barely even talk (I know her friends and we do hang out but I never add to the conversation) and since its summer I won't get the chance to talk to her IRL until August........also Im starting to have odd feelings about my sexuality, but even as an anon I dont feel comfortable discussing that.
So theres my shit, its not as bad as others but it still feels good to get it all out there I guess

I used to have many more problems than I do today, mostly because I now realize when I'm about to do something self destructive or when I'm about to lose control of my emotions.

I sit down and just think about how bad it would be for me personally to be self destructive and how it is really not a good idea to think about the sad things until I've lost the urge to do anything that would case me bodily harm. By focusing your thoughts solely on the matter of keeping yourself fro harm, you will have a lot less to worry about when the time comes to emotionally address the issue that you are currently dealing with.

The ticket it remembering not to think about the bad thing, try keeping a totem around that reminds you that need to not cause yourself harm, preferably something soft and hard to break, I use my phone.

When I was younger, a number of my close friends died, I coped with this by going to see a doctor and the doctor told me to do these things.

My parents had a divorce when I was about.. 13 I think. I ended up in the middle and it was up to me to decide who would have custody of me. I chose my mother (since I'm a girl and I was going through puberty) but I clearly stated that I wanted to live with my father during the weekends. However he didn't like that at all, since by me choosing my mum we got to keep the house and he had to move out. He blamed me for everything, said I had ruined his life. Lots of bad stuff like that. It became so bad that I felt the urge to hide whenever I saw him drive by (we lived in a small village at the time.) After a while I just stopped responding since the only things that came out of it where me getting hurt. In the end, he had to flee the country (he had a lot of loans and never paid any taxes). To this day (I am now 19) I've never heard from him since.

What got me through was talking about it. Venting and letting every feeling out helped me so much, not with the situation, but with my wellbeing. Speaking out loud what you're feeling, hearing your own take on the matter, gets you thinking and kickstarts some process in your brain. You see new sides of the thing and you realise it can only get better. And it does. It gets better. It was hard, but I managed to get by by confiding in people and talking about it. Slowly I got over it and I realised that you don't have to have both parents to be happy (as that was one of my main concerns), family is not defined by blood, but by actions. Since then I've had 5 best friends that will always be my family. Talking with them got me through. Grieving by myself only made me brood and brooding, I've learned, never result in anything good. Sure, it felt like I was dragging everyone down with me, but in the end that's what friends are for really. I'll use every day for the rest of my life to pay it back to them.

tl;dr, It gets better, talk about it outloud, and don't be a recluse. Talking about it and addressing the issue makes you think about it in another way. That's what worked for me at least. Also, time heals all wound I've learned. Or at least lessens the pain.

I've struggled with anxiety and depression even since I was 14. Luckily I found someone who was always there to pull me back but shortly after I graduated high school I began to feel like I had no purpose those negative feelings grew stronger and because I was letting them overtake me, no one, not even my love, the one who is most important to me could pull me back.
My anxiety lessened during the next summer but problems with my relationship were forming and threatening my stability. I almost purposely crashed my car a few times this winter thinking that my love would be better off if I wasnt around anymore. The only thing that kept me was the fact that I had stopped a good friend from killing themselves just a few months before and if I were commit suicide he would probably follow soon. It took me up until about a month ago realize that my love wouldnt be better off without me and while I was off feeling so sorry for myself he had needed me more than ever. At the moment I realized I wasnt there for him I suddenly knew and understood what I purpose was in life was. It is to be by the side of those who need me the most and to love them. I guess that you could say that now at age 19 I finally got what would be my cutie mark.

I still feel depressed from time to time and I know I always will but I have vowed to never end my life as long as there is at least one person who needs me in the world. I will protect and be there for all those I love.

I was suicidal for a few months in 2008. Basically, I had issues concerning religion, gender, sexuality and just plain loneliness that came all at the same time and overwhelmed me.

I coped by going to a therapist, (protip: they will be very accommodating if you tell them you are suicidal) which helped me just let all my feelings out, and explain myself to someone without having to worry about rejection.

Afterwards, I decided first and foremost that I would be true to myself, and not force myself to be anything I wasn't out of fear of rejection. I also made new friends, which helped with the loneliness.

The hardest part was telling my parents. I'm pretty sure my mom still cries about it, and it hurts me to know that. Luckily, they didn't disown me or anything, but ymmv.

A long time ago back when I had to use dial-up, I was a very unhappy little pony. I constantly doubted myself, was afraid to speak up, scared of disappointing others, blah blah, the usual but there wasn't a single incident to cause this so there we go. Eventually though I found my way of combating these issues through brutal self honesty.

I got mad at myself for not questioning why I thought these things, and after that I vowed that I would not allow myself to sink down again. When a bad thought of myself came up I would ask, "Now why am I thinking like that?" and a majority of the time I had no reason to so I'd tell myself to fuck off and get back to enjoying life. There were of course times where I had a valid reason but I took the extra step of honestly asking myself, "What can I do about it?" and did what I could and if there was nothing I could do I'd tell myself to fuck off again.

If it involved another person being mad/sad/bored/whatever with me I'd look at it the exact same ways, and where appropriate I'd tell them, "Sorry that who I am is such an issue for you, but you're going to have to deal with it or fuck off" either in those words or maybe something a little nicer. What worked for me was brutal honesty with myself, gave me what I needed to rise up from the self-hate.

As a shy nerdy type, school was sometimes Hell due to being picked on a lot. So this is mostly a story for those who are down because of that, and for those in their teens.

When you're in your teens and your body and mind are all over the place, this can and did occasionally lead to pretty heavy depression (I did feel suicidal a couple of times)

How I got through it:

- Put myself in my parents' shoes (figuratively speaking) by acting it out in my mind from their perspective how they would feel if I took my own life, allowed myself to feel their pain and sadness so that I knew what to prevent. I actually made myself cry from how they would have felt, and this helped to prevent me from attempting anything.

- Remembered what we were taught in school as we hit our teens, that we'd go through not just the physical changes (i.e. puberty) but that in the process our minds would be chaotic and we'd go through a lot of mood swings and strong feelings including depression and to basically stay strong and hang in there because once it was over (it tails off between 16-18) we'd be ok. Essentially, there is light at the end of the tunnel.
{Obviously depression does stick with some adults, which is more of a concern and one should seek medical attention. As soon as you do that though they will know what to do to help.}

- Told my parents how I felt... not the suicidal bit {though that might have been wise} but how I was treated by other kids etc. And then took notice of and remembered what they told me: to hang in there, because at around 16 when you move on to college, maturity kicks in. People learn to respect each other's differences and to act mature and friendly towards each other. This turned out to be 100% correct.

Well, I suppose I could help on one subject.

All right, sucide is NEVER the answer. I think about it all the time, in the back of my head, but I've never attempted it before, because every time I get close to doing it, I always try to stop and think.

In any situation where you're thinking suicide is the best opption, just stop for a second and think. Think about all the people that might affect. Even if you don't have anyone you think it will affect, think farther. Think about perhaps the person that would find you.

There are far to many people it could affect, it's not worth it.

No matter how bad life gets, it always gets better. It's a rolercoaster, and there's no point in stopping until you're finished.

I guess I can offer advice on how to cope with something that occurs far more often than most people would care to imagine, but nobody really wants to talk about.

This is specifically about corrective rape (most commonly applied to transsexuals and homosexuals), but I imagine that a lot of it applies to more traditional rape victims.

When I was 13, I went to my brother, and while I did not have the best understanding of the subject, I told him that I was female, what to the best of my understanding was known as a transsexual. The end result was that he decided that he would "show me the only thing a woman was good for" and raped me more or less every week until I was 18 or so. For a long time, I did in fact internalize it. I felt that this was somehow my fault, that I deserved this, and that I had to repress my identity in order to get right with God again.

Eventually with the help of a friend, I kind of got over that twisted self-repression. And then a lot of anger came. Anger at my brother for doing something to me that I did NOT deserve. With time I realized though that being angry still gave him power over me. While I am no longer a Christian, the line "Forgive them, they know not what they do" seems to describe my attitude to my brother right now. It is as of yet the only way I've found that I think I can be free of the aftereffects of what happened. I will admit that it took me 7 years after he stopped for me to reach that point.

Sort of at the end of it all, realize that in no way are you at fault for being raped. And while it is often hard to move on, and my scars are not healed and likely never will be healed, going on living is very worthwhile, if you can just get over that mountain, and live happy again.

it really is hard to put my case into words, words to describe the deep dark emotions that arent really so deep, but are truly the darkness that only pure malice can spawn from.
1st to know, i'm not missing limbs, i dont have a horrible disease, im not poor. on the contrary, i live with millionaire parents, have never broken a bone, and dont have any diseases that people would consider life threatening.
but i do have the great pain of being a human.
people will say that they are depressed and sad and feel pain and suicide, but most of them truly arent. no one should wake up everyday sad, wondering why they are still alive. every breath taken one to be dreaded, one to be hated and cursed. why not just choke myself? people shouldnt have to look in the mirror and yell at themselves, argue with themselves, and watch themselves hurt themselves, mocking and laughing the whole time.
oh the life . . .
i can say for a fact that money does not bring happiness. i would trade away all of my millions upon millions to be happy again, but truth be told i would rather suffer. i would rather have my wound stretched twice across the world and the salt of all the oceans poured into it.
oh, i remember being happy before.
the pain that brought
everytime i smiled someone would hurt me, they would cut me down, hang up on me, slap me, beat me, swear at me, throw me in the restroom and laugh at me sobbing, pleading for mercy. an 8 year old is never supposed to be raped by a 10 year old who is smaller than him either.
get away, i said. get away from them. but i missed the insults, the pain, the exclusion, the agony. i hated myself. i hated myself to the point where i started creating those insults in my head. everyday the insults are still there, telling me how worthless i am and how i should kill everyone around me and myself. compliments now turned into words of hate. the sweet, sweet pain . . . how lovely it tastes.

now i want to be alone, forever alone. away from all of humanity. i dont want a companion. i dont want to reproduce. i want nothing to do with you humans.
all humans sicken me to my core, every fiber of me burns with hatred for you. but not as much as it does for myself.
i still dont make sense.
i guess thats what i get for having a split personality? hmmm, i dont know.

i could go on, but i dont want to.
now, how do i cope?
Why should you cope with the something you love? I love the pain, the suffering, the agony. if it was taken away from me, i dont know what i would do . . .

sorry i cant explain things well.
wait . . . no im not.

Man, I don't know how I can sit through this thread and not discuss any of this.

Especially >>2507801 , you have a twisted view of the world, I wish I could talk to you in person.

My story is simple. I got depressed, I failed classes, I lost about 20000dollars worth of scholarship money. Then I decided that life is too short to be living depressed and I started living my days instead of just drifting with them, and I reached out and started spending time with my friends, and I stopped moping. Now, I am more or less fine although I have some catching up to do.

Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, It's not the end.

I cant tell you what to do but i can tell you what you shouldnt do, because ive done it before and am still doing it.

Do not ignore your problems, or they will continue to haunt you, if you think you need help go tell someone you know.
Unfortunately for me i dont seem to have a choice in the matter, my mind and body sub consciously rejects any hard felt feelings/regrets/sadness
And long with it it takes all the good emotions as well. I often find myself a wreck unable to emote, feel and connect to those around me.
But i don't fight this battle alone, i have had my friends and family support me though it. You need to find someone and tell them, if you don't think you can do that IRL then its OK to come here and tell us of your problems, we don't mind.
That aside the safest way out is to tell those closest to you, or at least try to find some person to help you; counselling does not make you weaker
Depression is never a battle you have to fight alone, there is always someone out there who loves you. Even if you don't know it

>>2507802
why thank you . . .

Well, things are going well for me, I'm happy. I had been sad for along time. A good bit of it I was sad and didn't even know it. Getting from A to B has taken about 8 years, and it could have been much shorter. Mostly it was spinning my wheels without direction, and my own hubris thinking I could do everything myself and that other peoples advice was silly or not applicable.

Do not be reckless with other peoples hearts, do not tolerate those who are reckless with yours. Do not think sadness is all that different from a physical wound. If you get hurt, you just take care of yourself *properly* and it will heal on it's own clock. Sometimes you need stitches. It's ok, that will heal too.

You aren't as fat, ugly, or awkward as you imagine. You won't realize that until you look back in several years at pictures of yourself, in a way that is unfathomable to you now and think, "I really was that awesome".

Sometimes you have to pay for advice, just understand who you are paying. Never throw away free advice, especially from anyone who has grey hair. Even if you don't think it is useful, hoard it in the attic of your brain. It took them that long to love the good and throw out the bad of life.

Don't feel directionless, just do something that you want to do. Don't let your plan get in the way of life either. The most interesting old people I know have worked odd jobs their whole life. I know a guy who started life as a med student and now builds cabinets. He is embarrassingly happy.

That is all I got, ask me again in ten years and I might have more.

>>2507803
This quote ALWAYS makes me tear up, because it's so damn true.

Anyways, I have plenty of issues... one of the most influential ones was being told that when I grew up I wasn't going to amount to anything and I would always be a 'good for nothing'. I was born out of wedlock, and coming from a very traditional, religious family, I was seen all the time as a black sheep. My grandma and aunts looked down to me all the time. I never did anything right, I was stupid, a moron, I would probably grow up to be a slut, etc...

They compared me to all of my cousins who were born inside a marriage... always said they were better than me, bought them the best things. They liked my cousins better, and my cousins knew that, so whenever they did something wrong, they'd blame me and I would always get into trouble with my grandma and aunt.

My dad was never really involved much in my life, and his side of the family never liked me much. I remember being really jealous of my half sisters, since they got to live with my dad and have an awesome family, while I lived with my mom (whom I love to bits. Seriously she's my hero). She always worked so hard for me since she had to raise me by herself. She would work long shifts and leave me at my grandma's house--Which i LOATHED.

Well, in the end I proved them wrong. I graduated High School with a 4.0 GPA, a few scholarships for college, and I'm right now coursing my fourth year of Computer Engineering. I recently had a violin concert in one of the most influential, artistic places in my country.

My cousins never amounted to anything. Two of them are in jail, and three of them got pregnant before they reached 18. I'm not happy about that at all because even if they were jerks, they are my cousins... but it shows that YOU carve your own path in life.

What I'm trying to say is that you can overcome /anything/ even if your family, your friends, heck the world, is against you. You CAN be anything you want to be. I won't lie to you: It'll be hard. You'll rage. You'll cry. You'll probably feel like you're alone. You'll probably feel like giving up. Just don't. Don't give up and keep going. All these hardships in your life are just going to make you a stronger, wiser person. Once you overcome all those obstacles, you'll feel like a Boss. Trust me.

My biggest fear is that I wasn't there enough for my mother when she died from ovarian cancer.

My best advice is that if you feel like you dropped the ball on something like this, talk to your friends and family. You may be afraid that they'll judge you or confirm your fears, but they can see everything you did right that you can't see for yourself. Believe in others that believe in you!

Thank you for this thread. I had been thinking about starting one like it, but I've been far too afraid. But now that one has started, I feel the need to post in it. I'm sorry if this is a bit off topic; feel free to delete this post if you want. I just felt like I had to post this.

I am not like many of you. I have never contemplated suicide. I have never experienced a debilitating bout of depression. I have never felt lost or scared. I cannot speak from experience about any of these things. I like to think (read: I hope) that I am a strong enough person who can pull through the toughest of times, though this may or may not be true. I certainly hope it is. I don't want to burden others with my own pains.

But I can tell you this:

As a Brony, I will always stand for Love and Tolerance. And BY THE GOOD GRACE OF CELESTIA I will always be here for you guys, ready to say an encouraging word and give internet hugs.

As a Brony, I will do everything in my power to ensure that all of you, who find themselves in dark times, see your struggles to the end. Why? Because that is what this community is about. Not just ponies. Not just a kid's televisions how aimed at preteen females. It is about nurture and support, for EVERY one of its members.

As a Brony, I will always treat you with the respect that you DESERVE. And though I would like to be treated the same way, I will understand you if you cannot find it in yourself to tolerate me or my views. Because I understand that each and every one of us is entitled to their opinions.

As a Brony, I will do my best to deter the haters and the flamers, by RESPONSIBLY reporting parasprit/hate posts to the Mods (not spamming them, of course) because we have rules here. And I'll be damned to pony hell if I'm going to watch people break them under the Mod's noses.

This is my promise to you.

I'm not the best person at giving advice. I have not experienced the same things you guys have. I cannot responsibly give you any kind of guidance But I'll tell you what I CAN do. I CAN, and believe me, I WILL always leave my door open for you. I'm not a trained therapist, nor am I any kind of professional psychiatrist standing behind an official help hotline.

But perhaps I can be a friend.

mbulsht@gmail.com

Well, I've posted a bit too much this time, I think. I really hope I don't inadvertently derail this thread. I'm going to leave you guys with my favorite pic (yeah, I post this one everywhere, I know). Brohoofs for everyone lurking and posting.

And for you guys posting, a very special,

*internet hug*

-Mbulsht

I'm failing earth science, Help me bronys :(

Without specific context, my advice will be even more relentlessly cold and unfeeling than usual. I'm not an expert in psychological problems or traumatic events anyway so I have no specific advice for the most part. I am not a motivational or emotional person.

Aside from my own clinical depression I've led a relatively peaceful life. I had my problems. Dad out of the country for work half my childhood. Pets died. Went through 8 schools in 8 years for my pre-high school education (record was 3 in one year). Loved and lost miserably. I don't think of this as being an unreasonable amount of suckiness in my life nor is any of it a life shattering event like some people experience. My point is that life sucks to some degree for everybody.

What I've learned from the low points in my life is that whatever happens, it'll get better eventually. It might get worse first. It might not be worth living at a particular moment. It will get better at some point though. Even if I was feeling glum about something I don't think I'd ask ponychan what to do about it unless there was something to be done. I'd try to put it behind me and come and have the l u l ziest thread ever to take my mind off it. Maybe ask for hugs for unspecified reasons if I really needed to feel loved.

That's the thing about ponychan. Unless there's something specific to be done all we can do is offer meager advice and support. We will always offer support. It's extremely easy to make a post saying you support somepony and give them a hug. It could be done as an entirely empty gesture. I personally try to care as much as I can about everypony on this board. I love this community and I love it's members. I hope the love I put into this post helps to show that.

It's rough advice, but the gist of it is "Suck it up. Move on. Enjoy life. Remember that we care about you"

edit: I borked the flow of the post in editing. Fixed

Compared to some of the issues you all face, my are very trivial by comparison; but for those who want some advice on the more trivial hardships of life...here it is. To generalize the events I went through, I give you a small table of contents to my post:

1) Social Anxiety.
2) Willpower.
3) Failure.

Each part is separated by '---'.

---

I used to, and still do, have a lot of trouble just replying to e-mails. I get incredibly anxious about what I'm writing, how to write it, what to say; and generally get far too caught up in what the reaction will be. At times, say, I'll have an employer ask me how work X is going; and I'll just be frozen the entire day out of anxiety from an e-mail like that. I didn't know what to do.

I then heard this story about how Abe Lincoln wrote two letters for every letter he sent. One was his serious letter, the one he intended to send; and the second was the letter he actually wrote first: the letter that contained his honest feelings and what he'd like to send to the person were it not fear of reprisal.

I used this strategy, and it helps a lot with me being able to get over social anxiety.

---

I've always had problems with videogame/internet addiction. For the longest time I thought it wasn't an addiction, and now looking back I realize in my case I definitely have it.

This came to a forefront when, one Spring Break, I sat down in my apartment and staid in the corner the entire week. On the internet the entire week. I didn't move from that spot, nor did I go outside, nor did I get any work done. And I would tell myself at the beginning of each day, "This is ridiculous, I have to get out of here, I have to just willpower through this trap." But even though I told myself this, it just didn't work, I couldn't do it.

Shortly after that week I had read "The Way to Willpower" by Henry Hazlitt. He had a quote that made me change the way I view things:

"I repeat it, lest you fancy there has been a misprint. There is no such thing as the will. Nor such a thing as will-power. These are merely convenient words."

He went back a little on what he said, but the importance of this is that instead of thinking to myself "Come on, just CHOOSE to plow through this!" And then repeatedly fail, I got decidedly more clever about my problem. I saw this talk (http://www.youtube.com/user/GoogleTechTalks#p/u/83/XeJSXfXep4M ), that backed up Hazlitt's claim even further. In other words, to use a cliché, I "needed to work smarter, not harder".

That was when I decided instead of trying to use willpower to get over my internet/videogame addiction problem, I got rid of the power chords and disabled the internet connection from my apartment (I am now typing this from a computer lab. Unfortunately, I have not found out how to substitute everything I use the internet for). This was a huge first step. Just simply implementing barriers and changing my environment, instead of using brute strength, really helped me out.

I still read pretty much every therapeutic book and self-help technique under the sun. And I had a great friend who helped me out in these endeavors as well. We tried Tony Robbins, Alice Miller, CBT (cognitive-behavioral therapy), NVC (non-violent communication, there is a way to apply that to self-control), family systems therapy, Nathaniel Branden, the GTD cult, Lifehacker, Pomodoro, and almost everything else under the sun. Somewhere amidst studying these things, I came across Skinner's self-control techniques (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self_control#Skinner.27s_Survey_of_Self-Control_Techniques and also in his book, Science and Behavior).

I initially had a large bias against Skinner and his behavioralism because of his deterministic conclusions. However, after getting to know his theory a little bit better, I reasoned that it didn't immediately lead to determinism like I first thought. And in the midst of trying the above, I dallied with behavioralism.

It wasn't long until I realized that the environmental changing strategy I picked up after reading Hazlitt was generalized by Behavioralism. And even though I didn't want to believe it, it has been the one theoretical framework that has given me success w.r.t. willpower.

This is still a work in progress, but I feel I've come somewhat of a long way.

---

When I was in undergrad, one year I had a very heavy load. I was taking a bunch of high-level mathematics and physics classes and one class in statistics.

I took the first final in statistics, and...I failed. I flunked. This was the first time in my life that I failed an exam so hard. And I felt horrible. I did the math and came to the conclusion that there was no way I could get a good grade in the class anymore. And I felt totally and completely depressed.

So, I went to my number one therapist: my mom :P. We figured out that it was still quite possible that I could pass. That, and I reasoned that at that point, even if I failed, I still had a lot of opportunities available.

The second sentence there was the MAJOR insight. I learned that just having a back-up plan in life is a major step in being able to cope with failure.

(and in the end, I was able to ace the class anyways. Which taught me a second lesson: even if it looks like everything has hit the bucket, if you have the slightest chance, go for it.)

>>2507815

Related to the second story I said, I also have this as a possible strategy:

>>222912

I didn't list it above though, because I haven't really tested it out so much yet. So, I'm not sure how much it belongs in this thread.....

>>224936
>>224936

Shortened version of my life story.

>>2507801
I have kind of the same thing as you; I hate myself to the core and don't have a way of fixing it. There’s several reason s for that, one might argue that it’s not my fault but the things I’ve done ever since that seed was planted in me are. I was also raped when I was a child, talked about it here, but didn’t say to what extent, I was pretty blurry about it to not make people too uncomfortable. But it was years and I remember pretty clearly. I’ve never been able to cope with the self-hate; don’t know if I ever will. There’s always something in my head telling me that people hate me and I contribute to that, try to make them see what kind of horrible person I am, can never sustain a relationship with someone because of that reason, I sabotage myself. I have untreated clinical problems because I don’t think I really deserve to heal. Not that my brain can heal but medicine might help.

Reading this thread makes me appreciate how things have gotten better for me, and it makes me feel like I’m not alone. This place has helped me so much and I wish I could do the same but I feel so impotent because I have all of these problems and feel so hypocritical when trying to help someone, I still like to show my support when I can.

Right now I’m not sure if I’m going through an episode of manic depression, I’m bipolar. Happy things have happen recently in my life but I still haven’t been able to snap out of it. it’s safe to say that I sit here with a tear in my eye 60% of the time, and at work it’s just torture to keep the façade. Same here, that’s why I feel I should just leave but that would probably hurt more than in would help me but I’m sick of making people angry/sad with my attitude/problems, I try to be loving and respectful but that’s just me trying to be what I wish I could be. People say the nicest things about me and it Hurst me.

Posting anon this time because I don’t think it would help me to give out my identity. I don’t expect anyone to help me, as I said you guys have helped me a lot already, this is something only I can fix.

This will require that I start at the beginning.

See, I was close friends with this girl when I was a little kid and we always played together. We spent time together so much that she started calling me her boyfriend and I would, for the most part, disavow that knowledge in public. Hey, I was a little kid that didn't want any kind of cuties or anything. But in secret, I really cared about her and thought she was really cool.

Then she moved away up the East Coast, and I felt like I had lost a big part of me. Over time though, I stopped thinking about her and went on with my life. Years passed and I became a young adult. But then one night I had a dream about her, and since then I couldn't get her away from my thoughts. I often wondered how she was doing and what her life was like.

So I used my resources to find her and eventually I did. I called her up and I felt so many emotions flow through me when we spoke again. It had been almost ten years since we had spoken to one another. Everything was great for about two weeks. We talked to each other everyday and I felt as if we were falling for one another again (which is what I wanted). Then we had our first fight.

I'm gonna skip all the BS and leave in the important bits. I contemplated suicide for three years, was hospitalized twice, and kept about six or seven journals detailing all my hate, spite, love, and obsession for her. I was in therapy for about two years and I was constantly calling the suicide pager so I could get reassurance and help daily.

It was sheer torture, my whole mind thought revolved around her day in and day out; from the moment I awoke to the moment I fell asleep she was always on my mind. I had never felt so utterly hopeless and fragile my entire life. It was like my entire world had turned itself upside down and I was left wondering what she was doing at every moment. I was paranoid and panicked if I wasn't kept in the loop about her daily life.

That's three years of my life that I won't get back, and they were the worst years of my life. I don't dare wish to ever go back and do it over again, I'm not that stupid, but I am thankful I experienced what I did. I grew as a better, more mature person because of it.

The things that helped me cope were the following, I think a list would better sort this out: therapy, medication, people, less contact with her (but not cut off completely), journals, work, school, music, and Trent Reznor. I cannot understate the importance that that man's music had on my life. His work was a life line for my torment, it was as if he was pulling the words out of my soul and expressing them in song. I know how absolutely cliche that sounds but that's exactly how I felt.

But, ultimately, I just one day stopped worrying. I guess time was the ultimate factor in helping me get away from her and her hold on me. Make no mistake, all those other things helped tremendously. I still have those old journals, and I refuse to throw them away because it was a part of who I am. And I still listen to NIN even if I don't do it nearly as much as I did before.

And I still keep in contact with my ex. She's my oldest friend, and nothing's gonna change that. Ultimately, I thank her for helping me become who I am today even if we had to go through complete hell to get there.

>tl;dr: My oldest friend became my love interest and worst influence for three years. Life was absolute hell, time healed me, and I don't wish to go through that again despite knowing it helped me grow into a more mature person.

currently suffering from mild depression and have been for 4 years. just keep ya head up

>shrugs

Dunno what all I can contribute. I mean, if I wrote down every single bad event in my life, the wall of text will be of China proportions. Also keep in mind that some things will never be quite right the same again for some. Realistically speaking, not everything is recoverable.

The biggest loss in my life to date is probably losing who was at one point the most special person in my world. We even talked about getting married - it was that serious. Throw on some family drama BS I will not discuss and other factors..that all changed. We don't even talk anymore.. Not like I have that in love feeling anymore, but it didn't have to come down to this, either. The biggest mistake I made was being such a fucking baby over it. Yeah, I was HEARTBROKEN, but looking back at it now, I'm dissapointed in myself for taking the feeling of "she'd rather I be dead" to heart. Then there was the stupid depressing songs that need to go die in fire...seriously...just no. Bluh, I was a mess.

This doesn't bug me as much now because I started focusing and who has been there for me through the worst times. loooool sometimes "bros before hos" rings true. The guy who was once a mutual friend between my ex and I is now my bestest friend. :D Later on I met Britny who sorta filled the void of having an awesome girl in my life that I can be a doofus with without being judged. I guess how I coped was not losing sight of who DOES love me and also not being afraid to be honest with a girl....AND PROBABLY 20% OF IT WAS PONIES. :E

Si!

The best "revenge" a person can do is to prove someone wrong.

I may not have much, but I take pride in not having a criminal record, knocking some girl up and dashing, being wanted for child support payments, addicted to drugs, an alcoholic and everything else a lot of my family is guilty of.

I can't contribute much, but...I do have this to say:
With any problem, talking about it is an amazing solution.

For example:
Just a few minutes ago, I had an argument with my grandmother about something. Now, ever since my mother's death, and my father's death as well, i've been depressed. This argument basically lead me to realize WHY I was depressed: while the deaths were a large portion of it, I was depressed even when my mother was alive. I remembered all the times she would drive around with a low blood-sugar, scaring me half to death, and how neither of them would even talk to me. I was seen as more of a friend than a son, I guess....anyway, after discussing all of this, I was able to find out much more about why i'm so angry and why I get so depressed.

in short: talking to those who will listen is an amazing thing that can be amazingly helpful.

Suicide is a permanent answer to a temporary problem.

Not meaning to derail this thread, but, THEME SONG FOR THIS THREAD.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfQmUcHwhMw

I listen to it when I'm sad or unmotivated.

My best friend moved to another province, and when he left, he didn't even say goodbye, yes he told two other people, I'm like a brother to him, and now today, I lost my girlfriend, and am having a mental breakdown

Well, my biggest issue isn't exactly depression... Or feeling suicidal. No abuse. Never have been raped, none of that.

I have this weird sexual reaction to seeing things getting eaten alive. I don't know what it is, it just happens.

This scares the shit out of me, because it is the only thing I'm to scared to be open about. I'm open about my sexuality, my taste in ponies, my mental problems, but this is the one thing I've been unable to tell anyone. That I'm 'broken.' I enjoy the thoughts of something so painful and dangerous to living things, and it scares me.

I'm always paranoid about if my family ,friends or my boss found out. what would I do? Is there even anyone else like me who feels the same way? I'm so terrified, I think I might be crazy. Does anyone know what's wrong with me? I'm not a mean person, so why do I enjoy something this sadistic?

>>2507828
>>2507828
its probably
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vorarephilia

Honestly, I believe fetishes are acquired and can change, as Ive grown out of and acquired some wierd ones, so don't worry too bad

No it doesnt make you a terrible person by the way

>>2507828
I think that's voreaphilia, sugarcube.
Besides, in a way, it's not that weird.
Everyone enjoys eating! unless you're anorexic Just... some more than others and in more ways than one.

I've met a few ponies who like it, so you're not alone in that respect.

Just because you like something "different" doesn't make you any kind of a threat, as long as you don't hurt anypony.

Its kind of ironic i should make this thread really as , i cant say i have had any major issues in my life at all. Dont get me wrong , its far from perfect, its just never been bad. I havnt lost anyone close or been ill , at least not physically, possibly mentally , tho not depression.

So i will speak of a lesser problem, that involves feeling crappy , and its because of imageboards. A lot of the posts we get are along the lines of - I feel ignored/i cant contribute/ im useless. Something i have felt many times here until recently.

I have allways wanted to be the center of attention , in school i would act the clown for laughs , i would do bad things for the adoration of my peers , and it would make me happy. Until senior (High) school , where it eventually led to bullying , not physical but verbal. Over time my attention seeking wore down and i pretty much changed into a more cynical and agressive person. I started to care less about what others thought and basically said fuck you world unless i was with close friends.

Then came the internet and with it imageboards. And with imageboards came 4chan. And with Anonymity came the chance to show off like a dick where no one could stop me and any online bullying meant shit because i was untouchable. Cue a few years later and Ponychan. I had generally mellowed by now, and as with most people here, the show made me happy. And after a week or so, this community had grown on me a lot. Threads like this made me see it was nice to help, Steven Magnet was adored by all and all those like ARGH and Moony , i loved how people looked up to them.

Cue the problems.

I wanted this too. I got myself a name and went to work. My first serious thread (A roll game of all things Autosaged after 300 or so) , 300 replies ! I felt estatic. People were paying attention to me again. So i kept trying , and it never really happened. I made a new persona and i got a few good threads , but i died off. I posted art , i had to bug people to comment , i would write pointless things in threads just to get a reaction. I joined RP , i made threads that had interesting quirks instead of the normal fare , again it started well , but soon even that was ruined for me. And of course , then came something else i wont mention , but i became obsessed about to an extreme, self bucking just so i'd maybe get replies. And every failure made me feel like shit. I wasnt depressed about it , just frustrated and angry. To the point i was going to just rage 4chan style and get permabanned.

And then one night recently i was reading a thread like this and i realised how pathetic i was being. All these people's problems and horrors they have endured and here i was being a little bitch about the most pointless of things. I realised to myself , if one comment , just ONE , could help someone or save them or make them smile or laugh, that comment was worth it.

It isnt the number of replies
Or comments to my art
Or how many read my stories

It was the fact that SOMEONE had , and so SOMEONE was affected by me in a good or enjoyable way. No matter how little , i HAD contributed to the community. Sure you may get ignored sometimes , but 9/10 times its not on purpose , and eventually you will contribute in some way. Sure it would be nice to be Steven Magnet, but you dont need to be to make a difference to someone. (And its less pressure lol). My point is , dont feel you aren't part of the community just because you arent well known , fame is not everything , and the harder you try the more it hurts you. Just be yourself and you will feel much better for it :)

>TL:DL - Go back and read it you lazy git. Or basicly , dont fret over feeling ignored because your contributions DO mean something to SOMEBODY

>>2507831
I think that at some point, we are all guilty of a little attention horseing. No person is perfect, and most are far from it.

I would add something here of my own, but you seem to have said it better than I ever could have. You're right. There are people who post and read everything in a thread. And though it may not seem like much, what you say here WILL be heard. This is ponychan; we all love each other here. Well, at least most of the time.

>your contributions DO mean something to SOMEBODY.

Post away, my fellow Bronies. You aren't being ignored.

>>2507825
If you are suicidal, logic doesn't work. Your statement is invalid. I apologize for saying so, but I've seen this used everywhere. I am a huge supporter of logic in everything. Suicide, however, is an almost always entirely emotional response. And you can't apply logic to it. Trust me, it's nearly impossible.

Three years ago (I was 17), I was a shy, emotionally cold person who simply disliked people and tried to avoid them at all costs. Although, maybe 'disliked' not the most accurate description. Afraid is the word here. I was afraid of people, afraid of being in contact with anyone except for my parents. Afraid to talk, help anyone, stand up for myself, hell even look at them. Almost never trusted a soul, always knowing and expecting that someone would always back stab me for personal entertainment. Yet I kept coming back, because the desire for affection in me was very strong (I could say I was somewhat spoiled by my parents), and I knew that I would have to go back, and the people that hurt me knew that too. Sometimes I've wished I could've lived alone, without the need for affection or any emotion whatsoever, just so that wouldn't have to go back to those same people that hurt me over and over. In fact, back then I've begun to develop a plan on how to achieve that state of emotional coldness, by watching filmed execution, murder, medical autopsy, (hell, I even resorted to watching necrophilia at one point) and various other bloody, violent and gory material to kill off any signs of kindness and compassion in me or 'weaknesses', as I called them. Heck, I would sometimes pause the video, cry like a little girl and then continue watching those videos over and over while crying my eyes out. Sometimes I would just be unable to hold back my tears and start crying in the middle of the day, just thinking back to those videos and the fact that I would have to go back home and watch them over again. Which, of course, resulted in more insults and bullying on my part. Goddamn, I probably have no idea just how lucky I am to have never crossed into that threshold, cause I'm not sure I'd be able to go back afterwards.

Now mind you, I was not suicidal. Never crossed my thoughts even once. I merely wished all those people were to disappear, although violent thoughts did take their place in my head, where I would imagine just how to show those people just how much they hurt me by hurting them. I never did make any attempts to hurt anyone, I was simply too scared for that.

So basically all of that was happening in my life until my parents decided that I should get a job. I hated that idea, because it would mean that I would have to back to working with people, especially angered by the fact that my parents have decided that it was time for me to get a job NOW, now that I was very close to achieving that cold, emotional state I desired so much. Nonetheless, I knew that going against my parents was a bad idea so I reluctantly began to look for a job. In two weeks, I've landed a position as a cashier in a Russian store (I'm Russian too, by the way). Now you can probably guess how that made me feel, not to be just surrounded by co-workers, but customers as well. And lots of customers too, those of you that work or have worked in a grocery store probably know how bad customers can be when they're in a bad mood. So, day one. I am introduced to a nice manager who showed me around the store, taught me about PLU and UPC codes, introduced me to some of the store personnel, basically she showed all the basics. She was really nice and helpful, always asked me if I understood everything properly, in other words for once I wasn't afraid or shy to be around a person. (Before anyone asks, no, this is not going to be a lengthy romance novel with a happy ending, I never found her attractive in that way and she was ~15 years older than me as I found out later). After that I was paired up with one of the cashiers (who was also a girl), who taught me how to handle the register and pretty much let me watch her work. Now, here's where it got interesting for me: I got to watch, no wait, SPECTATE the aspect of social interaction between her and the customers. No matter who the customer was, no matter what colour, religion, race or mood, they never said a cross word to her, or even try to bring her mood down. They simply laid their groceries on the slide, watched them get weighted/scanned, packed their stuff, paid and left. Not only that, she was actually smiling if one of the newer customers greeted her, or if she met an old customer, etc. What I thought was going to be a hell-hole for me actually turned out to be a pleasant surprise. So I watched that for some time until the girl offered me to try my hand at this. Of course, I was a bit nervous about me being unexperienced and all, but she said she'd watch me and help me out. When the first customer approached, I became so scared that I had drops of sweat going down my face in a matter of seconds and my hands began to shake. I couldn't even look at them even after the girl greeted them, and they greeted her back while placing the groceries on the slide. I just quickly grabbed whatever the first item I could reach. Bad idea. The first item were some apples, which need a PLU code in order to weigh them properly, which I did not know, which means I would have to look them up in a PLU list, which would take forever and probably piss off the customers. In other words, I was panicking. Still, I grabbed that PLU list and began to pretend to look for the code, which I now realized had no idea where to look. I didn't even know what the apples were called, so I had no idea what to do. The customers were now giving me an odd look, and the girl noticed that I was panicking, so she decided to help me out by giving me the code (I have never more quickly relieved in my life), and then explained to the customers that I was new and still in training. Now here's the part that SHOCKED me: they began to cheer me on. I was so taken aback by the fact that I've never met these people before in my life, they've never met me and yet here they were, cheering me on, and not turning around to leave me for some other cashier who would do the whole process much faster. After I was done, they thanked me and smiled at me. Right at that moment, my manager told me my training was done for the day and that I could leave. I left, while still trying to figure out what just happened, to get it all to fit in my head.

Now fast-forward to three days later, it was my first day of working by myself, and I've made my first mistake. I charged some customer $40 extra without knowing, obviously pissed and demanding compensation. Cue the red face, the sweat, the shak hands. So I now approach my manager with the receipt, expecting to be fired on the spot for my mistake. To my surprise, I was told to get back to work. Still, I pondered "Am I gonna get fired?" until I found a spare minute and asked my manager about it. She laughed when she realized that I was serious, and told me "No, but be more careful in the future." I thanked her embarrassingly, and rushed back. Throughout the day, I just kept replaying the event over in my head. At that point, it hit me that maybe people aren't as bad as I thought them to be. Still, I decided to work some more and see if that was the case for sure. And you know, I was right. Over the weeks of working there, dealing with hundreds of people per shift, some good, others not so much, and watching how other cashiers deal with them only confirmed my suspicions further and further. I no longer tried to rid myself of emotions and actually tried smiling at a customer, and guess what? He smiled back. After that, I (you may have no idea just how) gladly deleted all of those brutal videos off my laptop, and never thought of going back to that since.

And now here I am, three years later. I am no longer shy (well, maybe occasionally around a cute girl), no longer unnecessarily suppress my emotions, and most importantly, I am no longer afraid of people. Over the three years that I've spent working as a cashier in a small Russian store at minimal wage, it has done wonders to my perception of people and my confidence. Plus, even though I am a cashier, occasionally I had to do some manual labour, which in turn improved my body. I've never visited a gym since high-school, and yet now I have those veiny hands of a frequent gym visitor. Working there has also improved my psyche, I became much more mentally stable, to a point where I can easily tell off a customer that is screaming in my face without even moving an eyebrow. It's not like I'm even suppressing myself anymore, it's more like I've stopped caring that much about it to a point where it doesn't really bother me. Even when it comes to situations of potential bullying, I've never had to deal with it because I no longer fear it. As long as you have the confidence to keep your head high, chest sticked out and a determined look on your face, people would back off instantly, which is something I've only dreamed of before. I've began to analyze things in a lot more calming manner, I actually decided to study human behaviour from a scientific angle (in fact, now that I think back to all of this, I think I had Avoidant personality disorder, possibly with Schizoid personality disorder co-morbid, for anyone interested in my story from psychological perspective), I began to study psychology, biology. Soon my hunger for knowledge expanded to various medical and military endeavours, still going strong. My most recent achievement would be this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2OUSxQPG6vU

I've finally began to grasp the idea of how to land that thing without crashing or destroying my landing gear in the process. So far, life's been good to me.

And right now I can honestly say that I would rather die fighting for my current lifestyle than go back to my previous one. Happy end? Suppose.

>>2507834 Thankyou Lucki , that was beautiful :) And that kind of inspirational post is why the thread was created. (PS , i also work in a grocery store so i understood that better than you would know lol)

Allo. Just popping in to do some ranting. You don't really have to respond with advice, I just need to get some things off my chest, and I don't know where else to turn.

Okay, the first problems are basically sexual. These topics are hard to talk about most places, but it seems to be pretty well accepted on here, so here goes:

I basically have 2 big fetishes. One, is gum-chewing, which I realize isn't that odd, and is perfectly acceptable. The other is kind of like sadism. And by kind of like sadism, I mean it is sadism. I am sexually thrilled by the idea of people being in pain/dying. I specify people because, well, I'm attracted to both sexes. This is also a problem for me, because i was raised by a very religious family, and I myself am very religious (Catholic actually), and my beliefs say it's wrong to like men if you're a man (which I am), but I still do, and have no control over it, which just makes me hate myself even more.

Which brings us into my next problem, one I realize a lot of people on here struggle with, so it's nice to know i'm not alone, and that's self-loathing. I hate myself for so many different things, but the biggest is this: I'm always so unhappy and unstable and stuff (even though I ALWAYS act peppy and lively and stuff), and I feel like I have no good reason to be. I was raised well, never abused, I have no problems at home, I just am always sad, for stupid things, and then I feel like I have no right to be, which makes me even more sad. I hear people go around like "My problems are worse than everyone else's!" and I realize they're just self-centered or attention whores, but sometimes I really believe them... Because I don't feel like I deserve to worry about myself, so I devote myself to everyone else, taking on all their troubles as my own, which takes a hell of a lot out of me.

I'm the guy who has no problems, the guy who's always happy, but I CAN'T live up to that. It DESTROYS me. I just recently failed out of school because of all the stress, wasted tons of money on a failed education... I don't know... I just wish I didn't hate myself so much... I wish I could show it when I'm unhappy, since I'm sure I have friends who care, even though I generally think my friends hate me as much as I do...

Well... That's basically it... Sorry to take up your time. I just needed to get that out..

(Also, I apologize for accidentally posting this as its own thread a few minutes ago.)

>>2507837

1) I'm really not in any place to tell you what to believe, but I've always believed in Coercion-based morality. Put very simply, I feel that immoral actions are ones that impact other people's lives without their knowledge/consent. And in that frame, any consensual sexual acts would not be immoral, and mere thoughts don't register on the morality scale at all. Again, this is just me, but if it helps you it may be worth considering. I don't feel like it's exclusive to faith at all.

2) EVERYPONY's life sucks, in that no matter how healthily we are raised we're all exposed to the same harsh elements. Humans are perceptive creatures, and even when we're not in the line of fire the cruelty of the world can depress us. And perhaps even more relevant is that fact that we all have brains. Brains that control mood through chemicals, often to our detriment. Even if you're clinically completely normal, it is totally natural to feel negative emotions regardless of context. Self-Respect is something you'll need to find yourself, through soul-searching and self-improvement, but I can tell you right now that there is NOTHING wrong with feeling bad, no matter what your external life is like.

TL;DR :

1) If nopony's hurt (who doesn't want to be, in a controlled environment) you shouldn't feel bad

2) You shouldn't feel bad about feeling bad, because feeling bad is universal.

One more note: in general, avoid comparing your life to those of others. It's a very natural thing to do, but it's extremely easy to misjudge, for a few reasons. Life's not a competition, the only happiness that you should use as a metric is your own.

Hope that made some kind of sense. Feel better, bro. I don't think you have anything in you worth hating.

>>2507838
... I see. Thank you, that was actually pretty helpful. Like you said, it's really hard to NOT compare yourself to others...
As far as beliefs, it's also hard to do things you were raised so strongly to believe are wrong, even if you know they really aren't... I'm sorry if this counts as discussion, I'm just commenting.
But really, thank you.

I imagine my story will get swamped beneath everyone else's, but I still want to put out my two cents.

I've suffered from depression, probably my whole life, but in severe form since junior year of high school, when I attempted a semester at a private school that ended in a nervous breakdown. I've dealt with thoughts of suicide pretty frequently since then, and have once gone so far as to check myself into the ER after slicing myself up with a dental hook. I still cut from time to time, though my family and fiancee think I stopped years ago.

One thing I can say is that depression doesn't necessarily have anything to do with hardship. My parents have always been good (if overprotective). I've never been abused. I've had very successful relationships, and I'm getting married in the fall. But I still hate myself. Its all about chemicals, and anyone who tries to tell you that just because you don't have it THAT BAD you have no right to be depressed does not know the feeling of powerlessness that accompanies this kind of bad chemistry.

One piece of advice: don't be afraid to seek out treatment. It may feel like admitting there's something wrong with you, but there IS something wrong about constantly hating yourself. No matter what things your brain tells you when its spitting out those horrible thoughts, you do deserve to experience happiness. And sometimes something like seeing a therapist once a week, or getting a small prescription can be the start down the road towards making that happen.

Just going to include my DA profile, for anyone whom this story might have reached, and wants to talk further about such things, in a more private environment. I don't claim any great solutions, but I've got way too many years of first hand experience, and I'm still here after all of them.

http://doctordapples.deviantart.com/

When I was in 10th grade, I found out my dad had cheated on my mom a year ago (possibly multiple times before when I was a child). After that (they stayed together), there were some nights where I'd hear my mom screaming and I had no idea what was going on. My other siblings (all older) were in college or living on their own so I had no one to go to. On top of all this, kids at school constantly made fun of me, and even my dad would call me ugly/stupid/fat (when I was/am NONE of those things).

Finally I started cutting my wrists because I couldn't take ANY of it anymore. My boyfriend's mother finally called my parents and they called me downstairs and made me show them my wrist. Rather than being concerned with my well-being, they went on about how everyone would think badly of them (my parents), they'd have to take me to therapy, etc... They didn't seem to care at all how *I* felt, or what was causing my depression.

The day after they found out, I was upstairs on my bed doing some homework. My dad came home from work and came to my door and, mockingly, asked "Did you try and kill yourself again today?". Essentially it was at this point that I realized my parents didn't really care for *me* as a person; rather I was just offspring that they needed to look after.

How did I cope? Friends, drawing, music, cartoons... I used any outlet I could to make myself feel better about myself. It's really hard, and even now I have recurring feelings of depression and a complete lack of self-worth, but it does get better. I promise.

I've gone through some shit in my time. I used to really want to fly in the airforce and I loved to run. I spent tons of time running and reading about planes and stuff..
When I was 12 they found bone cysts in my arm and leg (they're like tumors, but not cancerous, and they only grow in bones). I couldn't get them surgically removed, so that put me out of commission for running. Around the same time I went deaf in my right ear, and the doctors could never find out why. I couldn't pass a physical to join the army anymore.

I pretty much went into a spiralling depression -- all that work and everything I had done, all my dreams and aspirations were taken from me there. Also, moving to a new house where I had no friends didn't help. I became more politically active then, and became a huge misanthrope, questioned my faith, all that jazz.
I think the person who got me out of that the most was Boxxy, as weird as that may sound it's true, she was like the only person who didn't fit into my black and white generalizations for everyone, and made me smile for once. That's what kicked me in the flank hard enough to realize how much of mopey little fuck I was being.

I made some friends and started playing guitar more seriously, and then one of my friends introduced me to parkour, which is now one of my major hobbies. This all helped immensely, although I still was really cynical until a few months ago, when I found the bronies. :3
You guise are the best! :D

>>2507835
;_; That was beautiful.

I posted the following in Lemon's thread when he was in need, and I'm reposting it here.


Okay. I'm new to this whole chan and relatively new to ponies in general, but I saw this thread and it spoke to me. And I'm feeling like tonight is a good night to talk, so I'm going to share a story.

Let's start with this - When I was nine, my mother killed herself.
She was born with severe Major Depressive Disorder (which I happen to have as well). She'd had a hard life, but, as she always told me, the first time she'd ever been really happy was when she met my dad, and the happiest day of her life was when I was born. My whole life, I'd learned to deal with her mood swings, depressive times, and so on. She was on and off anti-depressants my whole life (She said they made her feel like a robot, and boy do I know the feeling). When I was almost nine, she had the worst bout of depression I'd ever seen. Two days after my birthday, she seemed better, strapped me into the car, and drove off a bridge.

I'm alive, and I have the scars up and down my right arm to show for it. That didn't really help me. I was extremely depressed for a very long time (and I still sometimes feel like I should have drowned all those years ago).

When I was thirteen, my dad was killed in a car accident. I was sent to the United States (from France) to live with my mother's sister. I met new friends, who I now consider as close as family. I really and sincerely love every one of them, and they've all helped me in their own ways.

When I was seventeen, I recieved a large box from my uncle (on my father's side). Inside was my father's synthesizer. Music has really helped me get over the time when I feel like I'm worthless and there's no reason for anything.

Okay wow that was a lot of typing. It feels good to get that all off my chest though (Don't tell most people about how I got my scars, though I'll tell people that my mother killed herself).

I have social anxiety disorder/ADD/chronic depression and meditating helps me feel better. Every day, for ten minutes a day, find a quiet place in your house and empty your thoughts. Focus on your breathing. Count your breaths. If you find your thoughts wandering and lose track, start over. I like to sit up on the roof of my house and watch over the neighborhood, it makes me feel like a badass.

>>2507845
I usually go for 30 minutes, and I was about to go. I think I need to find a ladder and get up on top of my house. It overlooks a valley, it's pretty neat.

>>2507801

I know your mind is warped to almost a point of no return, you may not want to do this, or even care. But, I would really advise you to get some Psycological help. Appearently what you are suffering from is some sort of Coping Mechanism, it's partly an addiction to Endorphins. Read here if you want some more detail:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20090602074514AAp2yv5

>>2507846
My house overlooks a river, so I just look out a window. I generally do this type of thing while I walk though. My city's beautiful, lots of foliage and a great array of vegetation, along with beautiful houses and just a generally clean appearance.

On a side note, I didn't know you posted on ponychan, Carl.

>>2507845
When my anxiety acts up I like to drink tea. Chamomile is a nice calming tea.

I used to not only cut myself, but I used to bite, tear, burn and pinch myself. Pretty much anything that hurt. this is my story about how my addiction stopped. I really hope this will be for any use for anyone.

About exactly a year from now I had a mental all-time-low. This was the third year of being addicted to self mutilation, and it had taken over my life to the point that I couldn't barely even go to school. Noone actually knew about my little problem, but I could barely stand life as it was. I can honestly say that at some times I really thought of ending it all.

I had to cut myself just to get some sleep, the addiction and all the emotions that made me do such a thing to myself was getting worse for every night, and I had to cut deeper and deeper every time. At this time the cuts where getting hard to hide, and I was getting more and more obsessed about it.

Everything I could ever think of was how good it felt to do it, what would happen if someone found out about it and when I could do it next. It all became a habit, and I couldn't stop doing it. When noone could see I used to push a pen to my palms at lessons in school, bite my fingers, tear of small pieces of my skin and sometimes lock myself in the bathroom to cut my arms.

Don't get me wrong, I don't like pain. I never did. Self-harm isn't about "liking" it, it's for most people about suppressing inner pain by inflicting it to your body instead. Sadly enough it works, but then you get addicted and the real hell breaks loose.

I managed to stop, but it took me months, and I really feel like if I could have told anyone about it it would have been so much easier. About half a year ago I held a knife to my knife to my arms again, I was so close to just push the blade through my skin again, but I realised that would have had to restart all over again, and the addiction would be back right away. I put the knife down and that was the last time I've even been close to doing it.

What did I do to stop? What might help?

>Confront the reason.
The reason why you started doing it is something that you have to confront. If its grief, hate towards yourself or the world or anything else, you have to deal with these emotions.

>Believe in yourself
After a while you will do it as a habit. There are moments when I've done it where I didn't even feel the need to. The next time you're about to do it, stop for a second and think "Do I really need to do this?" You're not weak, if you set your mind to it you will be able to stand it, if even just once.

>Find a vent for your emotions
If you feel in the "mood" you will probably need another way to let your emotions out. It might be exercising, playing a game, hanging with a friend or just anything that get your mind of self harm and still leaves you "satisfied." Don't be afraid to cry, ever, crying is only natural and you need to let your emotions out at times.

>Write it, don't cut it
I got this tip from a girl once when I was about to relapse. I said "Please, I need your help. The urge is too strong." She simply replied with "Write what you feel on your arms." I wrote all over my arms, a few song lyrics, drew some smilies and funny stuff. It worked, and I still do it today when I really feel the need to.

>Talk to someone
This is the key mistake I did. You need to talk to someone about it. A friend, an internet friend, maybe a friends parent. It doesn't matter who, but having someone that knows about it and supports you will make stopping so much easier. Showing your emotions isn't a sign of being weak, it's being human. If you need to talk to anyone, I don't mind at all if you send me a mail at zzott@live.se.

For you who don't know much about self harm there are a few things I need to make clear.

>Its not "emo" or an attention thing
Even though, there are a few people that does it for attention, self harm is a very private thing. Most people hide it and never tells anyone, so that's an old myth bullies use to make black haired kids feel bad about themselves.

>Its far too common
I don't remember any specific numbers or statistics, but self mutilation is very common, way too in my opinion. It's four times more common among girls to do it than boys, but this doesn't mean there aren't a lot of boys that does it too.

>It's an addiction, you cant just stop
I've heard it so many times before. Some punk thinks he's being smart and says "If they don't like cutting their arms, then they should just stop doing it. As simple as that". That's a lot like saying "If they don't like meth, they should just stop doing it...". It's a strong addiction, if not even an obsession. It takes many months, if not years, to fully loose the addiction.

A few things about me: I'm 17 years old, I'm a very happy person, I love life and being with my friends. I'm not emo at all, I'm not mentally ill, I'm not an attentionwhore, I'm not anything. Just a normal person, and this could happen to anyone.

>Last words
Don't ever try it, not even once. It's not worth all the years of suffering.

I love Ponychan too much.

That's my problem.

I have this friend who's obsessed with this girl, and thinks that they're destined to be together and what not. However, until recently this girl didn't know he existed, and now she barely does. He's making no attempt to become friends with her or anything, he thinks it will all just happen.
Today I called him on it, and told him he was being irrational. It was hard to do, but I think it was for the better. That is my story.

>>2507828
That's a LOT more common than you think. Like, a lot more.

I while ago, I posted about some trouble that I was having with my sister. She's significantly older than me and was concerned that I was not taking enough innitiative in my life.
One day, she blew up at me that my liberal attitudes and tolerance of several gay friends of mine was causing me to "settle for mediocrity." My sister and I took oposite ideological paths in our college experiences. She went in a liberal and came out conservative (due to an unfortunate incident with some lesbians she knew who only wanted to get in her pants and not just be friends). I went in conservative and came out liberal (due to meeting gay people that challenged my unsubstantiated attitudes toward their lifestyles).
Anyway, she really hurt me that day she suddenly unloaded on me that she thought I was either going to agree with her or amount to nothing in life. I called her a nazi and later appologized to her for doing so, but she never took back her hurtful comments.

Until today.

Turns out she had erroneously heard from my father that I had turned down a teaching position at a college. What I had turned down was a suggestion to attend seminary classes at said college. I chose not to because said college is a Christian religious college and I would prefer to learn theology in an environment where there are no "right" answers being forced on us.
It turns out it was all a misunderstanding. She thought I had been offered a chance to strike out on my own rather than mooch off my parents and had turned it down out of some left-wing zeal.
The point is, give it time if you are mad at someone you know over a simple disagreement. Don't cut off contact. Try to figure out what the difference between you is and try to rectify it. It may just turn out to be a simple misunderstanding.

So I suffered and/or suffer from depression - this is the thing, folks, unless it's something like post-partum depression women get after a pregnancy (for obvious reasons this is something I'll never have to worry about), you can't really ever be sure if depression's gone away entirely.

- One of the things I cannot over-stress is how important maintaining a positive attitude is. It sounds fruity, but please, please trust me on this: if you keep a positive mindset, you will feel better, and doing everything else I suggest will also be easier. Depression can easily make you feel discouraged and useless, and if that happens, you can get locked into a downward spiral, and the inertia of that can be hard to overcome. Try as hard as you can to maintain a positive assessment of your situation, no matter how difficult it is.

- Consider your diet. If, like me, you don't eat much fish (I'm allergic to seafood), take cod-liver oil tablets that have Omega-3 in them (it'll say on the packaging). Omega-3 is a very important chemical that has a laundry list of medical benefits, including mood regulation.

- Get exercise. Jog, swim, lift weights. Exert yourself physically. Not only is this good for your body, it actually has medically proven beneficial effects for your mood. At the very least, it serves as a distraction.

- Social contact. Get out and talk to real people as often as you can. Try and avoid making excuses not to. Spending time with your friends, as My Little Pony has taught us, is very important. Do not be afraid to share your problems and your troubles with your friends. If they are truly your friends, they'll help.

- DISTRACT YOURSELF. If you feel depressed, if you feel down, DO NOT sit there and ruminate. Read a book, listen to music, play a video game, talk to someon, get some exercise. It doesn't have to be "constructive", it just has to be a meaningful distraction that takes your mind off whatever you're thinking about. Do something that makes you happy.

- Avoid medication. I don't really want to go into massive details on this, but avoid it. It's not worth it.

>>2507855
short, sweet and to the point. excellent.

>>2507856
Advice for depression needs to be. You don't want to be reading this shit for hours, trust me :P

I might as well start at the beginning.

First of all, I never had the crappy parents, in fact they have been overly loving of me(something I'm EXTREMELY glad happened to me, because I don't think I would have made it without them).

I had always been the chubby kid in school since I can't even remember when. Now this is where my first problem arose:bullying. As most of you might know, it was the distinctly different kids in the lower grades that were generally picked on. From the first grade to the fourth, I had to endure almost daily torment from kids in my class about my weight, you know, the small, petty insults that wouldn't phase us anymore like "fatboy", "tubby" and "lardo". Dealing with this daily when I was eight though, pretty much shattered my self confidence. By the middle of the third grade, I had basically become a recluse; Go to school, deal with the shit, talk to no one except when I begged them to stop(except for my one friend, Landon, whom I'll go over later), go home and cry my eyes out in my room(which also hurt my miniscule self confidence being brought up in a society where boys weren't supposed to cry), go to sleep. Rinse, wash, repeat.

Landon was my one true friend during all of this, he too, was overweight and didn't have anyone to talk to, so for that reason of comradery alone, we clicked.

It wasn't all just verbal bullying, I endured quite a bit of physical abuse as well during this time period. There was one person in particular who I was a target of on a daily basis. His name was Chris and that name will forever be burned into my skull as one of pain. I think in the span of my 3rd grade year we got into 20 fist fights( He instigated every one of them, most of them starting from me minding my own business sitting on the swingset, alone.) If it had been just him doing all of this, I would have been fine, but elementary age kids seem to have a huge tendency to herdmind and more times than I could count one person would do one thing like take my pencil from me and throw it across the room, only for me to find out once I walked all the way across the room that someone had "accidentally" stepped on it and broke it, or "accidentally" kicked it back the other way.

Most of this seems petty, but it really was hell for me having to endure all of this, especially at such a critical age of development.

Now we come to the fourth grade. I had an all right summer, no contact from anyone except Landon, just kept to myself on the Xbox or spent time with Landon. I come into the grade worse off than I had ever been, terrible anger issues, horrible self worth problems, and I had more than one time contemplated suicide.( Do you know what it's like to want to kill yourself when you're nine years old?) The only people in the world who I cared about were my family, and my one true friend, Landon and they were my only lifeline left from me ending it all, the only parts of the day I looked forward to were either with my parents or Landon. I remember days of standing in the shower in the morning, just crying and thinking of the easiest way to to off myself. Anyway, I have my first day of the 4th grade and everything is exactly how I thought it would be, lonely, except that no one was picking on me, everyone just left me alone. I'm still not sure why, to this day, they stopped messing with me, but I sure am grateful they did. Now, like I said earlier, I had severe anger and paranoia issues and this is the big problem I faced in the fourth grade. I didn't trust anyone, I always thought people were making fun of me behind my back( I still suffer from that a bit to this day) and I was extremely moody with anyone, to the point where something like a classmate correcting me on something would put me into a fit of rage and me going off on them, basically I was my own problem for being so lonely for that year.

Needless to say, my 5th and 6th grade year were essentially the same, except for me making a couple of "school friends" through Landon( the ones that you associate a bit with during school, but you know it's only a temporary thing and you know you'll probably never see them again once school was out).

Grades 7-11 were when I actually was pulled out of the brink from my depression. I was encouraged by my dad to go out for football due to my size( I had grown into my weight a bit more now and actually was one of the biggest kids in my Junior high). I remember that first day of practice like it was yesterday. No one knew who anyone else was( the junior high was a mixture of 4 different middle schools) and we never really had time to form groups, mostly because of the coaches constantly riding us. We came to rely on each other, regardless of if we wanted to or not, but I wanted to, that's all I ever wanted, friends. School came around and I actually found myself talking to people, almost all of them being from the football team or people through them. My life had basically done a 180 and I was happy from day to day.

I now find myself one week out of high school(graduated last Saturday) and looking back on all of this I can safely say the number one thing I've learned from my childhood is this:

Don't ever isolate yourself from everyone else, always try to find a friend to be with. Without interaction, I don't believe there is a reason to live and that means that friends aren't just something to keep you company, but something to keep you sane, something to keep you happy. Don't ever forsake your friends, never sever bonds, because as I've learned, friendship truly is magic.

I'm not up for typing out a detailed post of my own sordid past right now. Just wanted to comment on something I saw in here.

>>2507855
There are some very good suggestions in there--diet and exercise can do a lot to help battle depression. But I do have to take exception to a couple things you said.

>if you keep a positive mindset, you will feel better
While not necessarily disagreeing with this, there are different levels of depression, and for someone mired deeply in it, a positive mindset just isn't possible. Not only that, but putting forth the idea that they should be able to can just make them feel like even bigger failures when they can't.

>Avoid medication.
I know this is a hotly debated topic, but again everyone is different. For some people, meds aren't the best option. And because everyone's chemistry is a bit different, not every med is going to work well with everyone; it can take a bit of trial and error to find one that works well. It's also important to note that the main intent of meds isn't to make you magically happy, but to help prop you up a bit so you can work on standing up on your own and eventually drop the meds entirely.

Last summer, my father nearly died and was permanently crippled because of a mistake that I made. It is not a point of debate, or false blame. It WAS my fault. The thing that surprised me was that it didn't affect me immediately. For a long time after the mountain climbing accident I was, at least in comparison to the other members of my family, fine. Whether this was because I had to be the strong one or just the way I internalized it I don't know, but when it hit me, it hit me hard. I nearly dropped out of college twice. First because I felt I had to help my family and later just due to falling grades and the requirements of my scholarship. Additionally, about six months after my father's accident, my good friend died in a plane crash totally unrelated to anything I had done. I still found a way to blame myself for it. It made no logical sense, but I did. Honestly, the best decision I ever made was when I listened to my friends and sought help from counseling. I was able to repair my GPA and keep my scholarship, but only through consistent help and support from my friends and the professionals I sought out. I know, for some people this isn't an option. However, it worked for me and so it's what I can contribute. I'm still not totally better (this was this past year), but I know that if I hadn't done so, I'd be in a much worse situation than I am right now.

Oh boy, where do I begin?

I went through hell in middle and high school. I moved around a lot, so I was always an outsider. I never had many friends, and all my friends were outsiders like me. I got picked on by everybody. I put up with a lot of loneliness and misery and days when I just wanted to come home and smash something to bits with my bare hands. Looking back on it now, it made me strong. All that struggle and strife and misery taught me that people are, in general, shit. It's a hard lesson, but an important one. I also learned that you should never judge someone at face value. Some of my best friends came across as "weird" when I met them, but I realized that, to them, I was the weirdo. So we were weird together. This taught me something else. Fuck everybody else and their Celestia-damned opinions. They don't matter. They aren't you. They don't have the same interests or goals or desires. They don't have the same upbringing, or the same character. So, fuck them. They can't (nor should they) tell you how to live your life. If you have to be something you're not to hang around with people, don't hang around with people. Your friends should accept you for who you are. Again, another very hard lesson, but I am honestly happier than I have ever been now that I move to the beat of my own drum. I have an air of confidence and strength about me because I know that I am me. All my rough edges, all my best and worst parts, everything I am I am proud of. Sure, I have problems but they don't keep me awake at night. I just work at them, a little bit at a time, until they aren't problems anymore. I've noticed that I've gained a level of confidence and sociability I never had when I was trying to be someone else. I used to be quiet and awkward in conversations, not sure what the "cool" thing to say would be and terrified I would embarrass myself. Now, I've dropped all pretense of "coolness" in favor of making my own cool. I think I'm cool, I think my hobbies are cool, and I've learned to find friends that think the same. Trust me, there is nothing more magnetic (or scary, to some people) than a person marching to the beat of their own drum. That's why I was picked on. I wasn't afraid to speak my mind or like something because it was different. I listened to music that nobody else listened to. I wore shirts and made references that nobody else got. They wanted to tear me down because I wasn't them, because I was a black sheep in their little uniform world and that made them jealous and angry that I would violate their norms with my new ideas and strange mannerisms. I had the strength to rise above it. Everyone does. Just shut out the neighsayers and focus on doing what makes you happy. You may have to alienate yourself from "friends" or even family, but only you can decide what makes you happy. It's hard, but we all have to find our cutie marks, even if they aren't what everyone else wants them to be.

Be yourself. There's no other way to be happy.

Last year was probably the hardest of my life. For the second time in many years, I was torn out of the satisfying social world I had constructed for myself. The first time was several years ago when I moved away from the first place my family really settled down in. I had a huge network of friends, and I lived in an awesome neighborhood full of kids and we had all kinds of great adventures together out in the woods. It was a great childhood (schoolyard bullying aside). I was torn away from that my freshman year of high school, which was partly why my high school experience was so shit. All those kids knew each other from before, and I was the strange outsider. After putting up with 4 years of hell in high school, I had managed to meet a handful of really good friends (fire-forged friends, fellow outsiders like me that received their share of crap. We banded together and managed to put a stop to all the crap by working as a group). Then, college came. College was (and still is) -incredible-. Easily the happiest time of my life. I met my fantastic ex girlfriend, made a whole mess of friends, and got to revel in a lifestyle that I had been looking for since middle school. I totally nerded out, played D&D almost every night, participated in a massive, campus-wide game of Humans vs Zombies, and was generally enjoying the time of my life.

Then came the divorce. I came home one day to see my mom with a look of intense determination on her face. She told me that the marriage was done. My parents both agreed that they couldn't stand each other anymore. There were fights, but the worst part was the tension. I was ready for the divorce, don't get me wrong. It had been rumbling on the horizon for a long time. My parents were married 20 years, but they were never really happy together and my dad had shifted to a whole new level of jackassery in the recent few years. The divorce, like all divorces, was bloody. A lot of things were said and done that were very painful for all involved. The tension of the few months it took for my dad to find a new place to live were the worst. Nobody came out of their room, lest they be caught in the crosshairs of my dad who just sat out in the living room and drank (and drank and drank...). You could cut the atmosphere with a knife it was so tense. Finally, my dad announced he had purchased a new place to live and left, leaving my mom with 4 kids, a mortgage she could never pay, and a mountain of bills a mile high. She was alone in a strange place, far from family, and in dire financial straights.

Long story short, we ended up moving far away from my old town to live with my grandparents. We moved far away from my idyllic college life, my friends, my girlfriend, everything I had grown to enjoy. I lost my car, I lost my job, and most painfully, I lost my dad. He disowned me after I "sided with" my mom (becuase, you know, kids should have to choose between their parents). My dad is a grown flankman with a job. She's a broke-flanksingle mother with three kids (not including myself) to take care of an a monumental (read: 2400 miles, four trips of 600 miles each) move to make. He didn't need my help, she did. Now, I've been cut out of everything, even his will. I no longer exist to my own father.

You know what? I'm stronger, more successful, and a better person now than I have ever been before. I can handle challenges. I stepped up and handled the divorce like a champ. While my world was crumbling around my ears, I shook off the dust, grabbed what mattered, and plowed ahead. Sure, I lost a lot. I lost everything. But I'm gaining it back, bit by bit, with a whole new appreciation for what it means. I've done better in school now than I've done since I was in elementary school because I appreciate how much it takes to get into college and stay there. I have a new gusto for my job, despite it being shit compared to my last one, because I appreciate how meaningful it is to work and be able to support yourself. I appreciate the value of family now, because without mine, and my mom's, I'd be living in the street right now.

Listen, as a kind of roundabout moral for this story, embrace adversity. Life will shit on you. A lot. It's a struggle, especially once you're out on your own. The hardest lesson in life is also the most important, and if you learn it well you'll always be happy. Struggle is an opportunity to be stronger.

Morgan Freeman put it better than I could ever hope to articulate. I'm not religious, but this really struck me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDDqCgV9jWo#t=42s

Don't look at your struggles as misfortune. Look at your struggles as an opportunity to better yourself. Make yourself stronger. Yes, my job is hard (it involves lifting 50 lb bags of horse feed all day in the blazing summer sun) but I'm also in the best shape of my life. I'm actually starting to get some definition and tone, something I never cared enough about before to get. Yes, I've moved far from everyone I've ever known, but now I live close to family I only got to see once or twice a year before. I go over to my uncle's almost every day I'm not at work and help him with his blacksmithing. Sure, my life hasn't turned out the way I wanted it two, but you know what? I'm happier than I've ever been before. Don't get me wrong, we're far below the poverty line. We don't have two nickels to rub together for warmth. I was raised upper-middle class. I always had food on the table and money for stuff. Now, we have to pinch every penny and make due with some pretty sparse meals. Despite this, we're closer as a family than we've ever been. This trial has made us stronger, and I know I'll never be the same.

It's a good feeling.

>>2507862
Umm... I don't know if it's impolite to say this or anything but... thanks for sharing this. It will really help me soon.

Don't let me get you down, please just ignore this post and keep scrolling down. I just need somewhere to self-pity post this, because I don't want to waste everyone's time with a depression thread.

Shall I post a list? It will be abridged so that I don't take up too much space, I'm trying not to be an attention horse. I'll only include the first twenty problems that I can think of that I have in my life in no particular order. (these are only the issues I have in Real life)

1) I struggle with depression.

2) I have one of the lowest self-esteems of anypony I know, so you can just disregard everything I write here because it's just my blatant stupidity see issue 6 and depression see issue 1 speaking.

3) I'm fat.

4) My face's proportions are hideous and acne-ridden the acne is a good thing because it helps conceal my facial features

5) I'm an awful writer, role player, and athelete but that never stops me see issue six

6) I'm stupid and don't know when to stop anything.

7) My only talent is the English Language, which is how I conceal issue 6.

8) I consider myself witty. However, I'm the only person who considers myself witty.

9) The closest friend I have lives half an hour away by car, and I don't have a driver's license.


10) I spend most days sitting in my room at the computer, trying to quell my feelings of insufficiency and worthlessness while not actually doing anything about them.

11) I know just enough about psychology to know I'm screwed as an individual.

12) My heart is made of a strange mixture of coal and stone. (whereas coal can become diamond at high pressure, my heard will always be only coal/stone)

13) The peak of my life was likely this past year in high-school Speech & Debate when I made it to the state level (this is bad only because I'll probably never exceed that point, seeing as how my body, brain, and life in general has gone downhill since that point)

14) My mother hates me.

15) My brother hates me.

16) All of my friends treat me with a mildly veiled disdain on a good day.

17) I have an annoying voice known to grate on people's nerves unless I artificially fluctuate and change it.

18) I'm socially paralyzed toward any given person that I can't actually communicate more than "yeah" "uh huh" and *nod* until I've spent at least 6 total hours sitting/standing near them, within listening distance.

19) I give up easily, whenever I come across something blocking my path. I'm also generally a massive dick whenever I come across these blocks, so I drive everyone away.

20) I'm an incurable pessimist. Worse, whenever I believe that the worst will happen (which is always) it happens.

>Pic related: Those of you who have listened to the wall in it's entirety will know what I'm talking about.
The symbolic value of the picture is that not even Ponies can break down my mental wall and make me free/a better person, just in case you didn't catch that.

As for how did I solve it... I didn't. I struggle with these problems every day, and every day I lose. The best message you can get from this is "be happy you don't have my problems in addition to your own", I suppose.

>>2507864

Any wall can be torn down. I won't get into details, but I firmly believe this and I've never seen a case that disproves it.

I never had many problems in life. I used to struggle with loneliness and not having friends, but I worked at it and now I'm leading a pretty enjoyable life, and most people like me so that's a plus. I also have a problem with insecurity and generalized anxiety but with changes in diet and behavioral changes (meditation, choosing to take time to think things over, ect) I'm improving and enjoying life much more.

The only issue in my life at the moment is just finding what I want to do with my life, continuing with my music, a search for my MUSE (I'm not bummed being single but y'know it'd be cool), and just the process of maturing from a teenager to an adult.

I lost My dad at age 3 to cancer

Im slightly overweight

Ive had tons of bad relationships

How ive dealt with it i haven't

>>2507865
*shrugs* just ignore me, I don't want to turn this thread into me whining about being me. I do enough of that the rest of the time. I'm just going to discourage everyone else from saying anything encouraging to me, as I've already given up on everything.

>>2507863

I'm glad I could help, brony.

I'm just a normal guy who found the strength to get through his tough times. It's in everyone. Attitude means everything. Just remember that and I'm sure whatever you're going through will turn out for the best.

>>2507867

Ah man, I'm not trying to bum you out, and I'm not going to help you out if you don't want it.

I'm just alluding to the knowledge that even the strongest, thickest of walls can be torn down with enough willpower. Even if you've given up, it seems you still recognize what's going on and why it's going on, and I think that's enough to tell you that there's no real reason to give up.

I mean, even trying until the last day you die is better than having everyone else banging their hearts against some mad bugger's wall. I mean, we all come from the same cosmic matter, so there's something in common in each in every one of us. The atoms that we're composed of, the elements, the anatomy of every human being, and of course emotional isolation.

I have no problems with people asking for help in this thread or posting thier problems , if anything it will possibly help to make others speak up and maybe give more advice on that subject, just lets not let it turn into a big conversation , it really IS a better idea to make a seperate thread if you need to ask for help really. Dont let that discourage you in any way , i just wish to keep the conversations to a minimum in the sticky so people looking for advice wont need to scroll through 200 posts of chat :)

Thankies All

If someone makes a thread like that, I usually try to give encouraging words.
That's all.

Well I have put this thread as an example of CrwoningMomentofHeartwarming on Ponychan's TvTropes page. Gosh if the people here don't warm my heart.

I, myself, have a problem. I am very anti social. When I was young, I was this bright ball of energy. I would ask random people over for dinner and always be as kind as I can to people. Yet, there was just this time, I don't know when exactly, where I just bacame distant from the other people other than family,

For a long while I was... maybe not depressed, but not happy. I rarely talked and it was hard to speak when I had to. Than I found MLPFiM. It was motivational. I longed to have friends like that. To have people who I could talk to and rely and trust on. It made try harder but it wasn;t much.

What pushed me over was... well, this fandom. The people I have seen here have been inspirational and it's made me want to try my best to be more social. I havn't made too much progress, but moreso than ever before. I still have trouble talking but I have been talking a lot more.

So, I just want to thank everyone in this community. Your kindess is inspiration, almost unbelievable to considering how jaded where I live is.

So much so that today, I am actually going to get out of my house and walk around a bit. I tried that once before a long while ago, but a group of people suddenly came up and mocked me. "Fatty! HA LOOK AT THAT FAT KID!".

But I really don't care what the jerks say anymore becausee I know that the world has people like you guys and I am determined to get out and find them.

So, Ponychan and the whole fanbase for that matter, thank you.

I don't think I have anything to offer, because I haven't solved my own problems.

I suppose, if you've got a problem, something about yourself that you think will be looked down upon for some reason, find a good way to explain it and talk to someone about it. It can be over the internet.

Since I can't give much of advice from my own experiences, I'll offer the music video full of general advice, "Sunscreen"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OojsLDYr7RY

>>2507828
As others have said, vorarephilia.
Yep, you're insane.

And that means nothing :)
In fact, it means that you're certain to have a different outlook on certain things than the average person, which I think can only be a good thing.

And yes, there's many who feels the same way.
There's plenty of drawn stuff out there if you look the right places. Drawings and fantasies are the way to go, brony. That's how I've been "dealing with" my own -philia ...

>>2507873

I found that song years ago. I can't tell you how meaningful that wisdom is, or how much it taught me.

Listen, first time listeners, pay attention. That song is wisdom.

>>2507869
Better today - Sorry about that. I go through cycles of happy - sad - happy - sad because I'm insane. Since ponies, (and thanks in part to bronies, like you) I've had longer happy cycles and less sad cycles.
>Pic related.

>>2507875

Oh it's you! Glad to hear I could help, man.

Hello everypony,
i usually dont go to the internet for my problems, but i just cant much figure this one out.
Spence its summer, pretty much all of my friends are on vacation/at camp for the whole summer.
and with my stupid sleep schedule, i`m not finding much of a chance to do anything social,so i was wandering, does anyone have any tips on making friends? it honestly embearasses me to post this but, as the title of the show says "Friendship is Magic" and i dont have much magic (lolwut?)

My advice is to remember that all of this *waves hand* is temporary. Everything changes in time. So if you don't feel you are strong enough to change things yourself, then be strong enough to wait. Time passes, and things will get better.

Figure id just post in this thread than make a new one but Im very nervous or something I don't exactly know what i feel but long story short:

Ive been alone all my life, no siblings, and no support. Completely independent is how i was raised to be. Well my mother is in the hospital and shes going to be giving birth to my very first sibling and she is going to be my sister...I know she wont replace me, I can take care of myself I just don't know how to feel or what to do in the mean time. Ive been informed that alot will change when she comes..that everything i was raised with will be blocked out and she will not only be raised better but with more attention and love.

I just hope i know what to do when she comes.

>>2507880
the new sibling may be given more attention, given the nature of babies, but that doesn't mean it will get more love than you. Parents won't direct their love to any one child; try not to worry about that c:

>>2507882

Well im old enough as it is so thats not what im really worried about, then again im unsure of what exactly im worried about anyways.

Found some interesting articles on psychological manipulation tactics (Ie. general manipulation for personal gain, bullying, degradation, etc.). Just thought I'd drop these in, seeing as how many people that posted here have problems when it comes to social interaction. Stay strong!


>Good ol' Wiki, pretty much lists the general info without going too much into detail.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_manipulation

>A lengthy article, neatly divided into various subsections, I suggest you read the index at the top first to see if there's anything you may find useful.
http://www.psychologicalharassment.com/psychological_manipulation.htm

>Short, sweet and straight to the point. This article will probably take about 10 minutes to read, and this one actually provides examples!
http://reallifespirituality.com/psychological-manipulation-techniques/

>Same as before: Short, sweet and straight to the point. Gives you the means on how to detect and most importantly avoid being manipulated.
http://www.cassiopaea.com/cassiopaea/emotional_manipulation.htm

Whoo-boy...here goes.

A few years back, absolute disaster struck my family. My grandmother went into a coma she never came out of, my mother had major surgery, and I nearly died of pneumonia. Things were pretty bad. My mother was an absolute mess after losing my grandmother and seeing me almost go under myself. There would be days at a time she'd rush in to check on me just to make sure I was still there and she wasn't alone in the world...For a while I couldn't even handle seeing it all, seeing her cry, seeing her face all this by herself. A few months went by before things got better...

I decided that I needed to be strong for my mom and make something of my life. I wanted to fight for her, if only because she had given her everything to raise me as a single-parent and never once complained. I wanted to fight for her because no one else ever had.

Despite some problems I managed to make it. I had gotten through BMT and Tech School and was a full fledged mechanics apprentice...I was so happy. Mom was so proud. We never even saw it coming when the other shoe dropped and I started breaking down.

You see, I was a hydraulics mechanic. We worked with very corrosive and somewhat dangerous chemicals. It usually isn't harmful to most - but after working around it enough, my body started having a terrible reaction. After a good deal of skin on my arms and legs started to be eaten away, they decided I was allergic and would have to be retrained. That decision led me into the worst living nightmare I could have imagined.

I had lost my usefulness as a mechanic. At my base, being a mechanic was everything - and I couldn't do it anymore. I lost all worth as a mechanic, a soldier, a person, and a human being in their eyes. Every day I was told how useless and stupid I was, how I was a burden on everyone while I struggled desperately to get my retraining paperwork through the system. Every day brought new problems to light - be it someone had lost my paperwork entirely, or would set me back with wrong directions...the system was just so BROKEN that I was never meant to make it through.

All the while I kept my silence and worked as hard as I could at what I COULD do. I became the official Snack-Bar Girl and worked furiously to make it work. No matter what I did though...it never got better. I was useless and a woman to boot, the lowest scum of the earth in a mechanic's eyes... No matter what gifts I brought them, or how desperately I tried to win their affections, their acceptance, I was beaten down verbally.

Slowly...over several months...I started to become suicidal. I can't even count how many times my death played out in my head. I could tell you everything, before and after, everything in detail of how I wanted to die. My body rebelled, retching every night until I almost couldn't hold down food any more. All the time I was hiding it at work, trying not to let them catch me being seized with panic and disgust at myself. I just had to hold on for that paperwork, at least that's what I told myself, and it would all be ok.

Then the breaking point happened. After fighting the system for almost a year and a half I was told that my paperwork was so ruined that I was going to be kicked out of the service with nothing. No medical benefits - no education - not even an honorable discharge after I had given everything I had to them.

That day I almost threw myself out in front of a car. I didn't want to live anymore. I had failed my mother - I had failed my flight - and I had failed myself. There wasn't a reason to live any more.

My mom, the only one who had supported me through this nightmare was the only thing that stopped me. Before I stepped into traffic, I remember a promise I'd made to her that I wouldn't die and leave her alone. Instead of stepping out in front of a car, I stepped into a mental hospital and proceeded to break down completely. They kept me confined there for almost a month before deeming me stable enough to exist outside the walls.

That was one of the best decisions I had ever made. My hospitalization started a chain reaction. I was released, honorably, from the Air Force and given full benefits. I wish I could say it was enough - and I am grateful for everything I received...but..

I guess it's bittersweet. I got what I wanted. I got my GI bill and benefits...but at the cost of myself.

That base shattered any confidence I had. I've ALWAYS been teased and picked on, ever since I was a little girl, and after enduring it again for the first time in my adult life - all that confidence I had gained through BMT and Tech School were shattered.

I'm not better. I'm not ok. I'm just stable. If I'm not medicated, I have break downs. I want to scream and run and escape from everyone because they terrify me. People terrify me and I don't know that I'll ever be better enough to really deal with them again.

What hurts the worst is seeing the way my mom looks at me now. She's the most beautiful, amazing person in the world and my hero...and every time she looks at me I see her fighting back tears because the happy, confident soldier she had been so proud of is gone. There's just me, trembling and trying to hide behind her every time we go into public.

I’m sorry… I know this is a lot to pour out and no one wants to deal with my whining, but I just wanted to get it off my chest. I don’t know. Maybe it’s my roundabout way of admitting I need help from people who don’t scare me as badly. The pony/brony community is one of the most forgiving I’ve ever encountered, so even if I am broken a little, I could make friends here and get even a shred of my confidence back.

Anyway... I'll be quiet now...*scuttles away*

>and every time she looks at me I see her fighting back tears because the happy, confident soldier she had been so proud of is gone. There's just me, trembling and trying to hide behind her every time we go into public.

Are you sure of this? Have you talked to her about the suicidal stuff and all that? I simply cannot imagine that she would not be proud of you anymore.
You fought for her, acting selflessly when you were feeling shit yourself. Putting yourself in a mental hospital sounds like a tough decision.
I don't know what to say really, but I see no reason why she'd not be proud. If anything, the tears she's holding back are because she knows you both have had a tough time.

And yes, it is a lot to pour out. And you're wrong, we do want to deal with your whining. Sure, maybe some of us don't know exactly how to answer or how to react, but for gods sake pour out more if you feel like it!

I just love how nobrony is helping others in this thread.

We're not? I really do wan to be of some help here. It's just that many of such posts, I don't know what to say.

For your situation, I suppose your independance can help. And I think you might do well with some time off, if you could distract yourself with something you really like doing, a vacation or just some sort of relaxation to cut off from the unpredictable events.

I mean, it's unpredictable what will happen, or what feelings will arise, so perhaps just go with the flow and see.

Support, could you get that through confiding in friends or anyone else you trust? Even just posting here does some, but in my experience it's sort of vague because it's on the internet :/

>>2507878

This is bothering me too. It seems that to make friends, you need to be forced into it, through either school or work. You're forced to interact with people there, which also means that making friends becomes incredibly hard when there is no such force, i.e. in summer vacations.

Only things I can think of would be to go to bars or something like that, parties or just confronting people in puplic like the boss of confidence. But more realistically, I'd either say make internet friends or wait it out and talk to friends that are not on vacation. And fix your sleep schedule? :P

>>2507888

>friends
I have no friends at all.

However if i do take a small vacation for myself i only come back to more problems apparently but i think i got a pretty good grip on things for now i just get the shivers from time to time. Mom's giving birth this weekend i guess..

>>2507888
>>2507878
Take fencing lessons.
You can mercilessly poke anyone who refuses to be your friend.

In other words,
Step 1: Swordplay
Step 2: ????????
Step 3: Profit

the serious bit: I suggest taking some sort of "Class" or something of that nature and eavesdropping on everyone's conversation. Once that's accomplished, butt in on their conversations in a relatively polite way.

>>2507885

Wow, that's just...

Wow.

In all the years I've been struggling, my dream has been the one thing that has kept me going. Through my shitty high school, my parent's bloody divorce, losing everything I had ever known, the only thing that has kept me going has been my mom and my dream of one day owning my own game development firm. I just can't imagine going through what you did. That really is an incredible story.

Listen, you're already past rock bottom. It can't get any worse than wanting to step in front of a car. As hard as it is now, you've made it past the toughest part. The trick now is to overcome your fear. No matter what it takes, you need to beat your fears. That has got to be your next goal.

You've already conquered so much, accomplished so much. The only thing standing between you and success is a mental block. As hard as it is (and it's hard. I know, trust me), it's all in your head. You can beat it. You just have to approach it with the right attitude. It'll take work, it'll take struggle, but that's what life is. You can't get around having to struggle. The trick is learning to enjoy the struggle. Make it a game to better yourself a little bit every day.

Don't try to do it all at once. You'll get overwhelmed. Through all my hardship, I've developed a motto that has become more powerful to me than just about anything else. It is the one thing that gets me out of bed in the morning and the last thing I think before I go to sleep.

One day at a time.

Don't think about next month, or next week, or even tomorrow. Focus on getting through the day as best you can. Give yourself a goal for the day, just some tasks to do to help you improve your situation, or confront a mental block, or anything a little bit at a time. Before you know it, you'll look back at the week and go "damn, look at everything I got done!" and feel energized for the next week.

Honestly, I can't even come close to comparing our situations. Still, you're story struck a chord and this is the best advice I can give.

Best of luck.

>>2507889

If you've got a good grip on things, I suppose you'll just have to go with that. Ride it out, take one day at a time as stated in the post above...
It's not a situation I can relate to, but you sound like you feel horrible :(

And are there other things causing you trouble? Other sources of stress or depression? If there is, I think you and anypony else that's thinking about it should make their own thread.
I did, and while I didn't expect the replies to help me or to at all change anything, it really did made me feel better :)

>>2507892
Meh i feel bad from time to time but i dont always feel bad and id like to think i got a good grip on things since im not so down id take my life, i love my life even if it is empty. I feel and hope one day somebody will tell me "thank you" and not leave me and mean it. somebody to return the favor for everything ive ever done for all. Ive done so much just to get tossed aside and stepped on over and over..

Nah i use my stream for anything like that and it helps others who feel a little down knowing there talking to me and hearing my voice.

Come on in anytime: http://tinychat.com/delponies (stream starts at 7:30pm Pacific time zone and ends at 3:30am.)

Hey guys, I wanted to say thank you to Josef and Trinket and everpony else who didn't smack my flank and go "Hyah-mule!"

I appreciate the support and knowing that I'm not alone with these kinds of things. I can understand the concept of one day at a time, and even if I can be hypocritical sometimes, I'll try to practice it in the future. I think it'll help - especially with the social anxiety...

As for my mom, I know she's proud of me. She's a wonderful person and lets me know she cares every day, and for that I'm lucky. She left today for a well deserved vacation - but didn't leave before sneaking three roses into my bedroom with a little note just to say "I love you."

Between her and, eventually, making good friends here - I think I'll get better when the time comes. So thank you guys for putting up with a silly-filly like me.

>>2507894

I honestly don't know what I could say to you to help you out, but I'm glad to hear you think you'll get better. Optimism, if anything else, is always a great start. I'm sure you're still the trooper you always have been!

As far as it goes, my life hasn't been too bad.

I'm 18 and grew up on a hillside in a dilapidated single wide trailer with both parents and an older brother.
My favorite toys(not my only ones, mind you, I had real toys as well) were literally pieces of junk- an engine, the axel to a four wheeler and an iron bar with a bend in it that I used to hammer on the boulders in my yard. We had the largest plot of land in town at about 3 acres, so I had plenty of room to run around.
There was only one bedroom, so my parents slept in it, while my brother and I slept on couches, he on a sofa, I a love seat.

I entered school, and things were mostly alright, I had some trouble learning to tie my shoes in the 3rd grade and had speech lessons throughout elementary, but that was about it.
At some point, about 5th grade, I was tested and entered into Gateway, the Accelerated Program at my school. The kids would be plucked out of class once a week and would go learn different things. One of my friends and the girl I had been crushing on since Kindergarten was in it, so I lept at the chance.
Things were alright at first, but I was always out of paper and couldn't keep up with the math, so I got kicked out after about half a year.

Next came Middle School.

>>2507897

I started out optimistically enough, but that went to pot soon enough.
I'd always been the smart, short, skinny, weak, pale, long haired blonde kid, so I was an easy target. In 5th grade, there were some jerks I had to sit by, but nothing too serious, but in 6th grade I had begun to be abused, verbally and physically. I was only beaten once, in 8th.
But when you're 11 and any friend you make moves away after a month, it gets to you.

In the summer before 6th my mother, who drinks, but wasn't quite an alcoholic, was sick or hungover, I'm not sure which. My father saw that in the kitchen we had two bowls for our cat's water, which we had about 20 of.
In a single wide. With holes in the floor big enough to fit through, no plumbing in the Kitchen with plywood floors after an abandoned renovation project, and little to no insulation. We had to wash dishes in the bathtub.
When my father is mad, he is pissed, yelling obsensties at the top of his lungs.
This time, he got so mad, he put my mother in the car and dropped her off at her mother's.
My brother and I, knowing full well that our dad couldn't possibily take care of us, called up one of our Mother's friends, packed a few of our belongings and moved to our grandma's.

>>2507898
Now, I can't honestly say that I'm the child of a divorce, but I can't imagine it's too different.

Moving into my grandma's was a turn for the better. I didn't have to wake up every morning to my dad shouting at the top of his lungs, and I got an actual room and bed. Eventually I started going over to my dad's on the weekend, and eventually my mom started to come with me, and eventually she stopped coming back. My parents in the trailer, my brother and I at our grandma's.

Now, this was the point in life where our lasting characteristics were formed. My brother did well socially, I did not. He lost his virginity at 14, I'm still a virgin.
He got money for anything he wanted, I had been screwed out of an allowance before I ever got one. But, what did I need money for? I had nothing to spend it on.
Still in Middle school, the bullying went on after hours talking to the principals, weeks in ISS when I was the victim, many thoughts towards suicide, and it only stopped when my mother threatened to go over their heads, tell the state, and get their funding cut.
That got them off their flanks.
Middle school was also when I started to brush my teeth. My parents never really stressed it. Or mentioned it at all.

Now comes Highschool. I started to hang out with the stoner kids. Nice people, most of them.
Still socially stunted, I never went over to any of their houses. I enrolled in Pottery and found myself mediocre, but I loved it. I failed 9th the first time around and had to repeat it.
My brother, being a drama queen, had someone call Defax on our parents and tried to get emancipated. At 15.

>>2507899
So Defax sent some people out to investigate, and after much worrying on my side, they cleared us.
Except for one thing- my parents had recently bought a house, the one I'm in now. The house they had bought was in a different county from where I was going to school. So I was kicked out in the middle of the school year for being out of district. So I had to move to a new school with much lower standards all around.
Finished 9th, went through 10th, nothing spectacular happened. Except for my brother dropping out. And he's done nothing in the two years since except get charged with possession of marijuanna.
Still no friends out of school, let alone a girlfriend, and I've been redristicted. So that means a third highschool.
This is where things are starting to look up.
No bullies, a few friends(but still nothing outside of school) and I'm making A's and B's.
I finish 11th, and since it was a new school, I sing with the chorus at the first graduation.

The next day my dad has a heart attack.

>>2507900
My brother actually does something useful and gives him CPR while I run across the road to our Aunt's house to get her. And this is one of the only times I've felt shame. It's a long driveway, and I'm weak as shit. But halfway though I have to slow to a walk. While my dad was dead on the floor.

The EMTs come and resuscitate him, and the ambulance takes him to the hospital and he has a quadruple bypass done and gets out of in half the time they thought.

And that's it so far. I have no talents, I'm too smart to be counted average, yet not smart enough to be one of the smart kids. And I have no direction on life, butI have some potential.
My only hobby is anime, and the only times I can really cut lose is at conventios twice a year, which is the only time I ask for money, but I'm going to try to get a summer job to avoid doing that.
At home, even though I have my own room, my brother's in it most of the day on the internet. I want friends, and can't have those. I want somewhere I can be alone, and watch my anime and ponies, and have to wait until 1am.

So, all in all, it could have been worse.
I've got no clue for the future, but I still have hope.

When my mother died, I realized that I had no motivation of my own. I had to face that I lack nearly every social skill, that I was an arrogant and deluded prick. One of my last motives was to take vengeance on those who hurt me, but my foster mom (mother of my siblings) opened my eyes up only to push me on the edge, taking my last goal in life...

I was slowly sinking deeper and deeper into self-loathing. I hated myself and hated the world.

My redemption came as an enlightment: I've decided to actually reach my perfect self – a stronger being, one that surpasses the disgusting, filthy animality of human nature. I've decided to strive and become the god of myself, the god I couldn't find in this unruly, godless world outside.

And you know what? It works.

>>2507901

Thanks for sharing, Anon.

I have a feeling your life is going to get a lot better soon. You seem to be underplaying it's importance a little, but I think that more than anything else right now, you need some money. Not a lot, but your life will improve dramatically once you become an independent man. Keep working at finding a job - it's tough, but I know you can do it, don't be too picky right now - and do your best to move out. Neither your job nor your new housing needs to be glamorous at all...Simply having your own income and your own home will improve every aspect of your life. Food tastes better, the air is crisper, all of that. It will give you a sense of autonomy and drive that will eventually lead to discovering talents and passions.

I don't know exactly when you're turning 18 and graduating and all of that, but I think that getting a part-time job would be an awesome step until that happens. Save wherever you can- it sounds like you're already practiced at frugality, which is a very good thing- and focus on getting independence.

>>2507904
Rising above your imperfections to become your best? Sounds like Nietzsche's Ubermensche.

>>2507887

I think this thread has become more of a collective sharing thread.

hey, a standard greeting, a cry out, a calling, an attack. i think to much eh?
im hiding under the guise of a sad brony to try and speak in a world where my words have no meaning. i have a chronic condition that causes me constant pain and occasional unpredictable violent spasming. i have in the past been mis diagnosed and suffered greatly as a result. in a place i cannot bring myself to name, i was tortured and forced to see people suffer and even die. i am plauged by memories and pain and spasms.

I've been following this thread for a while. Not sure if I really had anything worthwhile to post-- I'm far more used to simply whining about issues and never offering up a solution-- but now I think I may have something to contribute.

Some basic information: I'm a girl who just graduated from a high-stress, single-sex high school in New York City. I moved here between sixth and seventh grade, which really put an odd hitch in my interactions with peers. I've been pretty alone for the last few years, and it's really started to suck.

Now, I probably don't suffer from clinical depression or anxiety. I have, however, dealt with bouts of this; for nearly the whole past year I have been getting anxiety attacks specifically in the presence of my peers and I have felt depressed for spells that would last months.

I used to deal with these feelings by bottling them up until they would reach a breaking point, at which point I would self-harm or simply drink myself into oblivion. It's definitely not the best way to deal with things, but I had nobody to talk to, which meant that I felt like I had no place to go to seek some positive catharsis.

And yet, I've found that if you can seek out some very small thing to put everything into-- for me, it's various sorts of crafts-- things can get better. If I felt like there was nothing left, I could remind myself in these very small, tactile ways that there were bits of enjoyment in life.

And so I have thrown myself into doing various crafts. I've been assembling papercraft models, customizing MLPs, and crocheting amigurumi dinosaurs. Sometimes focusing on small things helps release some of that big stuff that really, really sucks.

tl;dr: I probably have no license to say this since I'm not diagnosed with any mental illness or shit but DISTRACTION MATTERS. If you can find one small thing to work toward that is worth living for, it can become a refuge of sorts.

>>2507911
I really loved your work customizing that RD into Spit Fire, it was really awesome, i wish i could get a chance to meet more people with your talents!

I grew up adopted.
I grew up hating myself.
I grew up loved, but misunderstood.
I grew up making art, but being told I had no future in it.
I grew up angry, hating everyone and everything.
I grew up being the butt of other people's jokes.

Sounds bad eh? It wasn't until I went to college that I discovered what kind of person I really was.

Now, 38 years later, I'm a professional animator. I make tons of money. I have great and loyal friends. I love life more now than I ever did growing up ( and I liked being a kid )

To you young people, for whom it feel like nothing will ever get better. Trust me. It will.

Remember what Doc Emmet Brown said at the end of Back TO THE FUTURE III."Your future isn't written yet. No ones has. Your future is whatever you make it! So make it a good one"

Some people like Shakespeare. I like Christopher LLoyd :}

"everything will be ok"

>>2507920
http://www.27bslash6.com/sad.html

Get happy.

This may be a silly statement as saying this to a depressed person is like telling a person with a broken leg to "Go walk" to get better. But stick with me for a second. I have been depressed, I know where you are at; looming darkness, unbearable sadness, fear for the future, I could go on but I think you get it.

All the statement above is saying to do is to try. Smile or laugh. Even if all you are doing is forcing a fake smile or a fake laugh, it helps. It is a step in the right direction instead of constant moping or frowning. If you smile, you flex muscles in your face that your brain can use to evaluate mood and thus elevate it. When you laugh, it can spark old memories or jokes you have heard before increase mood.

This is no cure to depression, I understand, but it is a step in the right direction. An elevated mood for today can help you hang out with friends tonight or do an activity you enjoy. Depression isn't gone over night, you have to work towards a happier tomorrow, but the road is filled with joy and a healthy mind and body.

>>2507924

HERDMIND 0.o

Check out the other depression thread one below...

Well, I think it wouldn't be so bad to share a bit of my story. I was in what I now considered to be a really stupid relationship when I was about 14. looking back at it, it wasn't even really friendship. He told me he loved me, blah blah blah... turns out after he met me, he ended up with someone else two months later who actually lived near him and had been cheating on me. The thought of being betrayed so easily, and how he treated me as if I was a little kid who didn't understand... it was pretty heartbreaking. I raged, I cried... after about two weeks my mind was completely numb and dead. I had no idea what to do, and I was seriously contemplating jumping off a bridge (I live next to a highway).

About a month or two later I met up with an old friend who had been one of my best buds since '07. I got really upset at him for something he did to me a while back so I had stopped talking to him, but that's another story. Anyway, we made up, he and I spent many summer nights just talking about things and getting to know a lot more about each other. It was really surprising how well I could talk to him... and well wouldn't you know, he's my boyfriend now. A year and a half going strong. And even though it's painful to not have hugs everyday, being in a non-physical relationship can be pretty amazing.


I think what truly helped me really was friendship, and especially forgiveness. I don't think I would've lasted if I didn't let him back into my heart, even though it took me two years to forgive him. If I didn't have anyone to talk to, I don't know where I would be today.

~~~~

On a different subject, this story is on bullying. Now, I'm a pretty geeky filly but I have my own group of other nerds and geeks, including a few colts too.
When I was in freshman year I got picked on a lot for just being me. I have fluffy curly hair and I would constantly hide behind it a la Fluttershy just because I didn't like being seen. In fact, I was so shy during that first year of high school (and in my case, public school) that I barely talked at all. Not even to teachers, not even at lunch with my new friends. I was completely mute.

Then coming Sophomore year and now, as of tomorrow, ending my Junior year, I came to a realization when I noticed how my friends acted - it's definitely okay to be yourself. I'm loud and fun now, just like I am at home or hanging out with my best buds. I'm not completely obnoxious but I'm definitely not Eris-shy anymore. Of course, everypony knows there's always gonna be parasprites out there no matter how confident you act. But I found that if you just stand up for yourself they have NO idea how to act. It's like paraspriting with kindness. 'Yeah? So what if I look like a dork? At least I have friends.'

> tl;dr? The pic's related, it's pretty much the difference between my first year and now. Let your loved ones into your heart, talk shit out, and you can go no wrong unless everyone you know is a parasprite.

>>2507926
Good for you. long-lasting and meaningful relationships can only come out of mutual friendship. I don't think anything else can ever be a good substitute. :)

>>2507926

This is probably going to sound really creepy but I think I know you, seriously your name and story all correlates to someone I know!

Either way it's good to hear you are doing better!

I grew up the eldest child in a divorced family that ceased to be whole when I was seven years old. Since I am the eldest and experienced and remember more than my two younger sisters, this has affected my life profoundly.

Firstly, Until I was fourteen, I had no contact with my father's family. My mother despised her mother-in-law (a dear grandparent I recently lost this month) but she despised her for good reason: my grandmother despised her first because my father's family is Catholic and my mother and her family are either atheist or protestant (try to figure that one out).

At first, I was able to visit with my father on Wednesdays and weekends. But then, because of what I now understand was his way of coping with a divorce he never wanted and throwing himself into his work, he graduated from college and moved out-of-state. From then on, I only saw him once-a-month, twice if I was lucky. He was always there for holidays and my birthday though. So the way I coped with this was to accept that unlike some fathers, he really did love me and my sisters enough to actively try to take a part in our lives. It was just that the divorce had been so painful for him and destroyed his Catholic faith and his work was the only thing of stability he could cling to.

Since the divorce, my mother has married two men who turned out to be completely worthless husbands and stepfathers. She turned to drugs and alcohol. And then she was diagnosed bi-polar and was too deep n drug culture and alcohol to seek proper treatment. Today, (although most people would say it is mostly harmless and I agree to a point: it is currently illegal and can land you in deep trouble with the law even if you are a non-violent offender) she is still using marijauna heavily and she and her boyfriend of twelve years (who had a lot of anger issues at first but eventually turned out to be a decent guy) are still mild alcoholics. They still sometimes ask me to join them in their self-destruction, but I have seen the carnage drugs and alcohol have wreaked in people's lives and I still politely refuse. Thankfully, they are , at their heart, decent people and respect my decision to be completely clean. My mother has since sought professional help from a very famous and respected psychatrist who has helped her with medical treatment for her bi-polar and I have had the luck of also being referred to this man, who performed a miracle on me with his treatment and dosage and I am now in complete control of my life and emotions. I cope with my mother's less-than-ideal choices by trying to remember that she loves me, that I also am bi-polar and so I understand that rollercoaster that can happen if you do not get treated, that she took care of my sisters and I and was active in our lives for the most part, while truthfully, my father could not and is still not there for us emotionally. It also helps that she had a child with her second husband, my half-brother, who is my very best friend next to my wife.

As to the Bi-polar part, or really any mental illness any Bronies may have, I was in denial that I needed professional help for many years and messed up my life very badly for at least twelve years. It may even be longer than that, since looking back I showed signs of being a bi-polar child, a side-effect of already being susceptible to the disorder with my mother being full-blown bi-polar and also the stress of my broken family and being an outsider at school.

Today, I am a happily married man of thirty with a home I own outright with no mortgage, a wife who loves me, and I am working on a business degree so that I may start my own business in a few years. It is only because my life has become stabilized through my own efforts to get treatment that these accomplishments were possible. I am following in the footsteps of my father, which has brought us closer than we have ever been after so many years of struggle to understand each other and his tendency to love my sisters and me in a somewhat cold manner due to his upbringing and becoming a workaholic.

I guess the main point of my abridged life story here (I've left out a lot that is not very relevant but still grossly affected me), is that I grew up in a broken home with a mentally ill mother, was a pariah in my class until the last two years of high school and unlucky in love until my adulthood, had a workaholic and distant father (both emotionally and physically; he has always lived far away from me throughout my life), I had difficulties in school and socialization, and a very long and difficult process of becoming a real responsible adult and a productive member of society. It was never easy, and I will not sugarcoat it at all when I say that life is and never will be easy for anyone. What matters is what you do with your own life, how you react to the punches life throws at you and the hugs it gives you in-between. Your life is so very, very precious because you are the only one of you that will ever be in the entire history of the universe. If you are having difficulties adjusting to the pains of life, perhaps made more complicated by mental illness, I highly suggest seeking professional help because it will change your life and it is never weak to ask others for help who can offer it. In fact, admitting to yourself and others that you need help, that you aren't as perfect, independent, self-reliant, or well-adjusted as you thought, is one of the bravest and hardest things to do.

But this is another piece of advice I want to give. Do not rush into love or marriage. Wait until you find that person who loves you exactly for who you are, even with all of your terrible faults and flaws. This kind of mate can be hard to find, but you will eventually find them or they will eventually find you. For me it was the former, and I am very thankful to have a warm, loving, and understanding wife who stuck by me loyally even when I was destroying our life with debt and chronic unemployment because of my disorder. Wait until you find that special person and then never let them go. Give them unconditional loyalty and never stray and if you have made the right choice, your mate will reciprocate. Perhaps I have been lucky by finding someone who so perfectly compliments me, but I am an optimist in the belief that there is someone out there meant for you just as you are meant for them and they are worth searching for, living for, and fighting for.

I'm sorry if this was overlong and TLDR but I want to stress that being true to yourself, being responsible, ethical, trustworthy, steadfast, and humble enough to ask others for help when you really need it will give you more happiness and true wealth in your life than money, a fast car, a nice house, or fame will ever give to you. Like one poster above me said, we carve out our own lives and our own paths and sometimes, even if you feel like the path of your life is leading you through a swamp with thorny weeds, buzzing and biting insects, and sucking you down into the sticky mire, you ALWAYS control your own destiny and the choices you make will determine whether that swamp swallows you or if you find the inner drive and energy to pull yourself out and blaze a new trail towards that distant fragrant and sunny field where a real life can be built.

A solid foundation for a house cannot be built in a swamp after all and the sun cannot reach you there. But when you find that field by making the right choices at the right times, carving your own personal path through the weeds and fallen trees that life puts in your way, and taking charge of your life by refusing to let others dictate who you are and who you should be and refusing to make excuses for where you are because of choices in your past, you will find freedom and peace of mind in that happy field and you will never want to leave it ever again. It will be the place you can finally rebuild your life and meet others who have found that field. And you will meet others who will become your best friends and loved ones, because once you find the field, you will never be alone to weather life's problems again. You will be around positive people who found the field like you did: in their own way, in their own time, making the right choices, having an open heart and an open mind with scarce cynicism, and never apologizing for who they are as individuals. And then, when these people are your friends and loved ones and you have built your house in that fragrant, sunny field (trust me on this even if you have no religious beliefs at all) you really will find Heaven on Earth. And that is worth any pain and suffering you may have to endure on the journey to get there.

>>2507931
Not arrogant at all. But cynical, yes. And it's totally understandable, based on where you're coming from. I suffer from depression too, brony. I welcome you to the herd, I hope you enjoy it here. Don't let yourself get too obsessed, though. Part of depression is trying to find escapes, instead of solutions. /b/ is definitely the wrong place to find happiness, so I'm glad you've abandoned it. As funny as those /b/tards can be at times, the bad stuff makes it far too bitter of a lemonade... Of course, that never keeps me away from /k/. Gotta love those guys. XD

You're in my prayers man, Lord knows how hard depression is to live with. Don't stop fighting it! Find purpose and happiness in every day, even in the smallest things, and know that there are people in this often crazy world who care about you.

And again,
Welcome to the herd. XD

I've always had problems with anger. It's led to me attacking family members, attacking students at school, destroying things. Other than that, I was a relatively well-adjusted pony until 2007, when I began sixth form. I got really depressed. There was no external cause to it, and sometimes I just wanted to die. This also led to my anger getting worse, cumulating in an incident where I tried to intercept a leaving school bus by attempting to steal a teacher's motor scooter.

I've been on medication since April Fools Day 2008, and while it has helped wonders with the depression, my anger episodes still remain. I also have Aspergers and OCD, which while not bad in themselves, lead to social anxiety which can cause anger, say when I miss a bus. Depressive episodes very occasionally come back, like they did around Christmas last year when I was working on coursework. I tried to tell myself not to get anxious and obsessive about the coursework this time around, and my marks improved.

As regards cutting and suicide, I've attempted it. I have never wanted to cut myself, but have succeeded in making minor cuts when I am too upset. I've threatened to stab myself in the chest and hang myself. Someday I fear that I'll be so upset that I can't stop myself from succeeding in taking my own life.

I'm 20 years old. I have survived depression and am now studying for a degree at university. I got excellent marks in my A levels and I hope my story can help you all.

And another word of wisdom- if you're depressed, find something you can immerse yourself into. It could be a website, writing or drawing. Don't let depression get on top of you- always divert yourself from it.

>>2507931 *sigh*
Samepony here. First off, I'd like to apologize for sob story: the horrendously abridged version. Coming from my position, it's really difficult to be honest about myself without fear of being judged; I think a lot of you know how that is. I feel like if I'm going to get anything out of this community, I need to be just as open as what I expect. I've also never opened up completely to anyone before, ever, so this is sort of new to me. 4 primary things you all should know about me:

- I'm manic-depressive, and subject to the kind of mood swings that make Pinkie Pie look perfectly sane and normal
- I don't trust people easily, as much as I want to (which should be obvious)
- I'm a hypocrite, and I'm more counter-intuitive to my own causes than anyone else, and
- Psychological dissection has become a habit for me, and a lot of the things I say will come with an explanation on why I do it.

I'm one of those nice-family types that never really had to go through any family issues. Which I am grateful for. All my issues come from my social experiences, and my Pavlovian style learning from them. I think it started around third grade, when kids are just starting to form opinions and learn swear words. Someone that didn't like me (I never learned who it was) started a vicious rumor that spread like wildfire: that I was gay. Now, I'm not gay, I've never been gay, and I'm perfectly comfortable being straight. So you can imagine what it does to the psyche to have hundreds of people around you telling you otherwise. Somehow, that rumor, among others, followed me throughout school right up to my senior year in high school. There was a point that most people didn't even approach me, and people that had no idea who I was or had nothing against me even thought I was gay, because that was what everyone said. It didn't help that I was the impressionable young lad that wanted to make people laugh, so I made jokes about being gay. I started having to rely on myself because there were only a handful of people I could even trust with my homework, let alone my fragile emotional state, and they all had problems of their own. It was a vicious cycle that turned me more and more inward, until I barely spoke to anyone because it wasn't worth it.

During my junior year, while taking psychology (one out of three classes there that actually held my interest), I had a dream about suicide. The most eye-opening thing about it is that it was a good dream. I was on the roof of a very tall building about to jump, and no one was trying to stop me. No one even looked up. As I fell forward and off, I felt tears of joy coming to my eyes, and laughed before I hit. I woke up in a cold sweat. That dream fascinated me, almost consumed me, and it opened my mind to the concept of suicide. Before then, I'd never even considered it. I've been fighting depression for 7 years now, and a manic state revealed itself halfway through high school. All those years my life was a shell, I was truly apathetic, and didn't consider suicide because I simply didn't care. But at that point, it might have been possible. The only thing holding me back was my fear of the afterlife, which remains my biggest (and only) fear. It also gave me a fierce interest in the subject of psychology and sociology; figuring out why people act the way they act, namely me. I started shrinking myself unendingly on every emotion I had: Why do I feel this way? What made me think this? What could thinking this lead to? I got so good at it that it became a second nature to me, and I second-guessed every emotion I had, including the happy ones. Instead of emotions, I had reasons and explanations. And for a teenager in high school, that's not a fun thing to have.

Jump ahead 2 years to last month, when I had my third real breakdown over anything in my life. This happened when, for the very first time, I contemplated suicide. Actually planned it out. I had just gotten out of the third bad relationship in a row, and I had always told myself relationships are the only thing I'm good for. I never acted on it, because it made me realize how much of a hypocrite I've been. I'm the one in the circle of friends that everyone runs to for advice or help, because I was raised around a more mature crowd than most people. I'd gotten good at it, too, I could solve a lot of my friend's problems with a few kind, wise words. The one thing I found myself preaching most was that suicide was never the answer, along with the countless reasons why. And then there I was, figuring out just exactly how I could make it all look like a terrible accident. I'm a 20 year old male, and I cried for a good 2 hours, and then sat there, numb, for the rest of the night. I couldn't even sleep. The next day, dead tired but alive, I accepted that I was a liar and a hypocrite, and that it needed to change. But, being the self-psychologist I was, I took that apart, too, and so for a week or two I was a machine. I had no reason for doing anything I did, I had no energy, and I sat perfectly still for hours just because there was nothing worth doing. Once again I'd found myself waiting around for death to come. And once again, I found there was a need to change. I couldn't live like that and not hate myself.

I started throwing myself in every social gathering I could, which, granted wasn't much, but most notably the pony community. As silly as it sounds, this innocent, pure and diabeetus-sweet little show pulled me out of my rut. I found that the fanbase is a collection of all the people who are sick of the exact same things that I am that makes the internet hate-worthy, and that most of the people I met ACTUALLY CARED whether I lived or died. It's a new thing for me, and I like it. So, while I can be a little crude sometimes, it's a product of having to form a thick skin to pretty much everything, and I'm usually very conscious of it so I avoid it where I can. I love helping people, and if my advice isn't too preachy coming from the guy who usually needs to listen to his own lessons, I'll help anyone however I can.

>mo aghaidh nuair I realized I wasn't being completely honest to the people I've come to love so much

P.S.- >>2507932
I know a little too well what addiction and escapism can cause. Thanks for the prayers, though, I'll keep fighting the good fight. :P

P.P.S.-
I think I'll start reading the Bible...

>>2507934

I appreciate your transparency, brony. I've learned through trying to hold things in that they tend to do more harm than good.

<PREPARE FOR A WALL OF TEXT>

I had a similar experience to yours my junior year, when some in-real-life /b/tard parasprited to the point of stealing my identity and forging images of me sending him facebook messages. The forged messages contained words of a homosexual confessing love towards him, along with his flattered but rejecting reaction. His jerk friends, people that I thought were my buddies, rebounded off of him, posting comments like "DUDE, THAT KID IS SO GAY HE HIT ON ME TOO" and other egging comments to make it seem legitimate. And so the rumors began to spread that I was gay and had hit on this kid through facebook.

However, he later admitted that he had forged it right in the comments section, which was incredibly unwise of him, because my parents had discovered what was going on and had put the lawyer on him. Every single person who was participating in my harassment received a cease-and-desist letter, which I helped write, and my parents demanded that the school become involved, as the bullying and rumors had been spreading through this kid’s mouth to other students. Apparently, he was just straight approaching people who had seen me, but didn't know me, and proceeded to trash me.

The kid ended up expelled for the rest of the year, lost all his credits he had made for his first semester of Junior year, and the law nailed him for identity theft because he had used my name and picture to libel and slander me, and admitted it right on Facebook. He ended up with, among other punishments, probation on the net and ninety hours of community service.

So, perhaps this was a happier ending than the example you gave, but the psychological impacts during this entire hit me hard. The class that I already had difficulty in, Algebra II, ended up turning into a landslide, and my grade went from a teetering 'B' to an 'F' within a week of not being able to figure out and concentrate on assignments. I ended up having to get a tutor and even then, only got a high 'C' in the class.

I lost a lot of people that I thought were my friends too. But ultimately, this was for the good. I realized who my friends were. I fell into such a deeply depressed state that I had to start seeing a counselor and taking meds to improve my mood.

Basically, what I’m trying to say is: don’t feel alone. Because you’re not. You’re in good company. Part of what has dragged me out of my own rut was faith. When the whole bullying thing happened, my parents encouraged me to start attending my Church’s youth service. Reluctantly, I went, but soon found out what a beautiful place it was. People genuinely cared for me, and the youth pastor actually sat down and talked to me, since he noticed I was new there. I was a Christian already at the time, but definitely a distant one. By being around other Christian kids, it allowed me to become secure and confident, not only in myself, but in my faith. I learned that there were kids who were having similar problems to mine, and we were able to be transparent with, and pray, for one another.

If you feel God is calling you to His word, I say go for it! Get involved in a Church, talk to a pastor, and become immersed. Grab tight onto Jesus’ robes and don’t let go. Even when your knees get scraped and your arms get tired. In the end, it’s worth more than anything else you could hope to obtain in this world.

God bless, and stay strong! *brony-hug*

>>2507935
The justice, it's... poetic.

I might try a few new churches. I hesitate because I've tried that before, and didn't like it. Speaking frankly, I got a bad vibe from the people I met, and not the faith they practiced. You're right in that I need more social interaction, though, if only I knew more people like this site's regulars, it'd be a lot easier. Being a northern boy living in the south US, there's not a whole lot I have in common with the people around me. Even my family and I have started to drift a little. Friendly as I try to be, I just can't get into NASCAR.

Hope this helps. I loved learning growing up until 7th grade or so. Then the bullying started and I got a psychotic, abusive, alcoholic stepmother. I was a chronically-depressed, apathetic, borderline suicidal wreck for all of highschool. Then, I saw Carl Sagan's Cosmos and read Marcus Aurelius' Meditations. My passion for life and learning was instantly rekindled. Also recommended: the writings of Douglas Hofstadter and the Loom of God by Pickover.

>>2507936
Bad vibes? Like, judgmental looks or just the things they said?

From my personal experience, that's the way I felt at first in my youth group: like everyone looked at me as if I were an alien. But after getting more comfortable, I realized that people observing something new is normal, and a lot of the anxiety I had was just self-created. It wasn't just about the people there giving me a chance to belong: it was about me giving myself a chance. And fighting yourself can be the hardest thing ever, I know.

>>2507938
The last thing I want to do here is start a religious debate, so we should continue this privately, if at all. I'll say, though, that it had to do with their attitude. The Bible Belt is home of ignorance, social unfairness, and closed-mindedness, and the Christian faithfuls here are no exception. I refuse to accept the fact that someone who observes any God other than Him is going to eternal Hell, and that's that. And most people here refuse to accept anything else. It's like they let their own faith blind them, and I can't stand it.

>>2507939
What's your email so we can chat about it on Facebook or something?

It's in my name: shajhirah@gmail.com. I can give you my other services from there, don't like posting my aliases online. :P

>>2507941
Cool. I'm gonna go catch a movie with some friends, I'll talk to you later, brony.

I'd like to share an experience about losing a deep and meaningful friendship. This is not my only story, but one that's still a little tough to write about.
____________________________________________

For nearly 20 years, I was best friends with "Joe". From late-grammar school, through middle school, and well past high school, we were always together. Especially during high school. We were "those two guys". The ones who were always hanging out together. We lived close enough to be neighbors. I was part of his family, and he was part of mine. I loved him and his family as if they were my own, and mine to him. We helped each other through good times, and bad. I was there with him the very moment we found his mother, dead in the bathtub (we were only 16). I didn't realize how much it affected him until many years later.

Even until well after we graduated high school, we spent a lot of time together, and had some fun times, and some awkward times, and a road trip to Canada...

A few years ago, "Joe" became a very angry person. His father sold their house, they moved to a place that was over an hour drive away. It didn't help that he was so far from friends. I would visit him once or twice a month, and he would come back to visit a little more often (as he still worked in the area). But then I started noticing, and then tried to get him to understand: he was changing. His anger got more pronounced. There were times when he was still a lot of fun to be around, but this just meant that his mood was completely unpredictable.

"Joe" was eventually diagnosed as bi-polar, and given medication. When he actually took it regularly, it was an improvement from who he had become. Unfortunately, he decided to not take his medication regularly, and whenever he did that, his depressive state would kick into overdrive. The last few times that I visited him were kind of awkward, mostly because he was just so negative and angry about everything--all the time.
And nothing I did or said seemed to have any effect.

I started visiting him less and less often, partly from being uncomfortable and not knowing how to handle such a drastic change in my *best friend*, partly because I had more responsibilities: building my own life, on my own.

After not speaking for a while, "Joe" sent me a very nasty and hurtful e-mail. He wrote things in that message that he knew were hurtful. Not just about me! He included specific insults for only a few of us. Friends who I know that he used to care about. All our mutual friends. I told him that I would always be there for him, apologized for not visiting as often and for not being able to deal with how he had changed.

The response was just as hate-filled and bitter as the first message. I decided that if he wanted to cut me (and others) out of his life, then I will respect his wishes, even if it made me upset. The last thing I told him was that if he ever wanted to work it out, to let me know.

That was 4 years ago.

It really is special, knowing someone so well, but sometimes, you have to let it go. Every thing must come to an end, must die. Even friendship. And that's not such a bad thing sometimes, really.

A friendship can die, remember that. My father once told me to think of relationships (romantic, or otherwise) as creating an emotional child. Your feelings and emotions mesh with someone else's feelings and emotions, and it's now this new thing. Long before 'Friendship is Magic', I knew that friendship really is magic.

I know this isnt really that bad, but this really put me into some emotional stress and I want to offer advice.

In 2009, I dated a girl named Emily. She was like the perfect girl, and we liked each other alot. After sharing alot of moments, she cheated on me. I forgave her when she broke up with him, and we continued to date.

She got really upset every time I found her cheating on me (it happened 6 times in total), and I was stupid enough to forgive her each time it happened. It was my best relationship ive ever been in, but also the worst. I want to say: If a girl cheats on you, do not go back out with her. Please, I dont want ANYONE doing what I did. To this very day, I go to sleep with a frown because of what she did to me.

Anyways, thats my stupid story.

If you ponies wanna support my thread i'd be much much happy

http://www.ponychan.net/chan/oat/res/35908219.html

>>2507943
Thanks for sharing, I almost went through a similar experience. My best friend from high school (more or less my ONLY friend from high school) nearly killed me last summer because we were fighting over something. Now he lives in Chicago, and I'm still in Georgia. It's a hard thing to go through, and I'm sorry you had to go through it.

>>2507944
Hey, the only stupid stories are the ones that aren't told. :P
More seriously, it is commendable, what you did. Simply having that capacity for forgiveness is a gift that not very many people share. That said, I will agree with you, that you should never date someone that betrayed your trust more than once.

>>2507946
You're welcome. Nice to know that someone can relate.
_________________________________________

I wanted people to know that even though losing a close friendship is sad and painful, it's OK to let it go. Don't beat yourself up about it.

For a long time afterwards, I thought: "Did I really abandon him? If I had visited him more often, would things have turned out differently? Maybe if I tried harder to be a better friend, he wouldn't have snapped..."

Then I realized: You can only extend your hand and have it pushed away so many times before coming to an acceptance of the truth of the situation. I know (now) that I tried my best, considering the circumstances. I came to understand my limitations; what I could and could not handle.

I can only hope that someone going through a similar circumstance reads my story, and realizes that they are not the only one who has experienced this kind of loss, and that it will be OK.

I have another mutual friend who I've known for just as long, and I am very close with him right now (he was also on the recieving end of some of the nasty comments). We were always close, yet now I would go so far as to say he has become my best friend--like a brother.

One door closes, and another opens; one chapter ends, another begins. Please, don't fear change, even if it hurts.

I guess this would be the perfect thread for me... I'd like to start with how happy I am now. I have been very happy for a few months, I think. I'm not really good with measuring time. But there was one point in my life, I guess not even a year ago when I was really alone and depressed... I can't explain why really. Maybe it was many things. Fear for the future, like what I would do after graduating high school. I was afraid, sometimes I still am afraid that I won't be good enough. That I'll mess up, and just... I guess sometimes it would make me avoid trying, especially back then. And there was so much more to it. I was just, so afraid to live, but also afraid to die. I could go further into it, but I won't... Just- I was in a pretty bad place mentally. The only time I really felt good was around friends, but even then it was just scratching the surface. I was just distracting myself from what was bothering me. I didn't- no. i couldn't tell them. I just... i don't know why. I didn't want them to worry I guess. I just put up a shield- a mask really, to hide what was inside. A cheerful smile was my disguise, and it was so easy to sell. Sometimes, it even fooled me. And I felt so vulnerable, like if someone knew how I really felt it could only make me more vulnerable. I didn't even tell my best friend, my BEST friend since 3'rd grade until rather recently. And I didn't even go this deep into it. I don't know if I ever will.

I can't say for sure how I got through it... I just sort of drifted on. I don't know how long I was in this depression. A year, two, three. It didn't matter- it felt longer than forever. But, about when I got into college... i dunno, I guess it sort of started fading. I haven't been depressed for a long time now. Actually, I think I partially have MLP FIM to thank for that. The cartoon really cheered me up, and even brought me closer to old and new friends (most of whom I have converted to bronies XD ). The online community has also been very warm and welcoming, which is the only reason I am posting this now. Normally I just lurk or am to shy to really say anything in real life or otherwise.

I feel I may have rambled and trailed off a bit here and there, but it's almost 3 in the morning where I'm from and well, it's a not a feeling I really like to remember (granted it is important for me to, so I know I can beat it again if... Y'know, I ever feel down again). Anyway, thank you Kagamin for making this thread.

>>2507948
I know just exactly, exactly how you feel. I was depressed all the way through high school and maybe 2 of my closest friends even knew it. I didn't have many friends and I justified not making new ones by telling myself they weren't worth it. And since I had no one to talk to, I convinced myself that talking about my problems didn't really help me. This (>>2507934, also me) was the first time I was ever able to open up about myself to anyone. I went through some of the same things; the emptiness, the hiding, the feeling of missing out on something even though I was afraid to change it. Even the fear of death keeping me from taking my own life.

I'm glad these ponies have had a similar effect on someone else, and having this community is actually helping people. I hope you stick around!

Okay so... I'm teenaged. I haven't been happy completely after what happend maybe 5 weeks ago. Here's the whole story:
One day, somehow, I just felt bad. I didn't know why; I had no reason to be sad. All my family members tried to help, but I still couldn't feel complete happines, 'cause I thought what was the reason why I was sad. I dunno what to do. I pray nearly every day, but nothing happens. Please help me. Please.

>>2507950
>One day, somehow, I just felt bad. I didn't know why; I had no reason to be sad.

Welcome to adolescence, bro. This is a really common feeling for teens, and brother, does it ever suck. I remember getting into these deep periodic funks between ages 16-19 or so, and with no true cause. This will mellow out quite a bit as you grow up, though. I'm glad you're self-aware enough to see that there isn't an external reason for you to be particularly unhappy- in that kind of state, it's easy to see any mild setback as a huge disaster. Hopefully, you can find some small comfort in knowing that it's all in your head.

Five weeks is a pretty long depressive period, though. Has there been any variation in mood at all over that period of time? If you've really been in a strongly suppressed mood for that long, consistently, you may want to talk to somebody. I view meds as being an absolute worst-case scenario, though.

Odds are that you're just going through the biologically-induced mindfuck that our bodies see fit to put us through before adulthood. The good news is that this is temporary. It will pass. You WILL be happy again, and you'll look back on this period wondering would could ever make you feel that way.

In the meantime, have a hopeful Fluttershy.

>>2507951

You. Are. A. Wonderful. Person. You don't even know how much that helped. I mean, the strange part is, everypony kept telling me it's just the age and it will all go away, but it didn't help, until somepony who didn't know me IRL told it to me. And well, sometimes I felt happines, but it wasn't... Y'know "complete". But I'm just 13 BTW... But anyway. I'm also telling you this: Before the day I felt that sadness, I thought before I went sleeping: "Why was my friend so rude to me today" and I cried. But then the next day my friend apologized, but I still felt sadness. I didn't know what was it, and I cried. The most stupid part was, that when I again felt happiness, I started to think why I was so sad, and I had no reason and I felt sadness again. I told about my feelings, and my kins thought that I may have a depression. I didn't know how could I just have depression, when I had no reason to be depressed? My sister is has just gotten better from her depression, which started when she was 12 years old. But she had a reason: She had been schoolbullied from kindergarten to middle school. I started to lie that I was happy, even though I felt unhappiness at times. I hated it, because when I sometimes randomly felt happy, knew I would soon feel bad again. Untill I wrote it to ponychan. Your help lightend my mood so much. And I know two other things that will help: Watchin & Buying more ponies.

And also...
*Hugs Fluttershy*

>>2507952

Awww shucks, I'm just a guy with a pony fixation and too much time on his hands. But thanks.

And don't get thrown by my 16-19 statement- that was a rough estimate, and I was extremely late to the puberty party anyway. 13's a totally usual time to have some bizarre brain chemistry.

For now I'm just going to tell you to relax a bit. Don't worry about your mood, and don't live in fear of future mood changes. They may well happen, but it's not going to ruin your life. The teen years are supposed to be chaotic- enjoy the good times and do the best you can with the rest. Also, about not feeling complete...well, 13 year olds are incomplete by design- you're getting too smart for the dumb happiness of childhood, and you're too new to the real world to have come to terms with it. In my opinion, life gets consistently better the older you get. A lot of people get all poetic about youth, but the truth is that growing older means getting a better understanding of yourself, your body, your mind, your emotions...and that EASILY outweighs having to pay the bills.

So don't worry about it. Live, learn, try not to do anything too stupid in the meantime :)

Also, if you have generous parents or a junky vehicle lying around, getting a cheapo used car at sixteen is gonna be awesome. Look forward to that.

>>2507953

Thank you. Really. If it anyhoof would be possible, I'd love to watch ponies with you. And thanks again.

This may not fit the thread, as I just wanted to get some things off of my chest, and maybe get a little advice in the process.

I'll start off by saying that my life isn't terrible, compared to most of the world's lifestyles. I've always had a warm meal, always had a place to sleep, always had the essentials. The rest though, I think, isn't as good as it could be. I'll start off with my dad. He isn't abusive, he doesn't hurt me in any way, but he did something I don't think I can forgive him for. He ignored me, up until the start of my teenage years. Almost completely ignored me. We never played catch, almost never went fishing, never did anything that fathers and sons are supposed to do. He never taught me any lessons that fathers are supposed to teach. I've never felt that connection, that special connection you feel to your parents. It's safe to say that I'm always jealous of the fathers you see in cartoons and video games.
Now, on to my brother. He was my best friend, until he moved out. With me being five years younger, this was all too inevitable. We did all kinds of things together, we played video games, watched TV, the usual brother stuff. Up until he graduated high school, he was willing to do anything with me, but at a certain point, somewhere during 2009, he stopped. This didn't really affect me at first, seeing as I knew he was basically his own person at that point, and was going to move out very soon. Now, though, I realize how much I needed him, but also how he probably doesn't know how much I needed him. We haven't done anything since 2009, even in the times he's come home to visit, he's been too busy doing other things for us to spend any personal time together.
It doesn't help that at one point, I was suicidal, and still haven't really recovered from it. I never pulled the trigger or anything, but it's changed me as a person. At the time, I was questioning my religion, had less than stellar grades in school, and had that general feeling that I'd never be worth anything to anyone. Being as stubborn as I am, I never asked for help, and gave my parents a hard time, which, at one point, caused my mom to say that she didn't care about me anymore. Then the day came where I couldn't take things anymore, I had hit the peak of my depression, and I was ready to end it all. What stopped me was the fact that I was scared of what happened after death.
Now, on to more recent things. I've recently gotten the desire to move out and be on my own, which is normal, I assume. I've been thinking more and more about my life, and my parent's haven't helped much. They don't get the hint that I don't enjoy their humor, and the fact that they seem to enjoy making me upset. They are also heavily religious, and offer advice that doesn't help me at all. They are homophobic, which I also have a problem with. But, because I never really learned how to express my feelings, I can't manage to tell them how I really feel. They also don't seem to like me being a normal human being, expressing normal emotional responses to things, so I have to hide my true feelings from them. It's sad because I'm more of a poser at home than I am around my friends. I also don't really like showing them the things I like, or have done, for no real explainable reason.
Now, onto friends and socializing in general. I've always been a bit shy about meeting new people, as I'm sure most are, but my shyness makes no sense. I've had no tragedy in my life to speak of, I've never been beaten up or betrayed, never met anyone I regret meeting. I'm just overall confused about my lack of social skills, and it doesn't help that I've never really been to any real social events outside of school and family.
If anyone, anyone at all can help me to set things straight, so to speak, can you please reply to this? I'm hoping that I'm not the only one here who has gone through a life like this.

Again, I'm sorry if this doesn't fit the thread, but I've had this on my mind for so long it's started to become unbearable.

>>2507955

I can easily relate to this.
That is, the part about having a normal life with no tragedies, just all very average, except there's shit going on beneath the obvious layer.

Well, shyness doesn't really make much sense in the first place, but we all have it. I guess it just takes practice to get over it. I'm guessing confidence and self-esteem have a lot to do with it aswell.

I guess I know what I'm supposed to do. I should open up more, get deeper connections with friends and talk some things out. Specifically I need to talk to my parents because I have kinda the same problems as you. When I lived at my moms place, I grew extremely annoyed with her and almost never talked to her. I solved that by moving to my dads place, which resulted in me now being extremely annoyed at my dad a lot of the time.

My parents don't take hints either. I think it'd help both of us to get all the shit out of the world, talk it out with the parents.

I'm not exactly sure what I'm saying :|

>>2507955
You fit just fine. I think a lot of people are going through just what you're going through, and you also shouldn't undersell your problems. A lot of people I listen to or see talk about these things like to point out that they 'have an okay lifestyle, I shouldn't really complain', because we have some stigma about people telling us 'you have a lot to be grateful for, you shouldn't complain', et cetera. Emotional needs are just as important as physical needs, and we don't attach that meaning to them because we think about how much it would suck to have to sleep on the ground or not have fresh water. But having that reaction to our own emotional problems only makes them carve themselves deeper because we feel guilty for feeling them at all. /rant

General ranting aside, while I wouldn't exactly blame your parents for all your problems, they're humans, and make just as many mistakes raising you as you do being raised. On top of that, heavily religious, which generally indicates a lack of desire for true understanding, or open-mindedness. Even so, you should try to be honest with them, tell them how they're making you feel. If there's any hope to be had for them, then they'll be glad you said something and try to be more accommodating to you. If not, then at least you know they can't be depended on for your emotional needs, and find a new source for it. Be it a best friend, a trusted teacher/councilor, or even here God help you if this is your last resort, but don't tell anyone I said that. :P, you need someone you can turn to.

I hope things work out for you, and my email's in my name if you need someone to talk to!

I understand that there are people out there a lot worse off then me, seeing as I'm a thirteen year old girl with a sweet little brother, and both loving parents at home.

But right before my family moved into the apartment I type this from, my mom and dad started to fight a lot. I tried to stop it, especially when one of them had been mad at me first, but they always were saying stuff like,

"Oh, this doesn't concern you"

"Why don't you stop being a brat?"

"Go on the computer and leave us be!"

Once, Dad even gave me money to shut me up. And I always said,

"If it affects me, it concerns me."

And then, came what could be the scariest thing that's ever happened to me so far in my life.

It started out with Mom telling us that, yes, we did have to go to the fashion show she'd been talking about all week, and yes, she HAD been talking about it all week, no, we probably weren't listening, and yes, we absolutely HAD to go.

One of mom's friends gave us a ride to a Safeway by our house, and while me and my brother waited in the car, the guy riding with us (Probably going to the mystery fashion show also) bought us each a large hot chocolate from the nearby Starbucks.


Then, quieted by our chocolatey treat, we followed a lady in a blue car for a while, and stopped in front of group of buildings. I don't remember where, but that's probably a good thing.

The lady from the blue car got out, and Mom did too. me and my brother followed her, and she got a stuffed-full duffle bag out of the car. At this point, I was worried.

My mom's friends drove away, leaving me, my brother, my mom and some strange lady I'd never met standing on the sidewalk.

The lady told us to come with her, and my first though was "Is Mom giving us up for adoption?" At that point, I crumpled into a ball on the sidewalk and started crying, stuffing my glasses into my thick winter jacket's pocket.

I no longer cared about my hot chocolate, just getting home. Later, I found out were were in a place for women and children who were suffering from domestic abuse to go.

After we came home from the shelter, things were slightly different around the house. I didn't have to lie awake at night and listen to my parents scream at each other, and nobody really bothered me.

Just a story with a happy ending to cheer everyone up, and let you know that the world isn't all bad, though it has it's ups and downs!

Also, if your parents fight, it's okay, most of the time it works out, despite all the divorce stories you hear on the internet! The only reason you hear about all of those, is because they don't happen very often!!

>>2507958
I always scrolled right past this thread, but I had to read this. I feel sorry for you. Like, a genuine sorry.

>>2507955
Read through this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avoidant_personality_disorder

Sound familiar? It certainly sounded really familiar to me when I read it. I thought I was reading my life's description there.

Remember, all of us were once young and struggling with the process of growing up. I overcame this. How? Here you go: >>2507834

>>2507960
Are...are you me?

>>2507961
Oh? In what way?

I did not realize Queen made this song, but it seems pretty relevant:

http://youtu.be/EToJ4lRq0xk

Thanks for the advice, guys. To be honest, though, I had already thought of telling my mom and dad to take their jokes and shove them. Not much I can do about the other things, I guess.

I wish I had some better advice to give but as someone dealing with depression and now having lost my job I'm pretty much coping with it one day at a time.

What advice I can give is, find things you can enjoy. That's a tough one for many people with depression like mine. Hard to really enjoy anything. But, I do enjoy ponies. The show puts a smile on my face for awhile after each episode.

Talk it out even if you're talking to no one, like though an anonymous online journal. It kinda helps. I had a LJ for years and would often write down what I was feeling. Hitting post felt like it meant someone, somewhere read what I posted. Poor man's therapy, I guess.

Always try to keep in mind that being alive and experiencing anything at all, even pain and suffering, is better than the alternative.

Just take things a day or an hour or a moment at a time. And, if you bring your problem up in a place like here, ignore the haters. They aren't feeling so good themselves and they just want to feel better by seeing others feel worse.

Losing my dad was one of the hardest things for me. Initially, I didn't really feel anything. I kept thinking, "Why am I not wracked in grief? Am I a horrible person?" when really, it was just shock.

It hit me a few months later, really badly. I shrunk in on myself and stopped going outside so much. I delved into the internet more. Nothing really helped besides finding things I liked to do, any doing them.

There isn't really any sort of magical way to get out of a loss like that unharmed. I learned from it, and managed to get through it all by finding things I could find solstice in and doing them. It was just a matter of taking it day by day and trying to keep my spirits up, because I knew I'd make it through eventually, even if it wasn't at that very moment.

I've had a relatively easy life by comparison, but I offer my most heartfelt best wishes to everyone.

I am now visiting my father in my other home land, and I have to spend all summer here. I don't know anyone here and I didn't have anything to do here the past years. So I left the place where I have some friends with hopes that this time there will be something. But nothing, for a month already, and almost two more to go. I'm trying to find some fun on the internet now, but I actually am that "lurking too shy/afraid to post guy" OP mentioned.

>>2507801
I'm not sure how you would like to cope with it, but when I'm feeling anti human (usually after work or after the news is on) I sit back smoke a bowl (I don't see weed as being self destructive, it tends to loosen me up) and make a list, pros ands cons about anything, (mac v win, human v Trans. Human, anything to take my mind off of the here and now), and then, with a cleared perspective, look for beauty in the world. I'm not anti human, I'm pro transhuman, so it might not be as easy, but it's something.

Here's the deal...

I'm a paranoid, shy mess. Online and off. I've been the one that everyone's been fake friends with, I finally found a few friends but I'm too shy to hang out with them. I want to change, I NEED to change.

Something happened a while back, I won't go into details, they aren't important. But as a result I feel like I can't trust anyone or that I'm always wrong. I want to be able to speak my mind again! I've come to terms with my gender issues, I'm seeing therapists, just...this issue. I've never told anyone about it.

Thing is, I'm sick of living like this. If I continue to live like this I think I'll end up killing myself off. I've already have had a bunch of suicide attempts in the past, I'm on meds but this isn't enough. I thought that once I came out to my parents my life would get better but it hasn't.

I want my damn confidence back.

TL;DR: Paranoid brony is sick of himself and wants to change before he fucks himself up anymore.

I get scared just by posting my issues, but I know I need some advice from anyone.

i dont know if this will ever help anyone ever, but i'm bipolar. whenever i get into a depression, i just look to the future and know that sometime soon, i'll be back into a mania.
for everyone else: just look forward to happier times. if you cant think of any that you know will happen, make your own happiness. no one can see what tomorow will bring, but you can change the odds of what does. wake up thinking today will be a good day? it most likely will. wake up thinking today will be a bad day, and again, it will.
so basically, just think of the positive side of things.

i may not be the best person to talk to, but i am a very good listener, and i will help as much as i can.
feel free to e-mail me at tomtom3000@hotmail.co.uk
i would give you me facebook, if you'd prefer, but i dont have a link to it at the moment. you can try searching for 'Bob Downer', but there may be more than one so its not much help...
i may not be a psychologist, but i can try. most of the time, just talking about it can help a lot. even if it isnt easy, just try. nothing bad can happen from it. so what, you may have kept it a secret all your life, but it isnt exactly like i can do anything with it, except fix it. everyone here is your friend, no hate here. just feel free, relax. it will be okay.

Allright I suppose it couldn't hurt asking for advice...I feel like my life is empty and I don't even know why. I've never been abused by my parents, have at least three really close friends who have always been there for me, and I get good grades in college....and yet I've never had any sort of romantic relationship, have yet to receive my drivers license at 22, and was emotionally betrayed several times during my sophomore year at a new college. This experience has left me terrified of losing what little I have and I'm terrified of what the future may hold. I try to keep on smiling but it gets a bit harder every day. I feel like I'm in a gilded cage.

>>2507806


Wait a lot of that seems to be paraphrased from Everybody's free (to wear sunscreen) good song and advice though

Hey there everybody, my first real post here, and It's in the advice thread. Make of that what you will.

All of a sudden it just feels like life is leaving me behind. I got poor enough grades in my first year of college that I can't take any more classes until spring. All my friends are going out of town for college this year, and leaving me all alone. Not to mention that just in general no one seems to have time for anyone any more. Everyone seems to be moving on with their lives, well everyone except me that is. I feel like I'm being left behind in the dust. The people who I care for most are leaving me behind, and I'm going to be all alone. Heck even the closest family member other than my dad that I have lives over 600 miles away from me. Heck the distancing seems like its happening already. We used to be as thick as thieves whenever One person was planning something we would all be invited, but now they seem to be planning more and more get-togethers and leaving me off of the list. I don't want to be alone. I also have no idea how to meet new people with similar geeky interests as me in real life especially outside of a college setting. heck I don't even know how to meet people outside of a college setting period let alone the kind of person I'd get along with.I just don't have any idea how to handle all this. I'd appreciate any advice/help but honestly who really cares about the problems of some whiny loser on the internet who is having problems dealing wit his friends moving away (Sorry if the post is a bit disjointed, but.I'm not in the best of moods right now)

I don't know how many military bronies there are, or of those, how many have deployed and seen combat; but I'm going to say here what I say to everyone I know who comes home from the sandbox.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with you. PTSD is NOT a mental disorder. Let me just say that again, for rote purposes; PTSD is not a mental disorder, and having it does not make you crazy. This is important. I've lost count of the number of men I've seen go without help because they thought that admitting they had PTSD meant they were admitting there was something wrong with them. This is not so; in fact, I'm willing to posit the exact opposite, that not showing signs of PTSD means that you are either dangerously disconnected from reality (less likely), or a piss-poor Marine/Soldier/Airman/Seaman (more likely).
PTSD is a normal response to a combat enviroment; when your in country, your body is in overdrive, constantly making fight-or-flight decisions, and in a general state of high adrenalin. When you come home, it's going to take some time to get back to normal levels of alertness, and the transition wont always be pretty; this transition is called PTSD.
That's the physical part of PTSD, but there is also the metal; I'm going to be brief and frank here. GETTING SHOT AT AND SEEING PEOPLE DIE IS GOING TO STRESS YOU THE FUCK OUT. So will seeing dead bodies, or finding out the village you were just in got carpet bombed by mistake, or giving your last MRE to a starving child only to watch her get twenty steps away before it's stolen by an older man. I've experienced all of these things, and they left wounds. Your combat or humanitarian (don't think combat is the only thing that causes PTSD) experiences are going to effect you to, and you will not be able to deal with these things by burying them.
Now that we know what PTSD is (and isn't), let's talk about how to deal with it.
1) Be honest. Lying to yourself and others isn't going to solve anything.
2) Get help. You wouldn't go into a room without your stack, don't fight PTSD without the support of medical professionals and the people who care about you.
3) Utilize your chain of command. As an NCO, it is more than just my job to look after the Marines under my command; it is my duty. The same is true for all NCOs, regardless of branch.
4) Utilize programs. There are so many programs available for servicemen and women, and so few of them are ever used. These programs are free, and include non-profits completely unaffiliated with the DOD. I'll post some links, but the best way to find out about these programs is to remember number three, and utilize your chain of command.

Questions? Comments? Bithces, moans, or complaints?

>>2507979
Fantastic post, sir. I agree completely.

http://www.ptsd.va.gov/public/pages/va-ptsd-treatment-programs.asp
http://www.ptsdsupport.net/va.html
These are links with some helpful information about how to start getting treatment for PTSD. Like I said before, PTSD is not a disease or mental illness; it is simply a rough transitory period that, if you try to ignore it, will cause much bigger problems later on.
The only thing I have left to say on the subject, unless anyone has any questions, is to look out for each other; don't be the one who says after the incident that "he seemed a little different, but I thought it was nothing." If one of your fellow Marines/Soldiers/Airmen/Seamen seems to be having trouble coping, and your not sure he's getting the help he needs, DISCREETLY take that up your chain of command. I know Marines take care of their own, and I'm sure the same can be said of any service, in any country.

>>2507979
>>2507981

sorry for buting into a very important thread but i wanted to give Gunny a special thanks for this. My dad[rip] suffered PTSD for 40 years and died early. Please even if you feel ok now, if you've seen combat, talk it over. For your family's sake and your own.

>>2507979

This is an aside, but even the American Psychological Association, the guys who write the "book of psychiatry," and the Pentagon itself are starting to make preparations to remove the term "PTSD" and replace it with something else. They're starting to see that having the label "Disorder" in "PTSD" stigmatizes the condition and makes people less willing to seek out help to get over their condition.

http://battleland.blogs.time.com/2011/06/05/the-disappearing-disorder-why-ptsd-is-becoming-pts/

As someone who has suffered from mild "Complex Trauma" in the past (not due to military experience, of course), I can only imagine what you people go through. If anyone talks down to you over it, SCREW THEM. Your health and your happiness are what comes first! You did your duty and now you have to heal, and having a condition like this is no different than any other battle wound.

True strength involves knowing when to fight and when to heal. If you never heal, you'll just get weaker over time, until your scars catch up with you. And this might seem a bit cliche, but remember Applejack in Applebuck Season: she kept going and going until she was too worn out to function, but kept going anyways because she didn't want to appear weak or accept any help. She learned in the end that turning to friends and family for support is necessary to not drive yourself right over the edge and get yourself hurt. Always remember that.

To be honest i'm not even sure if i should be posting reading other peoples posts. My problems seem so insignificant in comparison and i will probably get the response to "man up".

I sort of lack self confidence. I mean i'm fat, spotty, not very funny. The archtypical outcast.

For all the time i've been in education i've struggled with friends. In Primary school i was always seen as the fat kid everyone tolerates. I had it where i was invited once to a girls birthday party then told by her the next day that i ruined it all (for turning up). It did wonders for my feelings of worth. I didn't have any friends there and started to associate myself with the year below some of whom at least accepted me. The school itself was very small only 8 children including myself in my year when i left.

Once i reached secondary i thought that things would get better. Boy was i wrong. Two childish suicide attempts later in my first year due to bullying. Finding that i'm even more of an outcast in secondary school. Getting bullied for being overweight and different. I turned to playing my game boy rather than social contact. Thankfully things improved over time. But it was very gradual constantly being on the edge of acceptable school society. Getting bullied in every year i went in. I couldnt even escape it on the bus to or from school. Bullies were there too. I became one of the most hated people in the school but i carried on. Thankfully i made one friend (who sadly has grown apart after turning to drugs) who helped me at least get through school. He was bigger than me in terms of weight but somehow didnt acrue the same amount of bullying i got. Was i doing something wrong i asked myself manys a time.

It was with this friend that my parents decided to dictate to me who i should be friends with. They didnt approve of my friend and tried to keep me away from him. They still try to dominate my life now.

College was combined with secondary school so i was still stuck with my bullies. But for once i was able to expand my friend base only to learn from the few that have kept with me after college that they ridiculed me and hated me behind my back. They only tolerated me so that they could make fun of me. Like the plutz i am i accepted it for the hopes of friendship.

Now i'm in University and i thought i was free from my dominating alcoholic family. I thought i could make new friends. I thought i had but its the same thing. Again i am the outsider of the group and appear to be only good at pissing people off (if im not being paranoid). I can't even go deal with my friends as they live so far away and i'm out of uni. Now i live at home waiting for second year and draw the scorn of my parents. I'm not the smartest person in the world but i dont need it rubbing in my face. I also can't deal with an alcoholic mother who is in denial about it and family divides with everyone jabbing each other in the back.

I've also found out i'm a biological timebomb for insanity, alcoholism, heart disease and general mental health problems with it affecting most of my maternal family.

I only recently came to ponychan but even here i have proven a complete and utter failure. With trying to be funny and failing and drawing scorn.

tl:dr - Forever alone. My life is fucked or i'm a drama queen. Draw your own conclusions people. I don't think i care anymore.

>>2507985

I guess the simple thing is that i've started to resign myself to the idea that i'm a fuckup. I can't do anything right. It draws me some succour. I wouldnt reccomend it to people though.

Life just sucks. No matter how courteous and respectful I am, people treat me like crap. I'm treated like a second class citizen just because I'm different. In order to avoid more cruelty, I've become mostly mute. I don't look anyone in the eye or express myself. Every part of me is blank, right down to my clothing, so people don't find out why I'm different. Yet I'm still a doormat. I'm starting to wonder if treating everyone with kindness is even worth it. Many people I've met did not deserve one iota of respect.

>>2507987
I wouldn't say im the best person to be giving advice at this stage considering i feel godawful.

But the fact of the matter is that people will be people. Sometimes they can be nice but most of the time they are utter gits stuck in their little bubbles of self interest so that they wont give a damn about anyone around them. It happens on the street if you open and hold a door for someone and they dont say thanks. I wouldnt say shutting down and being mute is the best option. Just buck up, chin up and give the world the V. Know that by being different you are awesome! It sets you apart from the rest of the sheep in the world who simply dont understand.

I would put an awesome or motivational picture but dont have one. Sorry mate.

>>2507986
To be frank i don't even expect people to be bothered with me. But i've found that just getting it off my chest to a load of anonymous people makes me feel somewhat better. Its bittersweet having to think back to how much of a failure at life i am and how i will ultimatly fail at university doing a degree that makes it almost impossible for me to get a job with it (History). But i do feel better. I guess talking does help.

I grew up without a father. Between the ages of 1-6 i almost never got to see him, Then my parents split, and my mother won custody, but i still went to school from his house, My father stopped working, and was a drunk, he was never really "there" you know? My grandfather basically took care of me until he died when i was about 13. Thats when my father straitened up, and decided to try and be a dad, But instead of "Playing catch" or "building a fort" It was "You should play football" Or "you can go build a fort."
We still never did anything together.
Now Im 19 years old, and i almost never see my father, mabye, once, twice ever 3-6 months, and its my choice.
And i wish i hadnt made it.
Im saying this, not to say "I coped with it this way." But to say "I wish i hadn't."
Whenever i see him i never feel like im his son. I dont feel like we are family, i feel like im at a friends house for the first time.
My advice, throughout all of this is even if things get bad, dont wait for it to change, be the change.
I wish i could go back and hug him more often, hear him say "I love you" even if its only 1 extra time. I miss the feeling of having "parents" Instead of "a Parent."

Another thing.
Ive been that kid that everyone picks on.
Ive also been the kid that picks on others.
except i was bad with it.
I wouldnt just make fun of some kid to accidentally hurt him self, or had glasses, i made fun of kids for stuff far beyond their control.
Kids with burn scars across their forehead.
The mentally challenged.
Kids with birth defects.
I didnt care until i was at the end of highschool.
And now i feel horrible because of what ive done.
Those kids i made cry.
Some kid even killed himself because of me.
His memory haunts me, and i can barely handle it. But ive tried to make ammends, im a much better person now, and i have ponies to thank for a bit of it. This community is ludicrously amazing, and i cant thank you guys enough.
But try and be that person who stands up for the weak, meek, and tormented because you can always help.
My demons will never leave me, But you don't have to have your own.

guess i'd post my 2 cents.

Even being anon, its hard for me to talk about my problems...they're nothing like some anon's problems that i've seen so i dont usually bother, but i might as well.... I'm 15 and i've been on off with depression, anxiety, and OCD , and i recently started smoking pot to help level me out. The girl i have liked for 2 years shot me down and wont't return any of my calls or texts. And just last week 2 of my closest friends said they hated me and dont want to hang out with me anymore. Ugh.

>>2507985
>>2507986
>>2507991
I CELEBRATE myself;
And what I assume you shall assume;
For every atom belonging to me, as good belongs to you.
I loafe and invite my Soul;
I lean and loafe at my ease, observing a spear of summer grass.

Each and every one of us kicks our own kind of flank.

>>2507992
Thanks mate. Protip: Don't come on here feeling rather depressed. I did that and sort of felt that i was screwing up here until today (after only 2 days using the site). Then i saw this picture and it sort of spoke to me. No idea why. I guess ponies + motivation worked. Don't know if it will do so for others but it helped me.

>>2507993
I remember a version of that image ages ago when it was riddled with a few typos here and there but was still as helpful. Thanks for posting that brony.

So, I have a problem, /arch/.

I have this friend, at least I'd like to call him that, but I don't know if I can. He's a really great guy, never been a jerk to me, even though he's a bit eccentric at times, but so am I. We've been playing D&D and other various RPGs together for a few years, and he's never once given me a reason to hate him.

But I do. I can't explain it. I don't know why, or how, but I really just do not like this person. It'd be nice if I could just ignore him and leave it, but I can't, as he's also friends with a lot of my other friends, and I see him around a lot anyway. I can't confront him about this, because he's done nothing to deserve my scorn, that I'm aware of. I really do my best to be fair with people, and I've also always been a very good judge of character, and if I genuinely dislike someone, there's a reason for it. Here, there simply isn't. But the feeling is still there, nagging at me, and I can't figure out what's causing it.

I don't want to hurt him, but I can't just let these feelings sit and fester. Wat do?

>>2507995
>>guy in D&D group you hate
>>forced to be around him
Are you me?
I have the same problem except I have a at least some reason for my hate of him.

My advice is to try to limit your actual interaction with him. Talk to him only when you need to. And use some way of venting when he becomes too much. Using Ponychan is a good way to vent. Other than that there really isnt much you can do.

>>2507994
No problem. It helped me a bit. Hopefully it will help others.

>>2507996
This is me, venting. I don't like coming to other people with problems I should be able to handle on my own...

>>2507998
>"I am getting angry over nothing"
This is, essentially, what I'm saying right now. It isn't working. As for social awkwardness, I'm the awkward one in the equation. I have no right whatsoever to correct him on his annoying habits. Besides, even if I did start caring, I've got many worse problems than him on my hands.

No, this goes deeper than mild irritation or annoyance. The feeling is closer to real hatred. That his entire personality is just loathsome. But it isn't. I've been trying to figure out what it is about him that simply drives me mad, but I can't pinpoint a thing. All I have to go on is my sixth sense, which is what's confusing me because if it's wrong (and I'm hoping it is), this'll be the first time. Ever.

So, I know that this is likely no where near as bad as anyone else’s story on a scale of suckitude but from what I’ve read and the jist I get is that it’s open and most of the people that post think the same thing about there issues not being so bad in comparison that I do.
Here goes…

When I was young, about four or five, my mother and father seemingly out of nowhere filed for divorce. They split up Momma took us kids and Daddy moved back to Virginia. My mom got custody and we got to see my dad in the summer time for two months. I was torn though. My parents both hated each other and while I went through the whole self blame that is ever present in children of divorced parents, nothing hurt me more than when my parents would insult each other, and tell me how bad each other were and point out everything wrong with them. I ended up having to be two different people. When I was with my mother I’d have to be able to side with her and hate my father, and vis versa when I was with Daddy. Now I love both my parents equally. But essentially after a while there were two Mes running around in my head.

In school I developed a bullying habit. I distinctly remember there being a kid, the irony of which I’ll tell you shortly, that just didn’t fit in, he was pasty white, overweight and had long black shiney hair. So….I started a rumor in my elementary school that he was gay. Maybe I’m not responsible for it solely but I take responsibility for my part in the forming thereof.

I know that bullying is bad, and trust me, not a day goes by I don’t regret it. But yes I was one, and to all of you who have been bullied to the point of suicide attempts, thoughts, or even just depression. On behalf of all those bullies who lack the heart to say it. I am so sorry for everything I’ve done to you. I say ‘I’ because I am them and they are me, or at least what I was. I was just like them. Up until about high school.

When I got into high school the tables turned, I was the one that didn’t fit in, and I was the one that got bullied, made fun of, and just treated badly. I felt so horrible and it made me realize…just how horrible I had made those other people, that one pasty white long haired kid feel. I felt like I was evil, and I wanted to make up for it. To this day I still do, but during my second ninth grade year I met this pasty white kid, I’ll refer to him as Kevin. I met Kevin in biology, he was still the outsider didn’t fit in and was always being picked on for being gay or fat or any other thing you can think of. But this day I saw it, and when I saw the kid punch him I was reminded of all the times I’d done the same, and all the faces of the people who I bullied. (sorta like that moment that’s said to happen just before you die, when you see your whole life flash before your eyes.)

Anyway after class I waited till Kevin left and the other guy followed, and I grabbed the other guy by the shirt and shoved him against the lockers and told him that if I ever saw him mess with Kevin again that I’d personally rearrange his facial cartography. Now to set the scene a bit better, I was six foot 1 in my second year of high school, all of 290 pounds and a lot of guy. So in a nutshell the guy apologized and said it was just a joke, and he was only kidding with Kevin. I let him go and caught up to Kevin and walked to the buses with him, we became friends.

The rest of the time in high school I watched Kevin’s back when I could, I guess it’s because of some subconscious need to make amends for a road of hell through school I paved for him. But I loved this guy, I think more than because of him but because he was my salvation. Him and I still get in arguments we’ve had our ups and downs and the times where we’ve hated each other’s guts but we’re still strong friends.

Heh…I guess I got a little side tracked but anyway, for the sake of your eyes I wont post too much more. I just wanted to get this out…and to all those who are bullied, I promise you, what goes around comes around. Once again I’m so sorry for all that bullies have done to you and caused you to do. It’s not right for us to have taken our anger and frustration out on you.

>>2508000
As someone who was bullied it means alot to me that you wrote that, thanks

now this stickies back on the top!

must stay on top

I'm 16 and my parents divorced when i was 2. i ended up living with my dad, and my mom had to move out. We still talked and everything until my dad starting dating someone. She cut off any contact that i had with my mom, and later friends and family. The only people i ever saw were her (let's just call her Michelle, her son, my dad (who worked two jobs and was never at home), my sister, and our neighbors. Eventually she started to take advantage given the circumstances (she stayed home all day, dad was never home, and her son wouldn't say anything). She started to make up stories about how me and my sister were out of control when dad wasn't home, and somehow convinced him to keep us locked in our rooms, even going so far as to put alarms on our doors and surveillance cameras in our rooms (no i am NOT lying). We were let out three times a day, for meals and to go to the bathroom. (If i had known that this wasn't normal, i would've have taken off the first chance i was given.) Sometime in 2003 or 2004, i can't remember which, Michelle decided to take a trip to Maine (we lived in New York, taking everyone with her except my dad. The entire way there and back was complete hell. She never let me or my sister talk, we had to be completely silent. She took time to yell at us whenever she could, when we walked she pushed and pulled us if we tripped or slowed down. When it came to food, she and her son ate first and literally gave us what they didn't eat. At one point i remember watching her spit in my sister's face. Of course when we got home no one would say anything, out of fear on our part. Her son was a bit older and he wasn't like her, but he would never say anything.
Finally, in 2005, my dad kicked her out of the house. He was sick of her because of what she was doing to us and because she was destroying him financially. He was never home because he couldn't stand to be around her. I honestly never really forgave him for what he put us through.
Thankfully we started getting in touch with our mom again, she had remarried and had another kid, who was 4 years younger than me. (I actually had known for a long time, but it didn't really matter until now.) We started a new life, seeing my mom on weekends while still living with my dad. My dad started dating again in 2006 (shortly after, he admitted to have been cheating on Michelle [still don't know how i feel about that]with several other women)and met a woman named lashawn. They got married in 2008 and still are to this day. Anyway, i was ecstatic to be seeing my mother again. My half-brother was a pest, i couldn't stand being around him, all he did was antagonize, complain, and bother. I always thought that my stepdad was awesome. He was the kind of guy you always wanted to be around, at least until we found out that he was heavily into drugs, and had actually just stopped drinking the year i started seeing my mom again. I still remember my mom screaming in his face because she had found out that he bought Oxycontin from her cousin. They split up. Afterwards, my mom became manipulative. She tried on multiple occasions to create a situation that made it look like me and my sister only wanted to see her because we would be getting something we wanted. This really made me mad, and i stopped seeing her altogether. My mom could never keep a friend. She starts fights with everyone, which is why my dad and stepmom don't talk to her. It eventually dawned on me that the only good people on my mom's side of the family was my aunt and uncle. Of course, mom had to start a fight with my aunt Katy, over facebook. my uncle warned my mom to stop. they stopped talking, until my aunt posted a harmless comment (not even remotely in her direction) that my mom blew up at. My uncle got fed up and threatened to kill her if she ever talked to them again, at which point she threatened to file a restraining order that restricted me and my sister from ever seeing them again. I was fully aware of the situation and knew that he wouldn't do anything, so i decided to never talk to mom again. I still haven't, although she continually tries to get a hold of me, promising me money, blaming my aunt, uncle, and dad for my not wanting to see her, and using things as birthday presents to bribe me into coming to see her.

Honestly, putting all of that behind me has helped me tremendously. I have contemplated suicide several times and have seen psychiatrists about it, but i believe some of it was problems at school (which i won't get into), but looking back into the past and worrying about six years of missed childhood wasn't getting me anywhere. Being me, i refused to get help, i wanted to deal with my emotions myself (which i know is unhealthy, and for those who don't and are having similar problems, get help. Talk to someone with whom you can do so seriously and you know will help however they can) i took feelings out on the internet (a huge mistake. Nobody likes whiny, angsty 13-year-olds). I realized this was stupid idea that would only make things worse, so i started talking to people. Not only did i find life more tolerable, others found me more tolerable. I started making friends, and i became happy. I still have some problems here and there but i'm happy nonetheless.
Thanks for reading, hope I helped.

>>2508007
Do you have a steam account?
I was just wondering...

>puts on Therapist face

...because i happen to be open for new clients.
I have had sucess with cases like this in the past.
Even though i am not licensed or anything, i have helped people with parental abuse before.

So, do you have a way of communication like Steam, Skype ect.?

>>2508008
oh no, it's ok, all that is behind me now, i was just throwing down some advice. the further i get away from all that the better.

>>2508009
Thats cool. i guess talking about it and only 'self-medication' in your case would be best...

...The only reason i decided to become a psychologist in the first place was because of the brother-in-law.
He was the definition of cool. Later to find out, he was also the figurative embodiment of my late father, who died when i was 13. So not only do i look at him like a guiding light or Personal Mesiah, but also like a father.

All that grieving that was assigned to do was supressed and eventually relinquished by his presents. He gave me a road to walk on, and i am very thankful.

Moral: Find the one person you look up to and follow them in their footsteps. They could save you from yourself.

i dont have any big confession to make

i dont have anything to really feel sad about in my life

my problem is that im a promiscuous lover but i dont want to be, i just hate seeing anyone feeling down and depressed and i always feel like if i turn away someone interested in me they'll feel really down, ive only ever broken up with a girl once, the rest of the time it was mutual because i couldnt bear to end it.

to couple this fact i fell in love with the perfect girl, she was beautiful, cute, funny, interesting, she was perfecct for me, but someone drove us apart which sent me spiraling down into a string of women who i didnt love and were there simply for comfort, now, i think im in love with another girl, but ive forgotten what it feels like, but i already have a girlfriend who is borderline suicidal. now i face the most difficult decision ive ever faced...

do i break up withh my current GF and risk her killing herself, or do i stay with her but save her life?

>>2508011

I went through this almost to the letter. The girl I was worried about ended up fine. I got her pointed toward some sources of encouragement, and then split things off. Try to give her tools to cope before you split. I got her reconnected with an old friend, and she was the 'not me' comfort she needed to get through. It seems for her it was a tactic to keep me with her. She even strongly implied that if I left she would be dead the next day, and it made me stay a lot longer than I should have.

I want you to take a hard look at her and the way she acts. Do you think she feels you are pushing her away? Do you think this influences her behavior?

If you do split with her, make it personal, make it clean, and make it respectful. Let her know that you are doing it this way you are because you respect her and want to be straightforward because she deserves clarity.

I still have trouble saying 'no'. It has given me a LOT more trouble than I ever wanted. It takes an experience like this to realize that a small no now will save a lot of grief later. Make your decisions and stick with them. If you don't see any future in a relationship, don't try to stack one up that you know will fall spectacularly.

>>2508012
weve broken up a few times and shes the one thats done it, she always blames herself afterward and egs me to get back with her, i wan to break up with her, but the last time i broke up with someone that wasdnt consensual he had caused me so much grief that i didnt care if he killed himself, does that make me a horrible person?

The relationship I was in ended earlier this evening. Pretty depressed.

First place I go, even before facebook?
Ponychan.

Thanks for the undying support and love!

I am not sure what i can contribute here.

I suppose i was depressed for a while, but not in an average way

I didnt self harm or anything like that, but life just seemed bland.

i was usually thinking something like "i am going to die in the end anyway and all i am going to do is grind through life like i had been going through school, slow and painful."

But recently, i cannot describe it, but i Feel happier, i started socializing more, i performed better and i even plucked up the courage to stand up and sing in front of the entire middle school

Yeah it was that manly

Anyway the thing i learned is that, if life is absolutely horrible, it can only get better.

>>2507979

The number one piece of advice that I can give to anyone with problems is GET HELP. Don't be afraid to speak up for yourself. No matter how bad or hopeless your problems seem, there are people out there who are trained experts in dealing with them. Ask, and help will be given.

I dealt and am dealing with a case of PTSD this summer, and I couldn't have done it without my family, school, friends, doctors, and even classmates helping me. Just be honest about what you're dealing with. We're all human, we've all got problems, and there's no shame in admitting that.

I'm starting to come out of this whole ordeal, and I've never felt so alive as when I realized that my life wasn't over, that the world was still a beautiful place, and that everyone who'd been there for me loved me so much. So let's get out there and love and tolerate the hell out of other people's problems. <3

Thankyou to all those who have contributed to this thread :)
This community really is something isnt it

>>2508017
Yes, it really is.

I live with depression and anxiety. I feel like I'm a failure in life and that no one really loves me. I'm afraid to talk to anyone and even posting on here is terrifying to me. I've been going on this site a lot and have always been afraid to post, I'm always afraid of being rejected so I don't even try most of the time. I don't have any good friends and I get jealous looking at this site, because everyone seems to be a happy community and I feel left out. I've been in a physiatric ward twice in this year. I have no way to cope with this and I have no one to turn to.

I just want to let you know that I will dedicate my life too STOPING things like this from happening. I promise.

My storys probably a lil controversial and is about pedophillia. You have been warned

My storys a bit diffrent to most peoples but not nearly as bad.
When I was about a year younger and had discoved hentai I found out that I was attracted to lolicon and real life kids (animu of children) I hated myself for it evreysingle day of my life and was constantly scared that I would grow up and become a creepy bastard who mentally scars kids and cant properally function in society. After a while of this moping I found a fourm called lolicon r us. After lying about my age to get in I discoverrd there were more like me and I learnt that being sexually attracted to kids does not nessecarily mean you will grow up to be a filthy rapist so long as you use alternatives such as lolicon and simply restrain yourself. I also learnt that most people like me are completely normal and simply need a bit more constraint than the average person. So if anyone thinks they are sexually attracted to kids just remember that you are not a filthy sexual predator and that there ways to sexually satisfy yourself without harming children (lolicon)

And just remember that a pedophile is a perfectly normal guy who just happens to find kids sexy and a child molester is a horrible filthy bastard. Theres a big diffrence

My storys probably a lil controversial and is about pedophillia. You have been warned

My storys a bit diffrent to most peoples but not nearly as bad.
When I was about a year younger and had discoved hentai I found out that I was attracted to lolicon and real life kids (animu of children) I hated myself for it evreysingle day of my life and was constantly scared that I would grow up and become a creepy bastard who mentally scars kids and cant properally function in society. After a while of this moping I found a fourm called lolicon r us. After lying about my age to get in I discoverrd there were more like me and I learnt that being sexually attracted to kids does not nessecarily mean you will grow up to be a filthy rapist so long as you use alternatives such as lolicon and simply restrain yourself. I also learnt that most people like me are completely normal and simply need a bit more constraint than the average person. So if anyone thinks they are sexually attracted to kids just remember that you are not a filthy sexual predator and that there ways to sexually satisfy yourself without harming children (lolicon)

And just remember that a pedophile is a perfectly normal guy who just happens to find kids sexy and a child molester is a horrible filthy bastard. Theres a big diffrence


Oh and just to be totally clear being attracted to kids i out of your control and perfectly fine. Molesting them however is definnately not fine at all

>>2508022

Just know that there is a small difference between a kink or fantasy and an outright fetish or paraphilia. Are you sure you're only attracted to lolicon / underage?

>>2508022

It really annoys me how the media use the word pedophile to mean molester, actually.

>>2508024

>Remembers embarrassing facts thread
>Nedry

Compared to a lot of other people's problems being posted here, this isn't that bad, but I just want to type this out.

I'm 16 and bi. I've always been this way, I've always known that I was this way, and I'm perfectly okay with myself being this way.

The problem is, nobody I know personally knows. I don't want to bring it up with my family; my mom is very homophobic and my dad seems very uncomfortable about the issue.

I don't want to bring it up with my friends; I know that many will be okay with it, but my best friend since the 5th grade has a very strong conviction about how any gay thoughts are the result of the person not being okay with God. I love him like a brother, but I don't think it would be a good idea to tell him.

I also don't want to just go on pretending I'm straight; I do like girls, but 8 years of not telling anyone that you like guys too is... frustrating, to say the least.

I am doing stuff about it though. I open up on the Internet. I have ways of coping with feelings for male crushes that are healthy. Recently, I applied for and was accepted into NCSSM, an 11/12 grade school. It's free, public, it offers a lot of oppurtinty, and, while I will be leaving a lot of things behind to go there (it's residential during the week and most weekends), I know that there is a GSA and a lot of openly LGBT people there.

So, things ARE looking up. I'm happy with my life and where it's going. It's just that, I still at least want to tell my friends and family before I get to the point where I no longer see them like I do. I know that it probably will cause problems, but I don't want to leave without being open about it...

tl;dr: Life is getting better, but I still don't know how to handle a big chunk of it.

>>2508026
Go ahead and tell them, they are you parents and they should love you just the way you are. And with your friends, telling them will decide who your real friends are.

>>2508026
My significant other is bisexual. He didnt tell me until he was 18 and didnt come out until about three months ago and never really told his parents so I understand how you feel. Tell the people who you feel like you can confide in first. Once some people know it becomes easier to tell other people. If you are that afraid then baby steps is the best way. The people who care about you the most will always have your back.

I was....well....a fucking wreak. I had tried suicide over 23 times......some were stoped by fear....other times by blind fucking luck.....(aka, trying to crash my bike into a car head on...but hit a fucking COW.....i mean wtf?) but.......it got better. around the time of my 23rd try i meat my now 2 year girlfried......she....helped me a ton. I'm doing better......i'm not all the way out of the hole that is depression....but she's helping me out..... couldent ask for anything better.......don;t do it.....find something you find passion in, be it love or a hobby.....your hear for a reason...try to find it.....

also....well......school didn;t help.....weither it was messing with me in study hall, to the gym locker rooms, torment never let up.

The funny thing is.....i didn;t beacome the submissive person you'de expect....i became a hard flank. I stoped giveing a shit about what anyone said or thought.....if i was insulted i'd eathier ignore them, or throw back my own....

I guess i just realised....words have no power unless you GIVE them power.......

Me and the wife rescued two kittens from a co-worker of hers. She was going to put them in a shelter (two weeks and they're dead type of place). We were only going to get the one but she was so lonely that we also took in her brother.

We named her Luna.

A couple weeks ago, we noticed blood in the urine. Took her in to a vet, $200 later (I'm unemployed, she's making under poverty level where she works) and we're told it's a bladder infection. Antibiotics, yay! Except, it didn't go away. Took her back, they suggested X-rays.

Usually, stones are smallish white lumps in the bladder, which is in the abdomen. Her bladder is not only in her pelvis for some reason but it is entirely filled with one gigantic stone. The vet doesn't think even trying to get rid of that stone is worth it and where it is, it'd be hard anyway. We'd have to go to the local vet Uni to get all kinds of exploratory work done, all kinds of testing .... $3000.

We can't afford that. So Luna is going to have to go to sleep this Saturday because the vet's a coward to try and money, well, exists. I know it's not suicide or abuse or anything like that but all life deserves a chance. Luna never got hers. I hate that.

So, like many others, I don't have nearly as bad a life as most people here, but in case anyone is in the same boat as me, I thought I might share

My problem is that I hate people knowing me. I spend all the time in my life doing things to fool people. And it isn't just pretending to be someone I'm not, because I won't even let them get to know the fake me. I have to constantly change what I do so people can never really guess my personality.

I do like a girl, I've known for about 8 years now, and the problem is that I can't let her in. I have to constantly keep changing my out attitude to try and hide my true self from her. I don't know if she even knows the real me, and I'm slowly losing touch with the real me till the point where I might soon forget who I am to the point where I won't be able to remember again.

I still need a way to get past most of it, because I do it a lot. My entire life is like some sort of overdrawn improv skit, where I have to continually whoo the audience with yet another twist. That's when I figured it out.

I started acting, and it felt damn good. I never have to be myself, I can always be someone else. It's a way of throwing people off, but they know who I truly am. I am getting better about showing the true me. I still do things I hate or act out of character to confuse people sometimes. And it might even be getting worse, I really can't tell sometimes, but I know that acting has really slowed the process if it is getting worse.

I know I really didn't explain this very well, and most of you will probably disregard it anyway. But that's my story.

>>2508032
Probably the toughest decision I ever made was to be open about my asexuality (I don't feel sexual attraction). Most women have a hard time understanding that while I don't feel sexual attraction, I steel desire physical closeness, and do feel emotional attraction. Combine this with my generally feminine demeanor (when was the last time you heard a Marine admit to that?), and a lot of people confuse me for being either gay or "a woman trapped in a man's body." Third dates are always weird.
Yes, I would like to cuddle; no I do not want to sleep with you, and no, I'm not scared of your candy vag or anything crazy like that. I just don't like sex. I don't know very many men who've been dumped before for "not putting out." I have, and just hearing a man say those words makes me sick, angry, and depressed; in that order.

Okay.
I can't even come close to counting how many times I've searched this thread for a post about eating disorders, but I think it's time that I make the post myself. I don't want anyone to go through anything like this, so I think I need to share what little I've gathered about this from my own experience, even if I'm embarrassed and ashamed about it. If it makes somebody else's life even a little easier, then it's worth it.

In January, I was diagnosed with ED-NOS (Eating Disorder Not-Otherwise-Specified) and I've been struggling since November of last year. I'm not an expert, I'm not recovered and I'm not exactly doing a stellar job at getting better.
Here's my advice.

You cannot do this alone.
If you think that you might have a problem, go to your doctor. Don't fret about 'not being sick enough' - if you can nip it in the bud, PLEASE, nip it in the bud. You don't want to wait until it gets more serious or make yourself sick enough to 'deserve' help.
Do not diagnose yourself. Even if they cannot diagnose you, you still have a problem that needs outside assistance and they can help.
Find a counsellor. If you go to a university, ask for a student counsellor and, during your first meeting, mention your problem. I managed to jump the very long waiting list for appointments because I told them about my relapse into purging regularly, which let them know that I needed immediate support and that it couldn't wait.
If you can, try to get referred to a dietitian. Your GP (doctor) or your counsellor should be able to at least put you on a list. It's important to have somebody who can give you meal plans and get you back into eating regularly, at a normal intake. This is relevant to anybody with binge eating disorder too, since they give a lot of information about your body and how it works and why.

Get backing from your friends and family, if you can. Build a support team.
Try to speak to your parents about it - mention that you don't want anything but their support in trying to recover and that you and your support team (GP, counsellor, dietitian) are handling the finicky bits. You need somebody to talk to and somebody to dispense hugs. Plus, if you begin to retract from your social life and your friends, somebody NEEDS to notice and pull you away from curling into yourself and disappearing. You can't let yourself withdraw.
If you are worried about it interfering with your schoolwork, find a teacher that you trust and let them know that you are struggling with it, but that you are getting help. Then they will understand if something comes up or if you face a problem with it.
Find a friend that can distract you if you are ever tempted to purge or binge or starve.
But, most importantly of all...
If somebody does not react well or is not supportive, cut them out of your recovery. You do not have to sever ties with them, but don't rely on them in your support network. It will be detrimental to your recovery.
For example, my dad's girlfriend immediately told me, when I came out to her about my eating disorder, that I would never EVER recover without prayer and religion. That atheists and people of other religions NEVER recover and that I would suffer from this forever unless I accepted Jesus into my heart, etc.
So I refused to ever speak to her again about it - and it has saved me a lot of grief.

Otherwise, try to keep moving forward. Don't look at thinspo. Try not to be so negative about yourself and be selfish about your recovery. Do what is best for YOU and fuck the rest. There is nothing wrong with taking it slowly or encountering trouble, but be persistent.
DON'T GIVE UP.
I really hope that this is helpful - it's just a little of what I've learned in the last half of a year.

>>2508034
uhh, gunny, I think you replied to the wrong person

>>2508034

I know that feel bro, everytime any of my friends, gay or straight, jokes about how awesome it would be bang -insert party-. I just reply "Uh... I guess so?", which leads to investigation by what I meant by that, which leads to the conclusion that I am mentally ill, as no 'healthy' creature turns down intercourse.

I personally haven't had it all that bad.

I have had my low's. I've had self infliction issues. I had a rather bad relationship with both of my brothers since I was really young.

I was always not liked as a person by my peers. People found me very annoying. I had very few friends, etc...

Though all these things worked themselves out. I am now 17, since I was about 13 I started building a good relationship with my brothers.

I've found who I am, and now am very social, make lots of friends. I feel I've found what I love, and I'm part of a great community! I'm comfortable with who I am.

Now that's just me, but man have I learned a lot from other people. One of my closest friends has gone through absolute hell for the last year.

His mom and dad got a divorce, because his dad attempted to kill him. a year later, he found out that his mom, had been being abused, severely, by his priest at his church. I remember when he use to tell me how much he looked up to his priest. That really ticked me off.

If that wasn't enough, because of that, his mom had a mental breakdown from finally coming to terms with what was happening. He, his brother and sister were put in foster care for 2 months. Luckily, my mom and dad agreed to take him in. In those two months I had never, EVER, dreamed, of the anger, and sadness, and hopelessness a single human being could have.

Since then he's gone through countless failed relationships where he was just crushed. Despite everything, he has pulled through. Personally, I don't know what I would have done, but I know one thing.

Suicide was always a thought in his head, but he knew it wasn't the way. He knew that suicide, was the most selfish route possible. Nothing is more selfish than that.

So I say this. Find a way to cope, find something you love, not escapist, like drugs, or alcohol. It may sound cliche, but please don't lock yourself away. Try to find yourself with people as often as you can.

As it has happened for my friend and me, these problems subside, as long as you have the willpower to push forward. Pain is simply another piece of life we all as human beings can share, and to be honest, one of the only ways we learn. In one form or another, be it failure, physical pain, tedious work. It's there. If everything went right in life, would there be things to reflect on? Would one be able to grow?

So please anyone with problems on this thread, consider this. It doesn't matter if it seems no one understands, if you're still breathing, then you can still live. Unless your sleep and never wake up, or unless you are taken by something cruel and unforgiving, there is something to live for, taking your own life is taking away your chance.

Possibly your only chance.

So before I end this enormously long post I wish to tell a zen story

There was monk who was being chased by a ferocious Tiger. He saw before him a cliff, and his only means of escape were to jump from the cliff, and grasp a vine that hung from the opposing cliff side. As he fell he grasped it, and hung on to it with his life. The tiger stopped, turned, and left. He was left at the mercy of his strength. Then he looked down, only to see tigers beneath him, and the vine was slowly pulling loose. He looked to his left and saw a wild strawberry growing off the cliff side. He reached with one hand and plucked it, he took a bite, and he never realized how sweet a strawberry could taste.

I hope that's not too encoded.

Good luck, I love you all, hugs for everypony.

(BTW my friend I mentioned is now a brony /) (\ and he's been doing much better)

When i read through this thread, a part of me feels happy, because even though it might sound mean, it feels good that I am not the only one that have endured some tough times.

I am 17 yars old atm.
And my life pretty good now, but just 4 years ago, i saw no point in living.

When i was 13, my grandmother was put into prison for (murder by accdeint, i dont know the english name for that crime) . also durin this time, my previous best friend started hanging with some other kids, the cool kids I guess. I still trusted him so I told him about my grandmother, which was a Huge mistake. He started bullying me together with the cool kids, both psychologically and physically. I started to think about sucide but that quickly changed.

I started to think about everything in another way.
I started to feel sorry for the bullies, since the only way they can feel cool, is to be flankholes towards other people. This is, in my opinin, the way to think about bullies. it took about 1 year for me to really think like that, but made sense in a way.

that is my only tip to my fellow bronies out there, that are suffering from some sort of bullying right now. just know that if they bullie you, they are most likely sad inside, have troublesome parents or something like that.


now I know that this most likely wont work always Just don't confront them physically, cause that won't work out for the better, not htat i didn't try since im honestly not very strong.


Hope this helps somepony in some way.

One last thing, never forget about you'r fellow bronies, cause if you can't talk to your parent's about you problem, we will always assist

>>2508037
Are...are you me?

I've gotten crap for my asexuality too. People claim to be tolerant and accepting, but as soon as they find out I'm not interested in sex or even dating, they try to play matchmaker anyway. I'm not assertive enough to tell them to stop.

My grandmother has schizophrenia; my mother has some sort of odd fuck disease and often takes it out on me. She switches from hating me to praising me within a matter of hours. I often feel worthless, I find myself debating suicide for two reasons. I hate everyone or I hate myself, either way, this world was not suited for me. I know I must have some psychological issue I inherited, but I've been too shy to ever ask my dad for therapy.
I mean, ponies are about the only thing that ever make me happy anymore besides my pets or stupid video games. Boy, what one stupid Oblivion NPC glitching out can do. I'm constantly stressed out due to gaining entrance to a new University. I'm an artist ((the image I'm posting is not mine)) , so I draw every day and beat myself up during the process. It normally ends in a stressful break down. It's just kind of funny because my friends call me a hermit because they never contact me, little do they realize I'm hiding in my closet tearing up my skin with my nails. I feel horrible for ever feeling bad, how can I? I don't deserve it. There are other bronies on here suffering more than me, I just feel so weak when I cry. I never tell anyone about my problems. Recently, it's gotten so bad that I've had to call the Suicide Hotline because I have a tiny slimmer of hope.
The people for the American Suicide Hotline are very caring, it was really comforting to hear them talk to me and tell me that they were glad I called; that they were glad about my existence. I've never felt that way before. They check up on me every week with a follow up call, it's been really reassuring and I'm on the road to recovery. I hit rock bottom, I never want anyone to know how weak I am inside, so bottling it up has made it so much worse than it really is. I can't believe what a difference they made in my life though. I hope everyone gets better. <:)

>>2508042
Find somepony on theses boards to constantly talk to.

So I'm not sure whether this is a rant or not, but I need to get it off my chest. Just a whole bunch of things. So if you read it, here's your golden steak.

My living conditions aren't that great. There's bugs everywhere, and no matter how hard me and my family try to clean it up, it never works. We've tried exterminations and bug spray, but to no avail. I know that there are other ponies worse off then me, so I guess I shouldn't complain. I just hate living like this, and at my current age I can't do anything, as my Mom either can't work or makes excuses for not trying to find a job, my brother in mentally retarded and extremely annoying, my sister has two children which I both love dearly but they're simply too much for us to handle on our own.

My brother, as already stated, is about 20-something and mentally retarded, still living with us. He causes a lot of drama due to his mood swings, which I know he can't help, but it is so irritating because all he does it make things worse. When my step dad was living with us, the two would often get into arguments and occasionally physical fights. After this being consistent for seven years or so, he left us about 4 months ago. He's still legally married to my mother, but it really doesn't count that much anyways. This causes my mother to get upset even more, and you really have to be careful about what you say or do around her, as she is not very open-minded.

This makes her contemplate depression due to her wreck of a marriage life, and I can't really help. As much as I should feel compassion for her due to this, I don't. I wish she would stop complaining and try to find a job, despite the difficulty, instead of making excuses about her health and living by government checks and food stamps, which we constantly have to fight for to keep. I wish there was something I could do to help at this age, but I'm not quite old enough to get a job just yet. (15, almost 16) Basically, everything got messed up by paraspites. And there's my relationship life, but that's not required to live, so I won't complain about it here, unless you wish to probe further.

Ponies, music, and video games are my only form of escape, but in the end I have to face reality, I just don't know how to deal with this poor lifestyle or improve it.

Anyways, I'm terribly sorry if I sound attention-horsing in any way, just had to get it off my chest. Thanks for reading.

My life after the University was depressive

When I finish my career I moved out to another city with dreams and hopes of a new beginning and a bright future, but when I arrived and started to search a job *BAM!* World Crisis, recession, no jobs, bad economy and more shit like that.

After 6 months without luck my parents told me that I must return home, "What?! But I'm an adult! I can't go back to my parent's house!" That was my feelings but with few cash and more and more time passing without a job it becomes pretty hard to survive in another city.

So I returned to my hometown and begins to search a job... In everyplace was the same history:
- No experience no job!
- You must be older for this job
- I'm not hiring now
- I can give you a job but you will work for 6 months without pay
- We'll call you... Don't call us.
- Sorry, no job for industrial engineers here.
- I'll pay you with rocks! (not really, but almost)

After 3 years without a job I was very depressive: 26 years old, no job, no money, living with my parents, all my other classmates with jobs and even with family... "This life sucks!" I tell to myself.

An then after a few days of my anniversary of 3 years without work a friend call me to tell me about a job: Government job, a "good" pay, very demanding, a lot of pressure... I'm in!

>>2508044

I'll tell you man. That's a situation that is a lot harsher to deal with than you give yourself credit for. I'm lucky to have grown up with a family that was extremely hard working and dedicated, to making me and my bros lives as good as they can. Right now my dad is working 3 jobs and my mom 2, just so they can get us through college and hold up good conditions for us. I've have more problems emotionally than, actual physical and lifestyle issues like the ones you're having. Those can hit you harder.

So saying that, I really can't relate fully to you position. However, when I was coping with issues, I remember I would try to tell my mom how I couldn't sleep because of the way I would feel sometimes, or how school really sucked because it was difficult getting around everyday knowing so many people held hatred towards you. At first she almost just blew it off, till eventually she actual realized what I was saying wasn't something she could just ignore for a while and it would go away.

It's really just the way problems works themselves out ya know?
You can't just be passive, and tell yourself you're trying, because until there's some result, bad or good, you probably haven't tried hard enough.

When you're young, (which I still am) your brain just has this way of making everything even worse, no matter how bad things are. So just realize that your mom can pull it together, you just have to give her the strength, because you are her child, and if you are being affected by her actions, and you can really make her understand. I'm sure she'll find a way.

Good luck man, If you got an email and you need to talk, I'm on my comp alot, perhaps to much xD. Send me a message man

"mahoney_matthew@live.com" without the quotes.

Keep trucking along, and Good luck bro.

>>2508044
>>2508045
Man, it really bothers me to hear stories like this. As a teacher, it kills me to see how little help education (even higher education) is in the job market today; as a father, I'm really worried about the kinds of employment opportunities my daughters will have when they grow up; and as a man who has just recently moved from the working class into the "affluent sector," I can tell you I've been there before, but I can't honestly tell you it will get better. In fact, it will probably get much worse before it gets better. Poverty is one of the most miserable things a human can experience, and it changes very little from place to place or decade to decade; modern society has made many of our lives easier, but has had little effect on the bottom of the barrel.
The best advice I can give you is to keep moving forward, no matter what. Taking a short break from the job hunt may not seem like much now, but most of the people I've seen go from unemployed to destitute took "one day off," than two, than three, etc. AvastFluttershy: I don't know where you live, but there may be more opportunities to work at your age than you may think. When I was your age (oh boy, never thought I'd be saying that at the tender age of 36...) I delivered papers, shoveled snow, mowed lawns in my neighborhood, and all manner of odd jobs for whoever was willing to pay for physical or menial labor. If no one near where you live fits that description, find somewhere that they do and start asking if anyone has odd jobs (protip: suburbs are the best place for this, you wouldn't believe the kinds of things 9-5ers will pay a kid your age to do), even if you have to start out doing them for free, people will soon start offering you money.
Chipotle: I'm glad it looks like you found a job. Hope it works out for you.
Both of you might want to read a book called Down and Out in Paris and London by George Orwell. Maybe it just speaks to me because a large portion of it focuses on the trials and tribulations of dishwashers (how I worked my way through college, without touching my GI bill), but it is also about joblessness and general poverty.

i guess it's high time i post here, although my problems may be nothing compared to other's it does feel good to let off some steam
lemme start off by saying that i have a relatively good life.i have a good paying job, a house and that kinda stuff.
However, this is where the problems set in. for instance, my brother is a druggie who constantly bugs me for more cash to feed his addiction. So, i recently decided to let him stay at my place as well as hire a $900 a week rehab session. He seems to appreciate it, which is good.
the bad thing is that he has all the addictions of a hoodlum. beer addiction, gambling, you name it. not one day goes by without him going on a drunken rampage. my stuff constantly gets broken and in some extreme cases he may even hit me.
well, i can't think of anything to end off this post so i'll just say thank you for reading this...

I'm not a big writer, my English vocabulary is limited (my native language is German), but still I want to share my story for those who need it.

For my whole life, I was an outsider. My parents limited me very hard, didn't even allow me to leave the house alone until I was, like, 13 or 14. My parents, or even my whole family, always were outsiders. I had a few friends when I was a kid, but most of them left me because I wasn't "cool enough" and would limit their social interactions.

Over the years this started to burden me. When I was, like, 13, I started to become depressive. First my parents thought I just wanted to annoy them with my strange behavior, but it became worse and worse. Me and my parents found a psychiatrist for me.
My condition still was getting worse, and at some point, I started to become suicidal. I told it my psychiatrist and she sent me, with my agreement and will, to a psychiatry. I had a hard time there. I found friends, in a situation like that you'll always find friends. Everyone there has their problems, and nobody has to be afraid to tell them.
Still, you had to behave to get permission to get out for, like 2 hours. Sometimes, if you didn't behave right (like, hurting yourself or insulting patients) you'd have to stay there for a whole week.
The food was bad, you had to sleep with up to 3 persons in the same room, and you were not allowed to visit the rooms of patients of the opposite sex.
When you were suicidal, like I was, you were observed, they watched you taking a show, going to the toilet, doing anything inside the bathroom.
They gave me antidepressants, but they didn't work. I just noticed the side effects. They lowered my inhibition level, I beat up my friends there. (So no permission to go out for 3 days).

But after 3 months, probably the longest 3 months in my life, on Christmas Eve, I was allowed to get home. A few weeks later I still was in a pretty bad condition. I was scarifying myself with a knife. It was so deep, the wound had to be sewed. (Sorry for that level of detail, but it's part of my story).

But my psychiatrist helped me a lot. And over the time I started to feel better. Now, over 2 years later, I have some friends (one much younger in RL and a few via the internet), and I'm generally pretty happy with my life. I'm still not very social, that's the reason why I'm still going to my psychiatrist. I'm 15 by now, getting 16 in a month. I'll attend my school for further 2 years, and I don't know, if I'll ever be able to communicate with my school mates on an, you know, natural level. Without forcing it.

But I have a life now. I'm not depressive anymore. I still have the assessment for it. Sometimes I start to feel bad (like the last 2 days). But then I start to do thing, for example I made a vector of Twilight Sparkle today. I never did that before, it was exciting.

BUT: I'd never come so far without help. So for all those out there who are chronic depressive, here's my advice: Get help. Look for an Psychiatrist. And if you don't like him or her, don't force it! Get another Psychiatrist! It's really important to have sympathy with your psychiatrist. He won't get you anywhere if you don't trust him and feel (somewhat) good in his or her presence.

I hope I helped anypony with that. I don't like talking about it, it's history to me. A lot of good and bad things happened in that time, but my life is going on. I've got a life, and I'll make the best out of it.

>>2508049

I'm very proud of you to hear of you getting over this. You deserve this Rainbow Dash salute.

Great job!

I'm having a feeling 60% of these stories are either complete or near complete lies..

I was originally the fat kid in school in elementary and 6th grade. I hated myself because no one else seemed to like me I thought even though I had a few friends but we were never close. 7th grade and on I slimmed up but I still thought I was fat. I didn't make myself throw up or anything i just felt sorry for myself. In elementary school I was bullied A LOT and to give you an example; when we would play a sport I was always last and they would even choose kindergardeners before me even though I was in fifth grade. I high school I thought girls only liked me because they thought I was the cute chubby kind of guy. I wasn't until recently when I put on this tight sort of tight t-shirt that I realised I was actually skinny and not only that but muscular. I now have the confidence to use my own face in my profile picture on face book and I think more women may begin to find me attractive. It felt so weird to display my body that way because I didn't think I looked that way. I feel like I have more confidence now and feel much better about myself.


Not sure how much that helped but there you go

>>2508052
I know that feel bro, I'm kinda chubby and have always been a little overweight. It sucks when people bully you because of "shoddy" looks. It's hard because people seem to care more about beauty rather than intelligence, or inner beauty.

But, it sounds like you are doing better now than from when you were younger, keep doing what you're doing, you'll be fine.

My Mother and Father have been divorced for about 15 years, the reason for their divorce is a quagmire of unwarranted complexity and deception. They have been divorced so long that I can hardly have any sort of actual familial relationship with my Mother and Father. Having one bickering family is enough, but having to deal with two is even more intense. I have problems on both sides in which I have to deal with, but it could be worse.

I grew up a little kid with my Mother, although I had a naturally unbreakable love for her, it was hard. She was addicted to drugs, cocaine, heroine, LSD, you name it. I guess that I was lucky that my mother never hurt me while drug induced, which is fortunate. Although, growing up with my mom drugged up, it was hard because I didn't have a proper and caring mother, I was anti-social and didn't have many friends growing up.

When I was about 7, my Father gained joint custody of me, where my mother could only see me once every month. The upside to that is from then on, I guess from an epiphany, she stopped drug use and started caring for me. The downside on the other hand, was my Father's new wife, my step-mother. She was hateful and abusive, bold enough to take a swing even at my father. She loved no one but herself, her house, and her child, a 14 year-old obnoxious bitch who was exactly like her mother. To make matters worse, my step-sister would always try and convince me to "take a step into her closet" which meant that she wanted to hurt me, with brutal beatings and her forcing me to take off my clothes.

My father finally divorced the bitch, and we moved on. After years of self-rehabilitation (I could never bring myself to tell my father or mother what my step-sister had done to me, and they know nothing of it even to this day.) I had finally started to make friends, in retrospect, its a wonder that I didn't become socially unstable and even psycopathic.

I don't want to take up too much space here, so I'll cut to the end.

I now have a father and mother that care for me, my new and current step-mother actually gives a shit about me, my mother has been clean of drugs for years and continues to try and set things straight.

I know that what happened to me may not be the worst, far from it. But, what happened shouldn't happen to any kid. I wish that I grew up in a family where I could see my mother and father each and every day, loving me unconditionally as I loved them, and loving each other.

And, here's the conclusion, if you decided to reach it. Don't ever give up hope now, I could be anti-social, without friends, failing school, and addicted to drugs, but through perserverance and hope, I was able to become what I am today. A straight-A student, with many close friends, and an aspiration to become a Game Designer. Don't give up any of you.

Remember, I love each and every one of you. I hope this helped people as much as it helped getting it off of my chest. Thank you....

Here's my sobstory. File it with the rest.
Right now
I'm going into 6th Grade
My personality changes
I'm Anxious ALL the time.

Here we go. From the time I was a baby through 1st grade, life was awesome. In 2nd grade I continued to remain as kind as I was back in the previous grades, witch appearently to the popular group was a bad thing. I was then an outcast. I was nearly a carbon copy of the popular group, except the fact that I was a little chubby. So I thought this was just bullcrap, these people are better than me cuz they can put a ball in a hoop. No freaking way! So I fought with a few of these people. But they were just more athletic than us, and we coudn't keep up. In third grade no one ever looked in my direction so I "camoflauged" my self with the popular group.

At the end of the year, it all came together. People
started looking at me, and wondering who I was. They remembered me. Everyday I was mocked by students, kindergarteners, even Teachers. Fastforward to day-before-last-day, I got a letter in the mail saying I was gifted, and was being transferred into Magnet, parent talk for "nerd-hole". Whoop de doo.

4th grade, I was an outcast for being new. I offered to play a race in Mario Kart with him. We became friends, first I had since 1st grade. Later in the lunchroom, I found out he was popular. Being a friend of his made me popular to. The other kids hated me, though. The kid I was friends with was Shashu. Eventualy, something stepped in to make my life suck. Noah B. He randomly hated me, because I was younger than him. I thought this was just bucking retarded. To make matters worse, 2 other kids fought me for Shashu's attention. Having them team up on me, I lost in a flash. One of them, Charlie started beating me up weekly. I coudn't be a snitch. The other kid, Maxx, grew popular thus making me a loner & the butt of every joke. I contemplated suicide, but cast the idea as I woudn't leave my family alone. Fourth grade ended like this. During 5th Grade there was a new set of people here. Noah B. was gone. Shashu & Maxx were gone. I made a friend who had not betrayed me (yet), named John. Another two people had befriended me Sam & Jess. I had also made this "frenemy", Dainel. I was truly happy. But it was short lived. My dad all these wierd headaches 3 weeks after school started, and he went to the Hospital, only to find he had a severe lung cancer after smoking too much. My life went on like this until May. That month I discovered MLP: FiM, I was truly happy as I watch this inspiring cartoon. The year soon ended. I now face middle school, filled with a bunch of kids who hate me from my old school & all the bullies from all other schools in my half of my town. I probably wont survive.

>> 36469483

I know that feel, bro. Year 2 upwards was hell for me. One day, I just walk into the class, and no-one says a word to me. I don't talk to anyone for that year, 3rd, some kids ask me to throw what I thought was a discarded shirt into a bog (I saw someone running at me, and hesitated). Belonged to Zach, who was my only mate for the next 3 years. Grade 6, older kids give me crap as well, but in year seven, things began to pick up. I got to know a few guys better, and ended up with a tidy, close circle of friends. Sadly, those against me banded together too, and years 8-9 were hell. After trying to bash one to death with a hockey stick (didn't catch him, luckily), I was diagnosed with Induced Sociopathy. (When anyone gets on my nerves, I lose all empathy for them.) When medication was recommended, I refused, stuck to my guns, and come year 10, I was no longer teased, so much as revered. After the hockey stick incident, all I had to do was look in their general direction, and they'd run. In year 11, I'd made peace with most of them, and for the first time, had more friends than enemies. I am now a year 12 student,officially cured of Induced Sociopathy, coping with Exams and Tests, one after another, but a few kids (none in my year) still find it funny to piss-take me. MLP:FIM helps me cope with any struggles that life throws at me.

If those kids haven't seen you for years, they've probably forgotten about you, and/or grown up. Make a good first re-impression, and you're solid. They still hating? Band with whatever mates you do have, and wait it out. Patience and kindness turns foe into friend.

Persevere!

Many times I have found others who know someone who is severely depressed or contemplating suicide, and those individuals are unsure of how to best handle their friends. They are concerned for their loved ones, and naturally don't wish to see any harm come to them. I have much experience in this area, sadly, and I have some general advice on this.

Get in the know with the depressed individuals friends. Know who they talk to, know their support system, know their confidants and trustees. Communication, team work, and planning can be very effective for chronic individuals.
Try to be as open and honest as possible. Talk with them when you can, don't try to assume that you know what they are going through, and overall try to be empathetic. Possibly the best way to ensure full trust is to trust them first; that is why being open is so important.
Possibly the most important part of protecting them, is to not control them. Don't threaten them with talking to their parents, teachers, psychologists, police, anyone of that sort. Leave them their autonomy. Don't try to force them out of the ability to harm themselves, try to convince them away from the temptation.
Watch them for sudden mood swings, good or bad. This can indicate anything, but it always means that something has happened. Try to find out what it is, but don't be too pushy. That can scare them off or make them defensive. Beware thinking that they are back to normal just because they seem happy; this can be a cruel trap that I have seen played out far too often. Calm before the storm, and all that.
Anything else I could say is too specific, but I hope this helps. I know it's not really a personal story, nor a self-help idea like the thread is for, but if it does anyone some good, then it was worth it.
Love and Tolerance, Peace and Joy.

This girl met me at college in a class we had. We talked and really hit it off. Months later she became my girlfriend. We started dating for a year or more and now we live together.

We are happy together, however I sometimes feel really anxious, guilty and feeling kind of dirty around her.

The truth is that I've been stalking her for months prior to having class with her. The reason why we had class together is because I found out her schedule ahead of time and tried to have a class with her. She was just a stranger to me who I only admired from the far. I found out her name and looked it up on some social networking sites where I would find out about her interest and daily life . She posted her upcoming class schedule which is how I found out which class I can pick to be with her. I would save any pic of her I can and I used to follow her around campus .

Should I tell my girlfriend that I used to stalk her or is it better to just not let her know?

>>2508058
Let her know. If you keep something like this hidden and you keep worrying and stressing over it eventually it will build into something worse and you might end up losing her or worse.
A relationship needs trust and if telling her that you set it up so you would have class with her to meet her upsets her, I guess it's her loss. But on the same note it could be very flattering to her too that you went through so much effort to meet her.

could somepony please leave me a package with a .45 1911 in it. That is all.
Please, I beg of you, in tears, PLEASE do this for me.

>>2508060
Nope.

The greatest victory is to tell all that is bringing you down "fuck you". To overcome obsticales a stronger person. Suicide is failure. Proving everyone right. Psh, prove them wrong, pony!

my advice: never give up ~ no matter what

i've delt with mental and physical abuse. and was forced to do terrible things. it was so terrible. i have been depressed and sometimes it's hard to walk outside my house. but every day i try... and life has gotten better. some days are worse than others, but i have a lot of good things in my life now that was worth me never giving up.

>>2508058
Mostly this >>2508059 but also make sure to not say it so bluntly. It might come as a shock to her so its best if you add some fluff or dont say it all at once. If you dont make it sound like downright stalking it can seem kinda cute.

mfw
Archived :>

Dont let the advice die just cos were not in /chat/ now :<

>>2508223
It saddens me greatly that being immortalized killed this thread :(

Well, I have seen and been through some scary shit, maybe not as bad as other's problems on here but it still hits me hard. So I used to live in Georgia and my parents would fight a lot when I was around 5. I was very young at the time so I didn't know what was going on, I just new they didn't like each other much anymore. Then the divorce came up when I was 7. I was very upset and depressed. We had to move out of our house to go live in California on Christmas Day, which sucked cause I was thinking, "Santa, this isn't a very good gift." My Dad went with us to the airport so he could say his goodbyes. I tried not to cry, I couldn't stand it. I was holding onto my Dad and wouldn't let go. My Mom just grabbed my arm and started dragging me on the concrete inside of the parking lot, I tried to break free but I couldn't. I started screaming, "DDAAAAAADDYYYYYY!! HEELLPPP MEEEEEE!! I DON'T WANNA GOO DAAD!" My shirt was very wet from the tears. I was depressed a lot after that experience, and that is just one of the many terrifying things I have been through. One just happened recently where I almost killed myself, I will post that later maybe. I'm pretty sure you guys can guess why that stuff hits me hard and will never leave my memory.

In january 2010, my father passed away after after a long and painful life we shared. (Note, this may end up being a wall of text/life story, but I really feel a need to share it, so please, bare with me).

He was born in 1947 out of wedlock in a town deep in the bible belt of America, to two people who were already married to others. His father was a respected business man who raised him in secret, making sure he reveled to no one, not even us, his own future children who his father really was. He grew up with his mother, who had gotten divorced from her husband as a result of the affair, by themselves in the 1950s.

He graduated law school in the late 60s and went on to become a successful lawyer, one of the top rated in The state. However he suffered from physiological issues (asthma, hereditary type 2 diabettes) as well as numerous psychological issues that started around 1972 when his father died . He had what I now realize was an inferiority complex which I believe was caused by a massive sense of rejection from society in the 50s, his parents raised him lovingly but I suspect he always felt guilty for being a secret shame to his father, about being "illegitimate" in a hyper-conservative society where children like him were not supposed to exist (though there were probably far more like him than most "descent" people would have liked to admit). He also had developed a massive case of generalized anxiety disorder, recurrent periods of clinical depression and severe anger management issues. His primary way of dealing with this was the only way a "proper" man was supposed to deal with psychological issues: sucking it up and taking it like a man, and lubricating with plenty of alcohol.

I was born in 1981, the last of my parent's children. My childhood home was tumultuous as well, mostly due to my father's aforementioned problems. Some days, he was a very loving though somepony desperate father, trying very hard to maintain relationships with his three children, and other times he didn't seem to give a shit, fighting with us over his disappointments, fighting with my mother as a way to deal with his own issues. He was drunk on a nightly basis (never during daylight hours), and indulged in activities that only seemed to make him angrier. Other times he seemed to wallow in shame and regret over things that never went exactly as he wanted them in his life or regret that he was driving a wedge between himself and his family. I didn't learn until after he died that he was BETTER behaved in the 80s and 90s than he was in the 70s when he would occasionally treat my mother like a literal punching bag.

Throughout my childhood, my father had a poor attitude about life and about his family. He was always the pessimist, he was extremely cynical, and I suspect he believed that I was mentally retarded. He drove a wedge between my (significantly) older sister and himself and expressed nothing but regret over it throughout the 90s. He seemed to show nothing but disapointment for my older brother, who had inherited his first name, and he seemed to believe I could never amount to anything because I had a learning disorder (specifically Auditory Processing Disorder). My sister's way of dealing with it was to basically disconnect from the family as soon as she entered her teen years, my brother got into drugs and I became a bitter, cynical, pessimistic, anti-social flankhole who basically hated almost everypony.

This is not entire my father's fault though, he had worked hard so we could live in an upper-middle class inner city suburb of San Antonio called Alamo Heights, a place were Reaganomics was the local religion and yuppies abounded. It was the kind of community where everything said by anypony had a competitive subtext, the kind of place where it was easy to develop a paranoid personality disorder, where cynicism flourished, where nearly every social interaction involved somepony trying to humiliate somepony else, and it was easy to develop a general hatred for humanity if you existed in a space between the social classes.

By the late 90s, around 1997, I hated everypony but my mother and the handful of friends I had at the time (literally, I could count the number of them on one hand). I also suffered from classical clinical depression. 1997 was also the year my mother, the person with whom I was closest to in my life, was diagnosed with non-hodgekins lymphona, a type of cancer that is generally considered curable, but still runs a risk of death like any cancer. 1997 was the year that strained the family relations most, with my brother getting heavily involved in drug abuse, and my father constantly picking fights with us as a way of dealing with his anxieties and frustrations, all while my mother endured chemo therapy. My mother survived and is still living to this day some 14 years later, but we all had psychological scars, so much so I ended up going to therapy for clinical depression and anxiety disorder.

During the therapy, based on what I had confessed to my therapist, we decided to have a number of family therapy sessions, In these sessions, I learned secrets that my father kept about his childhood and came to realize something very important : He and I were fundamentally the same person, metaphorically speaking of course. I came to realize that I could potentially end up just like my father or worse if I continued down the same path I was going. That day set the path for the rest of my life. My hatred for my father became empathy, I realized that he had struggled his whole life to prove himself worthy to a world that constantly rejected him, and even if our childhood circumstances were not exactly the same, we still suffered together that sense of being rejected by the world. In many ways, my father became my best friend.

>>2508433
In the years following my mothers chemotherapy, I made a conscious effort to be more connected to him. We started a somewhat short lived tradition of going on trips together during spring and winter break to various famous places and cities, just me and him. He also started to do this with my mother.

In 2000 when I decided to graduate from high school rather than drop out and then I decided to attend university and major in psychology, partly out of a desire to understand my own problems and partly out of a desire to understand my family's problems. I found I really didn't like psychology that much and the only class that really helped me was a course on abnormal psychology, which helped me understand my father even better than that therapy session confessional in 1997, and for the first time in felt like I actually had a real father.

By 2004, I had switched majors many many times trying to decide what I wanted to do after college, and by that point I qualified for an Associates in Liberal Arts and just took it. Despite the fact that it was not a very powerful degree, it did have the effect of making the relationship with my father more reciprocal. He frequently expressed pride that I could say I was an educated man. About a year later, he was delighted when I announced I would go back to school and actually focus on a major : Computer Science.

The 2000s were not without problems for my father and my family. Decades of bad financial decisions made in haste, ruined credit ratings, and lost retirement funds, and lost health insurance left my parents in dire straights. Add to this years of alcohol abuse and denial over medical conditions like diabetes led to a decade that severely strained the relationship between my parents. In 2006 my father's condition had gotten to the point that he was clearly too ill to work, though he refused to retire (he couldn't !). He had collapsed during a meeting with a prospective client, and ended up in the hospital, He was informed by a cardiologist that he had nearly had a heart attack and that if he didn't get a double bypass operation, he could have one at any moment. After fighting over it for a while, my parents decided to go ahead with the operation despite the fact that the the health insurance would not cover it. At first, they had decided to sell the house I grew up in to pay for it. The house had been a huge point of pride for my father, and after the operation, he had second thoughts about selling it, trying desperately to find another way around having to do so, which often led to numerous arguments and fights with my mother all the way until the end of the year, when I fought with him for the first time in a decade. Fortunately that would be the last time I ever fought with him.

In 2008, he had a stroke caused by excessive fluid in his blood, which was in turned caused by his failing kidneys (a long term complication of diabetes), and he began a 3-times-a-week regiment of dialysis. He recovered from the stroke, but not without problems, he now had problems balancing, and walking. Again his psychological problems and pessimism kept him from fully recovering, he could have regained the ability to walk if he had stuck to his physical therapy regiment, but he didn't feel it was worth it. He spent the last two years of his living back and forth between a wheel chair and a walker. At this point in my life, I had decided to graduate as soon as possible so I could take care of my parents, being the only child in the family who had yet to move out. I graduated from UTSA in may of 2009 with a bachelors in computer science. Before the graduation ceremony my father said something to me that still haunts me to this day, a little over two years later: "If you hear a popping sound from the handicap section of the auditorium, that's the buttons of my shirt popping off as my chest swells with pride"

My father never retired, he had to change the nature of his business from that of a trial lawyer to that of a legal consultant because it became increasingly difficult for him to leave the house. In mid 2009 he started to develop a disturbing symptom, his breathing became more and more shallow as his lung capacity shrank. By November, we had taken him to see his cardiologist to find out what was happening and found he had yet another problem. His lungs were slowly filling with fluid as the walls began to break down, partially as a result of excessive blood fluid and partially as a result of years of asthma related lung damage. After the fluid in his lungs were drained, the severity of the problem became magnified, the fluid in the lungs had caused the formation of a thick protein build up in his right side that could not be removed. He would need a lung transplant, but that prospects of surviving a lung transplant were slim if he did not get a kidney transplant. The unlikelihood of any of this ever happening led the doctors to advice that we place my father in a hospice.

By January of 2010, I had felt like a failure, My plan had been to get my degree, find a job, and support my parents until their eventual deaths. I felt like I had to rush because my father's health was failing fast and his ability to stay aloft financially was quickly disappearing. But despite my best efforts, I could not find a job with my degree, the economy was collapsing, and not even my new technology-centered degree was going to save us, I was going to need more than just a B.S. unless I wanted to spend the rest of my life with the cashier job I was lucky to find.

On January 10, 2010, my father was having a panic attack at the hospital, and I was there, being his security blanket, holding his hand as he trembled, by the time he had calmed down he said to me "Okay, you can go home, take care of your mother". Those would be the last words He ever spoke to me. The next morning, he wouldn't wake up, The doctors found him in a vegetative state, not quite dead and not quite alive, barely responding. They put him on a life support system and shoved a tube down into his lung to keep him breathing, he finally responded by trying to pull the tubes out of his mouth, then passed out again.

>>2508434
We were called shortly afterwords, I called into work and told them I was not coming in. The entire family was there, me, my mother, my brother and his wife, my sister and her husband, the only one's not there were the grandchildren, whom we all believed to be a bit too young to handle this emotionally. While my mother, sister and brother, seemed to be able to compose themselves with solemness, I was unable to sit in that room for more than thirty minutes at a time. I had to leave every so often so I wouldn't have to see it. Whenever I looked at the bed where my father was laying in a deadened state, I saw not only him but also myself.

In a strange twist of fate his life was flashing before my eyes, I thought of him growing up in San Antonio without being able to say "Hello Dad!" in public to his father, I imagined him being picked on in school, I imagined the anger and frustration he must have felt like I did when I was that age, I imagined him trying to do everything he could in life to prove he was worth something to somepony. I imagined every pain and frustration he must have felt everytime he failed at something just as I did. I imagined him and i never really feeling like he was really worth anything even when he succeeded, but most of all, I remembered that day in may when we told me how proud he was of my accomplishments as he breathed laboriously in his wheelchair.

An image from that day that will probably always haunt me is the moment I knew my dad was gone for good. His eyes opened and never shut, staring at nothing in particular as the pigment of his irises literally started to bleed into the whites of his eyes. My mother had decided to give him one more session of dialysis, to relive the possible ketoacidosis. At that point we knew it was basically over, the hospital wanted to keep him alive, as is their standard practice, and perform a CT scan to determine whether or not he had suffered from another stroke, though we felt it was obvious. My father had previously signed a prior authorization when he had his double bypass in 2006 but he had never written a living will, nor a DNR order, so it was up to us to decide whether or not to pull the plug. We decided, that if he were to recover, he would still be suffering from breathing problems, kidney problems, and he would probably be missing large portions of his mental capacity, something an intellectual like my father would never be able to live with very long. After sunset, we decided to remove my father from life support and put him on a morphine drip. He didn't react, he just slowly stopped breathing. That night everypony slept at our house.

A couple of weeks later, we held a memorial service for everypony my father knew. Grown men I had known much of my life from meetings my dad would have with them and fishing trips in years passed I had seen break down in tears, including the most foul-mouthed litigator I had ever met. The crowd of people whom I mostly did not recognize had decided it was best to tell stories of their times with my father and I got a rare glimpse of something I never knew about and my father and something he himself probably never believed, that he was loved by many people He had touched more lives than he realized or wanted to acknowledged. People he probably never really believed were his best friends skipped work and traveled across the state to break-down publicly. Many of them were people I never knew and probably never would, many of them were former clients, and my dad was never the type to break client-attorney confidentiality, even privately, to people he would have trusted the most.

The thing that most touched me about that day was a woman I met for the first time in my life who never gave me her name, and whose name my father never would have given to me, all she said about her self was that my father had saved her life.

That day I loved my father more than any other day in my life.


2010 was probably the hardest year of my life, I had never thought at the time just how long death stays with you and how much it can distort your world long after it has passed.

By the summertime, I had quit my job as a cashier, I was determined to make something of myself, to try and survive in this economy by going back to school, and getting the Master's Degree that I had promised to myself. My mother had agreed to allow me to live with her and support me with the life insurance money my father left behind.

>>2508435
I started attending classes again as a way of coping with my father's death, by fulfilling a dream that would have made him proud. Life is never that easy it turns out.

I was unable to attend graduate courses in the summer as they did not offer any of the ones I needed at the time so I took an easy undergraduate course just to kill some time. By the fall my real course work began and I proceeded to shoot my self in the foot by taking on more work than I was ready for, I was determined to finish in two years so that I did not have to depend on my father's life insurance any longer than necessary. I started suffering from panic attacks and sleepless nights as I became my father all over again. I even started developing my own medical complications as well, loss of feeling in my left ankle (a sign of diabetic complications) and spots in my vision (another sign). The stress was mostly psychological though, the money itself was like a parting gift from my father, and yet it was like a curse, and the feeling that I needed to make the best of it was only exacerbating the problem. I started to see a therapist again back in october, and also undergo medical testing to determine whether or not my own medical complications are related to my diabetes or to other possible causes (like multiple sclerosis, one of the things I was tested for, fortunately the test came back negative). By the time I got a little over halfway through the semester, I was failing everything and decided to abandon ship, I withdrew from all my courses so as not to actually fail them.

It was like a curse in disguise, I could not rely on my dad's money without the constant fear of failing him at every turn. At the advice of my therapist, I decided instead to go to classes only part time, to start writing letters to my father, and hiding them away in a place I can read them again later, and to pay for my classes with student loans.

It took me a year to get to a point where I felt I could finally really begin to let go, and that day was the first anniversary of my fathers death, January 11, 2011. When he died, we decided to have him cremated, and we kept the ashes for ourselves in a modest box, until the day we planned to spread them. We had decided to spread the ashes in a place that was very dear to my father, Corpus Christi, TX. It was one of the places my father grew up with his mother as they moved around Texas during his childhood and one of his favorite places to go when he needed to get away from the world on vacation. The last time I saw my father, he was a pile of ashes falling of the side of a small motorboat in the middle of the Bay.

I went back to school that spring with a great sense of relief and worked hard with only two classes, got myself a couple of Bs and am set to start again at the end of this month.

I usually never share the letters I write to my father, since my therapist never said I had to, But I will share this last letter, I wrote, probably because it will be the last one I ever write:

Dear Dad,
Last night I had another dream about you. I was in London with my friends showing them all the places we went back in '97, Piccadilly Circus, Parliament, Leicester Square, the British Museum, everywhere we went. I went back to the old hotel in Piccadilly we stayed that week, and I found you there, with the kind of smile on your face I had not seen in years. Now I know you are a part of me and forever will be, and you know as well as I do that life only persist in memories. So what part of me do you represent tonight dad ? Are you the part of me that once hated the world, that once wished at nights to just never wake-up the next day ? Are you smiling cause Ive left you here, in a place far away from me, long ago in a past I'll never forget ? Or are you the part of me who has come to learn from your life and your death that no matter how unloved I feel sometimes, no matter how alone I feel at times, and no matter how hopeless I feel at times that I am always effecting the lives everypony that I meet ? Are you the part of me that realizes that when I die, I may just as well have a funeral of a hundred strangers and friends I never knew I had ? Is that why you're smiling dad ? Are you the part of me who knows that when I die, my ashes will be tossed into the sea by those who love me, and are sad to see me go as I was of you ? And are you smiling because I've left you here in a part of my memory where you were happiest ? You don't answer me, you just turn your head, and keep smiling, watching the lights of Piccadilly Circus, watching the restaurants we ate at, the theaters we went to, and the underground stations were we rode back to that one night as all the pubs were closing. Im glad you're here dad. Im glad I can find you here, as well as on that pier in Rockport, that beach in Port Aransas, Elmo's Restaurant on Water Street and the coastal towns along that highway in Oregon, all the places I remember you best.

Dad, I know I may see you in a memory again one day, of this I am sure, though I may not write anymore letters to you. You and I both know that I've still got a lot of healing to do, that my life will never be as easy as I wish it were. Sometimes I forget that I make my life worse than it needs to be, sometimes I forget that bad things are only as good as I make them, and good things can become bad if I make them that way. Sometimes I forget to live in the moment and miss it as I worry about things too far in the future. Sometimes I forget about the people around me, and how what I do effects them, no matter how insignificant I feel. Sometimes I forget what I can control about my life and what I can't, fighting what I can't change and failing to change what I can. Dad, I guess we've got a lot in common huh ? But some days, when I remember these things I've learned from your life, my life becomes a little easier, a little more joyful and fun, and the day-to-day pains of living become smaller and less significant, and I find you in a dream late at night, smiling in Piccadilly Circus over a crowd of a hundred strangers you now know have always been your friends.

-Your Son, Andrew

For those of you who had the patience to read through all of this, Thank you very very much. This took me a very long time to write. I had been meaning to write something like this and post it somewhere as a means of self-therapy. This thread inspired me to go ahead and do so, a good year and a half later.

>>2508437
Oh and to add to this, sorry if the grammar or spelling seems a little weird at times, It was a stream of consciousness effort, and I did not bother to proofread it.