Thank you for sharing such vulnerability @stellabelle I recently suffered another of my depression periods.

The last time this happened was when my Pops died. He drank himself to death away from his family and to see him brought home from the province in a shabby coffin just destroyed me.

I did not go out of my room for over a year. I stopped school and subsisted on chocolate chip cookies, soda pop and video games. My family tried to intervene and sent me to a psychiatrist who went to our house because I refused to go out. I was a recluse who was trying to escape reality by playing video games. That was one of my addictions. It came to a point that I no longer liked myself and even the things that made me happy. So I drank a bottle of pills and killed myself. That was my first suicide attempt at age of 17. I lived and tried to have a semblance of normalcy.

I've had several other depression episodes but not as bad as the first one. I turned to alcohol and looking for love and worth with different women but nothing really lasted. Worst I was cheating on a childhood sweetheart who turned a blind eye to my indiscretions. Looking back I was really unfair to her because I couldn't really love her the way she deserved because I was broken and did not love myself enough.

Fast forward to 2017 I had another episode that culminated in me taking time away from work because I was not functioning well. I had the same self destructive action I had before. I turned to videogames again, grew cold and distant with my long suffering girlfriend and was talking to my shrink again. She recommended that I start writing again and that's how I ended up in Steemit. She may have been tired of reading my long ramblings emails of the futility and unfairness of my life so she set me loose in the world of Steemit.

My entries at that time were dark. I talked about the semi colon project that I have been part of for quite some time and the darkness eating at my soul. I was battling my demons and found several people here that shared the same darkness in me. We connected.

I was hoping that the semi colon would mean life will continue and was one of the factors that lead me to having Invictus as part of my handle. I did not want to give up. But mounting pressures and just plain disappointment and self doubt made me be so hard on myself. I simply did not love myself anymore and blamed myself for everything going wrong.

Finally last October I decided to die. I drew up my funeral arrangements and wanted to be cremated and placed in the same crypt as my Pops. I said goodbye to everyone and again shut myself away from the world. I continued to write not because I wanted to earn but because I wanted to leave a part of me in the world. The blockchain would always have my words in it somewhere. It was a way for me to say that I was once here.

I am pretty pathetic, I am emotionally weak, I have so many hang ups and the depression I had was eating away my soul. A key turning point I think was the gratefulvibes series. I connected to @paradise-found and with the light he was showing he was able to chase away some of the darkness.

Then I noticed that I was always looking forward to read something good. I looked forward to waking up. It's been so long since that happened. There would still be bad days but I was still here.

I was supposed to have died last Dec 4. That was teh day I would swallow the pills and call to have my body taken to the morgued. Sounds morbid but I did not want to impose. Yet that day came and I did not take the bottle. Instead I went to Steemit and wrote.

Today is the first day of the new year and I have a visionboard for 2018. I even created a contest for it and it even got curated. I was feeling pretty good.

So your words rang true to me. Your words gave credence that we need to love ourselves more and forgive ourselves.i hope your words will help another person suffering right now and may they see that light and live another day.

I think I should have just written my own post haha. It's so long.