I have been struggling with depression for many many years. If I could draw a picture of what I feel most of the time, it would be me struggling to climb out of a deep dark hole. Just when I get to the top and think I can get out of it, life happens sending me down into the darkness again where I try not to fall too deep, afraid of what the bottom might bring. When I first started working with mentally ill people at the state hospital, I kept going off of my anti-depressants. I was a Psychiatric Technician! I could handle this on my own!! Each time depression would come back and that dark hole suck me in. Back then in my early 20's I was young and thinking like a youth, I could handle ANYTHING! Plus the hole wasn't so deep or dark then either. I guess it started getting deeper and darker after my 8 year relationship ended and I had to move out of the house we shared and away from my then 4 year old little girl. Since I wasn't the birthmother she had to stay behind. I did see her everyother weekend and holidays, but going from being with her everyday to that was very painful. Right before my relationship ended my older brother Mark came into my life. My mother had been only 15 when she had him and was forced to put him up for adoption. SHe had been looking for many years, so had he, they finally found each other. My brother and I were only 11 months apart in age, my mom had me when she was 16 and her parents didnt have the heart to make her give up another baby. I do have a brother 12yrs younger than me from a different father, but I don't think of him as a half anything, just my brother. Mark had many problems perscription drug abuse as one of them. We became close and had soo much in common you would've thought we were twins. I tried to help him with his drug addiction but couldn't. He was very hard to be around and even harder to live with, so I moved out and began another relationship. Less than a yr later he OD'd and my mother found him dead in his apt. The darkness in me really began when I couldn't be with my daughter full time anymore. When my brother died the hole got much much deeper. I struggled with guilt over his death, for a long time. I was injured by a patient at work which ended my career and began my chronic pain condition which has included 4 surgeries with even more to come. Although, Ive stayed on my meds, they keep stopping working for me. Now at 47yrs old Ive been on so many that when Drs ask me what Ive tried I have them just read off a list, there's just too many to name. I'm going to end this here although there is much more to my story, but that's the start of my deep dark hole that keeps trying to draw me deeper and deeper into it.  Bye for now...