Hi. I'm Adam, and I am new here. This might be quite long.
I have suffered with depression pretty much since I was a kid, but especially so since I left school, whereupon I started taking medication. Things were manageable during the sixth form, until I went to university where I started having pure obsessional thoughts. They would, obviously, make me depressed, and I would self-harm and drink. I didn't really know why I was suffering with this at the time, and I saw therapist upon therapist, all of whom were utterly useless.
After finishing university, things were ok during a gap year until I went back to university again where my obsessional thinking came back. I was quickly diagnosed with OCD though, and I received excellent treatment and managed to get control of it even though I would still suffer from depression. It would come and go, and felt like a pervasive feeling of sadness, and I could not quite explain what had made me sad. I call it my black dog, and usually I manage to control it.
However, I finished my second university course in Durham in September last year and since then I have stayed here. I want a job in academia but because of the funding cycles and so on, I haven't had any success with that yet. I tried to find a job to tide me over but I had no luck there either, so I have been on the dole since then and I feel utterly worthless, ashamed, and disappointed that I have put so much effort in for no purpose. I have now decided to leave here in a few weeks to go and live at the family home, simply because it would be cheaper, and hopefully I will have more luck finding a job. If I don't, my dad will certainly find me things to do in the yard because at the moment, having absolutely nothing to do is driving me insane. But it is in the middle of the countryside, and I have no friends there, so am likely to get very bored and lonely. I am also nearly thirty and I don't particularly want to live with my parents at this age. Everything here is familiar, and I have friends and ties here now. All the major depression in my life have been during life changes, and this is one of them which is upsetting me. I am also interested in a girl here, with whom I have a long and chequered history, but she seems to just be messing me about. As we are both leaving soon, it seems pretty pointless anyway.
Also, two years ago, I broke up with a girlfriend that I was absolutely besotted with. I have never really got over her, and it caused me to go on a downward spiral. Since then, I have been drinking heavily, and at its peak I have been drinking up to ten pints of ale a night. Obviously, that is less now that I am on the dole and am skint, but it's still too much and I don't eat well. I just have no appetite, and in fact, sometimes eating makes me wretch. One good thing about leaving is that hopefully I'll be able to knock that on the head.
So basically, I feel worthless, inadequate and like a total loser. My career is in ruins, I have no girlfriend, no car, no money and when I move, no friends and no social life at all. It's a difficult sensation to explain, but I feel constantly spaced out all the time, like looking through fog. The days just whoosh by as if I never notice there was even a day and I can't concentrate or remember things. I feel exhausted and generally unwell; I have a persistent, tickly, heavy cough; poor diurnal rhythm and no appetite. All the changes that are happening upset me because I'm leaving friends that I will probably never see again, including this girl I am interested in. I cry every night, and often during the day, often focusing on this girl and the girl I broke up with. I sometimes want to look her up on facebook but I just know that seeing pictures of her would absolutely crush me. Most importantly though, the kind of jobs I want will soon start being advertised but I just don't have the energy to get on top of it. It's just a big chaotic mess.
