I'm not OP but just wanted to add my own experience with anti-depressants as someone who has battled mild depression and extreme anxiety for years. Ultimately in my case it turned out that I needed to try several different antidepressants that my doctor prescribed until I found one that worked to aid in decreasing my depression and anxiety symptoms with pretty much no side effects. I tried several which did not work for me or had a lot of side effects. Some antidepressants that helped my friends and family in their struggles did not help me. So definitely ask your doctor if they'd be willing to work with you to try and find a medication that works well for you with minimal side effects if they recommend that you take such medications.

Wish you all the best. Mental illness sucks.

I resonate with you word-for-word. I kind of assumed people were also struggling, but I didn't realize how much struggling it ended up being.

I will post an update every now-and-then. It might not be very software-related (sorry dang!), so I will try to not post all of them on here.

I wish you the best as well! And you are free to contact me, I think talking to someone in a similar boat helps a lot.

"while others have their own battles, they are very rarely similar to this" - meh, I don't think that's true. Being human is hard, and in some circumstances can be very fucking hard. If you've had a challenging time in your youth, that makes it exponentially harder.

That's most people. They just keep it inside, assuming everyone else is doing better than they are.

The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.

Stop thinking about it and go talk to someone. You are likely just delaying your healing and happiness.

Good luck!

Also be careful with reaching conclusions too quickly. I ended up breaking a 10+ year long relationship after thinking that was the problem, I ended up even more miserable than before. Begged her to take me back after some years, and luckily we're happily together ever since and still married :) (with lots of changes from the first iteration, obviously)

Would you like a tip? This post started out as bulletpoints that were no more than 5 words each, eventually you start typing away like there's no tomorrow.

There's a lot I want to talk about, and not a lot of words until people stop scanning.

> Going to therapy was the best decision of my life

Such an under-appreciated tool, going to therapy, granted you find the right person to do it with.

For people who've tried it just a few times but never really had "the epiphany", don't stop trying to find the right individual to have this space and conversations with, as it quite literally can change your life. It might take going through 5-6 people before you encounter "Ah, I actually feel like I could tell this person anything, I'm relatively sure they'll have good insights and understands what I want", but it so worth it once things click.

Many of us are used to monospace all day long in terminal