I ask the same Question!!!!

It has been a rough month for me. We have money to spend. We have a full house of groceries. We have pretty much anything we could desire. Hmmmmm? Rough??? Doesn't sound like anything should be rough on this end? Exactly!!!!!! The very reason I am writing today. My words will reach out and grab a few of you as you read this. You may find yourself whispering to yourself, "Hey, that sounds an awful lot like Me."
 I have a good life. I am a man that has been blessed more times in this life than any one man, especially THIS man ever deserved to be blessed. So why in the world would I be depressed? Again, the reason I write today. Depression and the added Bipolar and a little Tourettes tossed in to make for an interesting "salad" of life, certainly open up a world of sad. Yet still I ask myself, what do I have to be depressed about. Family members that simply refuse to believe that there is anything wrong with me. Those that think I can and really should just "get the hell over it!" I am very aware of all that I have. At the same time, I am extremely aware that I see myself as a total failure and that I have truly accomplished Nothing in my life.
 Depression IS an illness. It is brought on by imbalances in the brain that I do NOT have any control over. It is so easy to sit on the fence and scream all the things I Could be or Should be doing to make this all go away. To waltz through life, never seeing yourself as others see you tears the heart to pieces. To never believe that anything you have done in your life was ever worthy of appreciation or praise is not an easy row to hoe. The sadness and guilt and feeling of being completely disconnected and alone in this world can and do over-whelm the mind and soul. It wears a physical body out and leaves one feeling totally drain from the inside out.
 You, the ones that know me and love me and still look at me with disgust in your eyes, have no idea how many times I have looked in the mirror and saw that exact look coming from my own self. Over and over I ask myself why i am this way. I wonder daily what brought me to this point. I pray and think and ask again what makes me the man that I am? I know, the Past. Hmmm? Isn't the past exactly that? Isn't it Past? Not for all of us. Sometimes, there are those that retain and relive and struggle with the past daily, sometimes even by the minute. We rise every day and tell ourselves we need to be here. We create the reasons and try our best to process them so that we can make it through another day. And still we ask, why am I so sad inside?
 I think that perhaps that very question keeps us captive to our sorrows and guilt. We tell ourselves we have no reason to be depressed and in doing so, we cause our selves to become more sad because we can not find a reason for our feelings. We try so hard to beat these feelings. The battle that rages within wears us down and tires the soul and so... we slip deeper into a world of darkness and the feelings of have no worth or purpose. The accomplishments that other see become failures because though we "wrote a novel" or "made a CD" or "raised a family", all accomplishments in any one else's eyes, we didn't reach the top. We didn't become number one best selling authors or music moguls. We only did these half-assed or part of the way. We Never became "Anyone!"
 Why are we this way? What makes a person see them-selves through "tunneled" eyes? Depression is a terrible illness. It effects nearly half the people in the world in some stage or another. Toss in a few other issues like the Bipolar and Tourrettes and you have a real mess to walk through every single day of your life. And for those that don't believe or find themselves disgusted with someone like me, please be kind. I see myself the same way you do. I do not need you to tell me what I look like to others. A kind word or sign of love will go so much further. Remember this, you never know how close to the "edge" of life someone is standing. You may be the very means to either push that person over or bring them back to a little safer distance from that edge.