How cool for you, phlashback!!! Yea!!! Your post rings soooo true for me, and I just wanted to second it. The warp depression puts on one's thinking, the absolute certainty and the perceived everlastingness it convinces us of feels so absolute. (Personally, I think this is the hardest --even impossible -- thing to convey to those who haven't experienced it).

As another story as additional evidence of the truth of your own story...I was there, in depression, yet again, not the worst and yet still prepared, planned and so utterly convinced of the inevitability and rightness of... well, you know. Not at that moment, but the near future. So.... looking? Hardly.

Enter the most unlikely set of circumstance. If anyone had suggested even the possibility of where I find myself now, I'd have thought they were, at the kindest, utterly ridiculous. I'd even have been pissed at their obvious *not getting it* and pollyanna-ism. And then... someone sent a couple of emails. I only knew this person from a couple of business dealings. I wrote back, it was pleasant, you know, but nothing you'd think anything of. Well, a few more emails. It started to become obvious that we had a ton in common. More emails, more in common. This was getting interesting. Yet this person didn't even live in the same state and I'd never met them IRL. It just seemed so crazy, but I was becoming downright smitten. Even if only as friends. But...maybe because of my earlier plans (though that didn't occur to me at the time), I figured WTH, there's nothing to lose and, dare it be possible? -- something to gain. So arranged a meeting. It was either the craziest thing I'd ever done (lots of competition there(!)) or the best. Maybe both. Got on fantastically. Long story short(ish!), we are now living together and I don't think I've ever felt like this. Things I thought would never ever be... passion, real fun, even giving a flip or that *anything* good had even the possibility of ever happening to me... Boy was I ever wrong.

So just like phlashback said, it really *is* true, and can happen when you very least expect. Even having given up on expectation altogether. Even when you think it's the most patently ridulous pollyanna-ish thing you've ever heard. Even if you are a cynical sort (yeah, me), it *is* true.

Thanks so much for your post, phlashback. It's such a reminder that positive possibities exist, even when we don't believe in them. It's good to have these stories somewhere in our consciousnesses. We need them. More than so-called "normal" people can even imagine.