I recently got divorced from my husband of six years. I'm grateful the marriage is over because it wasn't healthy for either of us and I hadn't been happy in it for a long time. Still, I feel this sense of...I don't know...failure. I look back and think "Why didn't I see we weren't compatible before we got married?" or "Why was I in such a rush to get married when I was only 22?"

I feel like my marriage set me back in a lot of ways. I moved away from home to an area of the country that is economically depressed. This has made it hard to get a job. I tried to maintain the friendships I did have at the time and for a while I did. However, life drifted me and my friends apart. Additionally, I found it hard to make new friends. I moved twice in my marriage and it is so hard to make friends when you're introverted and have no connections to the place where you move to. I do have one friend from a job I use to have but that I pretty much it. There is another woman I associate with but honestly, I consider her more of an acquitance than a friend.

Six years of marriage and it feels like I have little to show for it except knowing what to do differently if I decide to ever get married again.

I try to look at the positive. I got my degree while married (although my lack of employment while having the degree has created it own set of issues). I learned how to drive. I live in an apartment now (my ex pays for it while I look for employment).

Still, I just feel like I should have done more. So I'm trying not to go back into a depression. I was depressed when I first started college and I don't want to go back to that point.

How do you prevent yourself from going into a downward spiral when life throws out curve balls?