Thanks, Laura. Yeah, telling anyone in my family about it just feels like the last possible option if everything else fails. It would ruin the perfect 1950's TV family fantasy that they've tried so hard to maintain my whole life. To them, depression is something that happens to people in other families...not ours.

I know it's weird about the stretch marks, but I feel like they would be a lot less embarrassing to me if I were a female because it's somehow more normal. There was a girl I noticed in school once who had really obvious stretch marks when I saw her lean over and part of her lower back was exposed. I already sort of had a crush on her, but when I noticed that I liked her even more because I was thinking, "Oh wow...maybe I could date her and she wouldn't judge mine as much." Of course I didn't have the guts to ask her out or anything because my self-esteem is so low. Weird, right? I'm sure there are plenty of females out there ashamed or embarrassed by theirs...and yet here I am thinking what a relief it would be to find one of them. I wish there was a dating site where the whole goal was to put all the worst things you can think of about yourself in your little bio so nothing had to be exposed later.

Anyway, I do think my best option is to find some simple job and try to not screw it up...even if I blow it, it might provide me with enough money to at least get some sort of process started.