You're right, depression isn't a vacation. It saps you of everything, including energy and your ability to feel pleasure.

But just because you have a visible disability doesn't mean that people are easy on you. That is a myth. I use a wheelchair. I will be using one for the rest of my life. My worst suffering comes from pain that others cannot see and cannot hear.

I've had constant pain since March and it's driving me nuts. It's turned me into a f*cking leper, as if years of depression and BPD hasn't done it already. I also have a hospital phobia, possibly post-traumatic stress disorder.

I've been told to snap out of it. I've been told I'm "wallowing in it". As a disabled person, IT IS EXPECTED that I take everything heroically: Abandonment by my family, surgery, emotional abuse, poverty, loneiness, severe pain. I should have a constant smile on my face, no matter how grim and ugly that something is. GOD FORBID THAT I SHOULD WANT TO COMMIT SUICIDE! Because that means I'm feeling sorry for myself, a feeling that is a no-no in disabled people. Wanting to commit suicide means that I am a coward and a traitor to my anti-euthasnasia beliefs.

I have received these wonderful messages from family and close friends, people who should be supporting me in my hour of darkness. I have been told to keep my pain between me and my God. BY A FRIEND! It hurts to hear these things beyond belief. It hurts me as badly as it would hurt you, maybe more so, because I've had to fight battles for my entire life and the emotional support just wasn't there, nor is it here now, when I am in constant agony and on morphine. If anything, I got emotional abuse, from my own family, or just dead silence.

And then the experts wonder why 75% of people with depression refuse to undergo treatment. The reason is the pain that your family and friends will pile on top of you as a result of having it!!!!!! That makes me sick!!!!!

I will do as my friend suggests. I will keep my agony between me and my God. I will play the hero. God will not judge me for my feelings.

As for your husband, get some counselling for the two of you. Speaking from experience, emotional abuse makes things ten times worse. You deserve better than that, trust me. Life is too short to put up with such garbage, especially from a man who swore to honour and protect you, FOR BETTER OR FOR WORSE!!! FOR BETTER AND FOR WORSE. Anyone who expects marriage to be all roses and perfume is going to be in for a severe jolt when the honeymoon ends. (My parents were two very screwed up people and they've passed those screw-ups to their children. They stayed together and they're still together, but at what price? I'm living 500 miles away from them and barely speaking with them!!!!)

Get some counselling for the both of you and if that doesn't work, go for just yourself and discuss options with the counsellor.

Thank God for the Internet, because the outside world just doesn't care.

There is a thing more crippling than cerebral palsy: the prison of your own mind.