Sky, did you read my post to Karen?

Wendy, when you get through the tunnel or pull yourself out of the mire, you naturaly gain a strength that you wouldn't have had otherwise.

You two try looking at it this way: What possible positive is there when you are training or on a weight reducing excercise plan? All you experience is muscle pain, breathlessness and exhaustion. The muscle pain can continue for days but eventually, your body gets used to the excercise and you're physically stronger, your muscles are more defined and you've lost weight. You're better for having endured the physical pain. It's the same way with emotional/mental pain.

While we're going through the physical pain of becoming physically stronger/better we wonder if it's all worth it. We are faced with the choice of either quiting and going back to the same flabby, overweight person we were or we continue to "work through" the pain and discomfort and come out better for it in the end. We can't stop, though, because we'll go back to how we were before we started. Granted, we didn't ask for this illness. It was dealt to us. Only two choices are either overcome it or give in to it.

Sky, we're still on the same subject. Only difference is that you and I are in a different stage of the "program/training." My hand is stretched out to you to give you "a lift up" from the mire. You CAN and WILL overcome this illness. "I will you to!" (I'm sure you know the story.) Sweets, you also have a physical disability to overcome, but you're not a quadraplegic. Even quadraplegics live successfull lives. Look at all that Christopher Reeve did in the years that he lived after his accident. Leave out that you think he committed passive suicide. You don't know that for sure. What you need to do is focus on the positive, on all the work he did and everything he accomplished while being in a wheelchair and on top of that, a respirator!

If anyone is looking for any positives while they're not working to overcome their mental illness, you're not going to find anything. It's all in the work you have to do to become stronger so that you control the illness and not allow it to control you.

I'm saying all of this in complete love, both to Sky and Wendy, but also to anyone else who reads this. Don't forget, I'm one of those that has been there and know it from the inside AND out.