Thank you, avlady. This is the great thing about peer support - the feeling I get that you know what I'm talking about. Actually, I wish you didn't. But you do, and I'm grateful to you for understanding. "One of the worst things" is no exaggeration.

My sig. other wakes up every single morning wanting to get up . . . and he is a man in poor health. It would be torture for him to try and stay in bed, once he is awake. I'm not lazier than he is. But I suffer from chronically, recurring depression. He doesn't, despite a great many other problems, including a history of severe alcohol abuse, which is long behind him now. He tells me that, even when he was homeless from alcohol abuse, he never really got depressed. I believe him. That's how he is, even now, in the face of deteriorating health. He tells me, "I think it's something you do to yourself." I accept that he has no conception of what it is to constantly (almost) fight against depression. He tells me I just "think the wrong way." Maybe he's right.

As you seem to know, the first challenge of daily life is to wake up and get up and overcome that awful inertia that sets in over the course of the night. It didn't seem this bad when I was younger. Now I have physical achiness in the morning, just due to age related physical changes, which makes the morning burden heavier. My guy doesn't even get that. Today I was just desperate for someone to understand and relate.

I do believe that managing my problem with depression is my responsibility, and I'm not applying myself as hard as I need to. I'm interested in suggestions to help me get over that morning hump.