smartiesparty: just wanted to let you know that I empathize. I live with chronic pain (nothing like what you're describing, but bad enough that it affects what I am able to do from day to day, usually without any given notice) and my mental and emotional health stuff affects me to the point where I too am unable to live the life I want. I go back and forth between feeling blessed, because it's given me such a different perspective on life and enable me to relate to people and situations that most cannot, and therefore makes me more effective in relationships, to hating the hell out of it because quite often I feel completely invalid in everything. I have struggled with school; I've had to leave jobs; I've had to slowly let friendships go; my wife and I have problems because of how much support I need from her at times, and types of support I require. It's next to impossible for me to be in social situations anymore because my reality is so far from the reality I see around me that it's more triggering than not.

I just try to focus on what *I* can do. I've been working on this for almost four years now (that's when I permanently left my job to go on disability, when it became clear to me, after years of 'just getting by', that this was not going anywhere and in fact was getting worse). People don't believe me either that it's as bad as it is, until they have to live with me and see it first hand, or until they're around when I have an episode and don't know what to do. The health professionals don't know what to do for me either because I can't take most medications and my symptoms are so widely varied that the best they could do is heap about eight different diagnoses on me and call it a day. I've been through every kind of therapy, treatment, group, one-on-on counselling, DBT, CBT, and even inpatient treatment for addictions recovery. If it's out there, I've done it. Still I struggle. I gain something new every time, but it's still a struggle. Jealousy's a big one for me. It's hard not to be: my friends have finished degrees, gotten great jobs, they're out doing amazing activist work, they're able to be involved in their spiritual communities, they travel (something that is next to impossible for me to do), hell...they can leave their house on a regular basis. I cannot.

I dunno, hopefully this helps you feel less alone. I think it's easy enough to say 'it gets better' or suggest getting help but I know that sometimes you can be doing absolutely everything and nothing changes. If you ever need someone to talk to feel free to shoot me a private message.