I've been where you are...or at least similar. I had a good career as a computer engineer after graduating the university in 1978. I had been married in 1975 & I had our daughter earlier in 1978.

Bad marriage but I was so involved in my career & music as my hobby & played racquetball everyday with the guys I worked with. I was constantly busy & then later on keeping up with supporting our daughters activities along with everything else, didn't have time to really think about my situation.

In 1994, aerospace crashed in California & there went my career, mid 40's & non-aerospace didn't want to hire high paid engineers who were without a job. Anxiety hit first then after the first year of struggling, major depression hit. I didn't realize it at the time but then being financially trapped in the bad marriage was making the depression so bad I started attempting suicide thinking it was my only escape. Bad for my daughter but I was so miserable I knew she would be better without me also. Several attempts came close but for some reason unknown to me none were successful & amazing, be never had serious problems because of any either even after coma & life support for 24 hours.....

I had new interests I got involved in during that time, training & showing & breeding my American Eskimo dogs & bought my first horse & took dressage lessons & showed in that....but I still hated my life.

Therapy & pdocs were sure it was JUST the loss of my career & thought I was overreacting....so that's what I thought too...why not...they were the professionals that should put the pieces together & know.

I did end up worth continuous migraines that I'm still dealing with. It wasn't until 2003 when I finally went to a pain specialist who got them under control. I started taking interior design classes at the junior college & H by that time also lost his computer engineering career so wanted to take the classes with me (HUGE MISTAKE TO DO THAT WITH HIM). Just made me dislike him even more & the fights got worse.

That summer my mom had her cancer surgery she had been in chemo & radiation for that past year, I had an asthma attach from forest fire smoke that landed me in the hospital 10 days, my mare Disco finally gave birth to her foal Izzy & injured her leg when 3 weeks old...cut it down to the bone, my moms cancer surgery didn't go well & she wasn't healing from it. From all the stress & asthma, my anorexia hit again. Needless to say, taking classes wasn't an option. To top that off, it was obvious my mom's cancer wasn't all gone like her oncologist said after the surgery...just to make my mom feel better. Mom didn't want to leave her home. I caught checks written, caught the home care person on the phone applying for a credit card with my moms social security # & the final straw, she od'ed my mom on her morphine after calling the police telling them that I was abusing my mom when she was the one doing it. I got my mom to a safe place for the end of her life....but it left me dealing with PTSD from the trauma that the home care person caused along with implied threats. Add to that a marriage that I realized was becoming totally intolerable & anorexia as I couldn't even eat any more.

It took almost a year before I could go back into my moms house, the house I grew up in, got it cleaned out & sold almost 2 years later.

I decided that I was going to buy a farm that I had always wanted so went to the horse state 2100 miles away & found a 10 acre farm that needed a lot of work (& still does). I spent 6 months away fixing it up & realized it was my way out of the marriage. The move made such a change in my life. It was like a miracle hit. I had been so afraid that with all my health issues that there would be no way for me to make it on my own but the time from May to December when I brought my H to the farm on a trial basis proved that I could handle myself by myself & my health actually improved being out of that stressful life I was living in. Trial basis lasted a couple of weeks before I kicked him out & back to Calif.

The point of this being....we never know what really good things the future holds that at our bad points we can't even possibly conceive could happen.

I have been here 9 years in May. I love life & the change in me is beyond what I ever could have imagined. I hated everyone & everything except my horses & my dogs before I left. Therapy was useless because it was just me talking all the time. A few years after getting here I was able to find a wonderful therapy group, a wonderful psychologist who suggested my joining the DBT group for the 2 year commitment. From that I learned skills but most of all I learned how to express myself in ways I never had learned before in my life. I have learned so much about how my past had effected what I went through by integrating & remembering many things that I hadn't realized were even going on in my life. I have learned why my marriage was bad & why my parents were so dysfunctional...learning also how dysfunctional that all made me.

Those 13 years of major depression now are like a black hole in my life. I don't mave much memory of the details except for a few highlights & that's ok. I got through the IRS mess my Almost x-H left me in a few years ago so able to put the past in the past completely......& totally embrace the wonderful life I do have now. Though living alone, I have wonderful friends, learning that there was a lot of the now me that had been so suppressed by all the circumstances. Changes we can't even think of can happen to take our lives in an amazing different direction. I am so thankful now that none of my suicide attempts were successful as I never would have had the wonderful life that I am now enjoying.

Life can get better....33 years in a bad marriage....13 of those years in major depression...never would have thought anything good could come after all that time. You never know when that door will open to enable us to leave that depressive past & circumstances behind