<font color="RED">To Everyone on the Forums Community --</font>

When I started coming here a few months ago, I could hardly move. I was almost paralyzed with fear and indecision. Last night, after I left the chat room, I realized how important it has been to feel like a member of this community.

I have not been judged for being ill. In fact, it is through the comments I read on the depression forum that it sunk in that I am ILL. I am not lazy, I am not morally deficient, I am not a mental weakling. I could not "snap out of it" or "pull myself up by the bootstraps." I was not being a "drama queen" to get attention. In fact, I isolated deeper and deeper in this bat cave of an apartment that gets so little sunshine and light. Until at last, all I had were a few telephone contacts a month with people I've known a long time and my mom, and the Forums. I had to hear the message that this is an illness over and over and over again.

I was told to get medications and go back to therapy. And, eventually, I crawled out of the recliner, where I sit with the laptop growing out of my thighs like a bionic creature, and did these things.

I started PM'ing a few people, as suggested, and gradually, I'd stop into the Chat Room for a few minutes here and there. Until finally it doesn't seem strange and foreign anymore. It feels . . . nice.

I am getting better. I got some paying work by forcing myself by keeping an apppointment that I felt too messed up to keep, but I did it anyway. I feel great to be doing something I enjoy that pays money. If you read my posts, you see that I may not yet always be able to keep commitments, but by the grace of God, I kept one that made a big difference in my life. I hope to someday be the person I used to be who was able to keep just about all commitments.

I am not going to be nominated for Miss Congeniality this year; I have a long way to go to get a life that is in balance, adding exercise and better nutrition, and more efforts to mix with people. A lot more efforts. I fear backsliding to where I've been, and some days are worse than others.

But when I left the Chat Room last night, I knew that people were not going to chatter about how, "Boy, she's a strange one, isn't she."

And I realized how very, very important the forums have been to my progress. It was a place where I could come and whine as much as I wanted to and not be judged. Where no one said mean things to me. Or tried to push his or her way of life on me. Offered a lot of dumb, meaningless platitudes. Or tried to make me feel guilty because I hadn't kept some commitment, or lived up to my or someone else's expectations, or because I felt life wasn't worth living. Couldn't make a decision. And struggled with this mean illness.

Yet, at the same time, there was wisdom and insight and putting things in a different perspective, in contexts I hadn't thought of before. And repetition, so that ideas such as "you have an illness" and "you may benefit from medication" and "why don't you see a therapist?" could sink through my head. Through the miasma of pain I've been in.

I read the words of what that pain feels like to others, and I knew that I was not alone. I wasn't strange or weird, it had happened to others. And they struggled, too. And for some, it had gotten better, and they stayed on the forums to help others. And their messages gave me hope.

Sometimes someone would thank me for caring -- and I wouldn't feel so lonely and worthless and disconnected from people and life when that happened. Or offer hugs, personal hugs to me!!!!, and that felt great, too.

But mostly having the community HERE was important. The gradual feeling that there was a place where I could come where it was okay just to be. Just to be.

<font color="blue">Thank you with all my heart, Forums friends. And Dr. John for making this possible.</font>