Thanks for this thread.
I almost wrote a similar one this morning.

Although I have never attempted suicide, I have been so very close many times in my lifetime, even as a child (c-PTSD and depression).

In a nutshell, my life became increasingly challenging with each passing year.

With a recent med change, I am "awakening" from a very foggy, detached kind of existence, which was full of paralyzing despair. I am looking back over the past several years, thinking --"Where the heck have I been?" There are years of my life "missing" somehow.

Just last night, I had attended a barbecue with a group of people I used to be very close with. They all live nearby and I have not seen them for 15 years! They have kept inviting me, yet I was in too much physical pain with severe physical illness, which was compounded by depression, c-PTSD, and now the swings involved in BP II .

Last night, I looked around the table and felt deeply grateful.
Yet, I also was feeling somewhat puzzled about how I had missed so much time with everyone there, along with deep grief for the time lost. (I last saw my friends' son when he was 4 y.o. and he's now headed for college.)

In feeling better, I can look back with a bit more clarity and see how I was deeply depressed.

Right now, I am very sensitive to any signs of "feeling down" or "low," kind of hypervigilant about it because I feel like I just cannot ever fall back into that type of "existence," it does feel like "the living dead."

Thanks for sharing your experiences.


WC