Newbie alert! *SU TRIGGERS*

[Hippomite]

Hello!
I'm Lucy, I found DWD through Google after trying and failing to find in-person support groups close to me.

I'm 39, have struggled with depressive episodes on and off for 25 years, and feel myself slipping into the 'darkness' again.

Right now I have a loving fiancé, a well-paid job (literally just been given a pay rise!), finally managed to buy our own home... and yet still I feel so miserable. My self-worth is at rock bottom, I feel like a fraud and a failure. Objectively I know how lucky I am and what a privileged life I have... I guess I'm just hoping for inspiration from others on how they managed to believe in themselves and beat the depression.

It feels stupid even to write this when people have genuine struggles and my only struggle is with my own mind. But I have no-one I can talk to (I don't have close friends) and my fiancé just doesn't understand. He is such a positive person, when I try to tell him how I feel he tells me I just need a holiday!

My father was clinically depressed and committed suicide when I was 19. I came home and found him dead. Obviously this was incredibly traumatic and I feel it has had a really lasting impact on my life, but after 20 years much of the pain is gone and what's left is the fear that I am predisposed to suffer with my mental health the way he did. The older he got the worse it was. (Of course I've told my fiancé all this too but to no avail!)

I have suicidal thoughts, but because I know the pain it causes I am also very certain that I wouldn't carry anything through. I can't tell my fiancé or my family this because I know it would hurt them so much. That just leaves me with a weird sense of being 'trapped', and wishing I would die by some random means instead.

So, after that rambling and gloomy introduction (!!) I guess I'm hoping to find some understanding, advice and - hopefully - a will to live that I can then feed back into the community!

Thanks for reading,
Lucy