Interesting combination of responses.
Witty - you are a person still - you are worthy of being treated as such. You offer so much support to others via the forum that I respect your views.
Acy - I don't disagree with anything you have put.
Matt - you agreed with Acy - so again I do not disagree.
Prinn - I wasn't saying that people couldn't give valid advice while troubled themselves.
morning rush - this forum isn't just for those who can "shout the loudest" - it's about everyone seeking support and I'm sure I wouldn't mind listening.
I guess what I was trying to get at - is why we don't look at it from a "lead by example" principle. Show people that we can manage the varying degrees of mental/physical health and still live, then maybe there'd be more of an impetus towards living over suicide.
In follow up to that "lead by example" line - I went from fighting with my previous workplace and my depression (and ok, in chat it didn't overly come across at first), to seeking out treatment through doctors. Then when I felt I was getting better - I weaned off the anti-depressants myself (and that didn't actually help, it spun me to worse. Not once, but twice, as my dosage of medication was upped). After all that and then early this year I threw in a few other factors of family history and found that there was a possibility (which was confirmed as a reality in june), that it could have been linked to a hereditary condition I have. Yet in spite of all of that - I have spent more than half of the last 22 months in work than out of it (marginally, but 12 months in and 10 months out), I have a girlfriend, I do things that I want to do. And I still have two psychologist sessions to go through before I'm without that side of support, but things are in general looking a lot better for me.
The idea here is that I'm showing through my choice of words, that I have been able to pull myself out from thinking about ways to hurt myself or even off myself, to finding reasons to carry on living and enjoying what each day brings. For a contracted 20 hours of work (often pushing up to 42) - so looking at around 25% of time in a week at work, and a further 56 hours (33.3%) in bed, that still leaves me over 40% of the time available within a week to do things for myself. Admittedly some of that is getting to and from work, but I have all that time to spend living, so why should I let it go to waste? Why can I not make the best of what I have rather than focusing on what I can't?
And there's the old argument of "easier said than done" - Ok, so it doesn't always work in the way mine has (I guess I got rather lucky). But could you make a positive story by showing others that you can make the best of what you have? Getting to work towards your dreams one day at a time?
Tomorrow... is the first day... of the rest of your life. It's up to you to make what you can of it.