I want to share with the community my journey with Depression; not because I want pitty or sympathy ...but an understanding ; that is all I ever wanted by sharing my experiences;... my journey through depression began when I was Thirteen ; when my mother met which is now her ex boyfriend; my sister and I had finished out each of our school year only to find out we were moving in with his parents; but before that happened; one day I came home from school and on my way into the kitchen and out of nowhere I get his fist in my face ; little did I know it was only the beginning of the two year nightmare; when we did move in it was at night and still remember walking into their pig barn that night ; we were given a week to settle in than I was expected to pick wood from their wood pile that they bagged or put into baskets for them to sell as for a profit; and one day I recall while I was picking wood for them my mothers boyfriend was picking alongside myself and out of nowhere I had been hit on my head with a piece of wood and on another occasion while picking wood again I had stepped on a rusty nail and still recall what he said “I don’t know why I’m even doing this for you” I found that rather cold ; than came the day when we had moved into a house on a dirt road that we had lived for two years and little did I know that he would get drunk and high on cocaine; he would not only drag me by the hair and slap me on the head , being made to kneel on raw rice in the corner; but during the two years he had shoved my face in dog shit ; he was cheating on my mother but I still remember another occasion where he said to me “ come lay down with me “ little did I know he was high on cocaine and drunk all at once and the next thing I had noticed was that he had placed a pillow over my face and I recall saying to him “I can’t breathe “ ( while my face was under the pillow) I ended up squirming out from under the pillow and ran off. And I do also recall once while we were “wrestling “ I thought to myself here’s my chance to exact everything he has ever done to me ; I punched him in the nuts after that I ended up running off again. Than came the day we came back to his parents house I was not expecting what was to come when my mom had told my sister and I to get our shoes on and we had walked to the college some miles away and caught the bus back to Windsor; some years would go by afterwards and several other fellows my mother dated and several other places that we moved to and my mother did take me to confront him but what he gave me was a “ shit happens “ ; than my mother met another guy who is now my stepfather ( he did try to connect with me but I didn’t allow it) so we ended up living with him and I moved out on two separate occasions once while I was 17 and had to move back in with them after a year of living with my friend; it wasn’t until I was 19 that the depression really set in after I had lost a job and from 19 to the time I was 27 I had already had been to a psychiatrist and was diagnosed and during that time my mind was a vegetable ( I had shut down emotionally and mentally from the effects of the depression) things did get a little better while I was on Prozac but it had kept me up at night and the psychiatrist had prescribed sleeping pills so I can sleep ( I really didn’t find that psychiatrist very helpful I really didn’t understand the process of tell him what is going on rather than telling him what I am thinking and feeling I really didn’t understand) I was still unable to think in any way. But what I found that did help was by learning new things my brain was a sponge i really couldn’t get enough knowledge my mind was hungry the more I learned the more I was getting closer to my “ normal “ I always felt something was wrong that was the depression and most recently I was diagnosed with ADHD .