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Not going to be an armchair shrink here, but I do hope you feel better soon eventually. And I hope you reach out to someone like this in "real life" as well, and maybe get the help and support you need.

I don’t know really where to post this but I guess I’m looking for some sort of cathartic moment. I have never really admitted this to myself or anyone really, I guess I have been in denial about the reality of the situation; when I was 19 I visited a psychiatrist because I had been feeling suicidal. The doctor diagnosed me as having Bipolar mood disorder type II, recommended that I enter therapy (which I never did) and take anti-depressants and mood stabilisers which I took for about 7/8 years, which I, on my own just stopped taking maybe two years ago, I was sick of being medicated, like a zombie with the blinds pulled down. I never really accepted it as a fact, my thought process was closer to: ‘nah, I can’t be Bipolar those people are crazy, and I am not crazy’. In the last month though maybe I am coming to terms with all of this, maybe it isn’t normal to be energetic, optimistic, kind, sociable, full of life one day, and to wake up the next feeling like a lead blanket has covered my body and mind, unable to even function as a normal person, I can’t even so much as eat or clean up a dirty tea cup, how can something so normal become an insurmountable task? Maybe it isn’t normal to erratically become sensitive to every little incident to the point of self-hate, shame, and anger. Maybe it isn’t normal to feel invincible and completely blinded to actions having consequences. I think my denial is caused by the types of people that wear these sort of things as a badge of honour, or as an excuse for what they do and how they act. I don’t want it to be an excuse or something to lean on, I hate it, I hate how it is defined as a thing people go through, like an observational phenomenon, I want to take responsibility for myself, because that is all I am, myself, and if I wasn’t me, I wouldn’t feel this way, right? I don’t really know what to do, or even if there is anything to do. It isn’t like there is a stimuli or an event that needs discussing, there isn’t a problem to analyse and solve, it is just the daily ebb and flow of my mind, existing in two extremes. I often feel like there is no one to relate to, no one that I can speak freely with, I know this is the role of a therapist but I don’t want a professional relationship, I want a personal one, I don’t want to open my wallet and mind to a stranger in a detached setting, it isn’t right. These feelings of isolation are compounded by my physical isolation, no family, few close living friends, this leads way to loneliness and pessimism, and when someone starts thinking this way they can’t see the forrest for the trees, I know people are close to me, love me, but I don’t feel it, it’s like I’m not even really here, like I’m on an extended holiday waiting to come back home. If people feel the same way, maybe it’s comforting to know people can understand me, because a lot of the time I don’t, I don’t know why I lose interest in my hobbies or passions day to day. I’m just sitting on the couch lamenting wasting a Saturday while discontented to not do anything to fix that, it would be very easy to do so, but I am unable to, there is no initiative. Thanks foe reading if you got all the way through it, even if no one replies it feels nice to let it out in the open, well at least ina very minor way.

Can't compare the two- Jürgen is a given name, while Fischer is a family name.

Spike, wishing you the best in this struggle mate, and also applaud the bravery of your post. I have my own demons and I understand a lot of what you said there. I think you're right about the impact of the isolation. That's bound to be a big impact and hopefully something that can be addressed with some changes like moving closer to home as you mentioned being on the cards. I hope you don't fixate too much about losing passions for hobbies over time, this happens to almost everyone. For example with football for me. And I felt down about it and started to psychoanalyse it. But what I realised with football was that what really made me love it in the first place was that it brought me together with people, and it had stopped doing that, because circumstances changed as I grew older... I went from watching it with my football team at the pub with regularity, and watching it at home in order to talk about the matches at training, and having a girlfriend that liked football more than I did, who watched games with me, whereas now days I left the football team, my wife is apathetic and I don't really have any real life friends I talk football with. This saps alot of the best bits out of it. Best not too put too much pressure on yourself to feel a certain way, as it can amplify any negative feelings. Hope you feel better soon mate

I love it when the grandson (Kaiden) stays overnight, I get a few treats like this, Scottish pancakes with chocolate spread and bananas all nice and warm.

Thanks John, I really do appreciate it. I think we are a lot more frail then we think we are, a lot of put on a brave face and make it seem like we are invincible but we've all been through the motions, I went through a similar thing to your wife. My most vivid memory, more vivid than even my wedding, or any other joyous moment, is the death of my grandfather. I remember everything, where it happened, the date, the time, the conversations, it was 24th of February 2008, my 14th birthday, it was just after lunch, around 3pm. I was sitting outside listening to an iPod I was given that morning as a gift, my grandfather had been gardening in the side yard at my nan's request. He was talking to me about my acne, it was bad and painful at the time, he mentioned when he was my age his father told him [piss on his hands and rub the urine on his face to kill the acne]. I wasn't sure about his advice and thought he was messing with me but he was dead serious. Then he went stiff and starting convulsing, I didn't know what was happening immediately, and still I thought he was messing with me but then it become painfully clear to me that he was having some sort of fit. I ran away to get someone, barefoot, my feet were cut up by rocks and sticks. He died. I was the last person to speak with him, I was the last person to see him alive, I was the person that saw him die. My family was so overcome with grief nobody stopped to think of me, the only person that gave me any thought was my friend that I called that evening, he came around and we watched Pulp Fiction. A week later he was buried, I didn't go to the Wake, instead I stayed home and my friend came to visit. We stole some beers and afterwards butterscotch schnaps, my friend invited around a girl he was keen on, I didn't pay her any attention, I didn't care if she was here or there, nothing really mattered. I saw people who hadn't been in our lives come and go as the funeral did, I was angry that they showed up for his death when they weren't there for his life, I felt angry that they had the nerve to grieve like I was. I still have nightmares about it, sometimes I think it may as well still be the 24th of February 2008, I don't think that day ever really ended for me.

Chin up buddy, write in here more often if you want to get things off your chest and clear your mind, if you look at myself and the wife, over the years we have had heartaches and upsets but we just gritted our teeth and got on with life. The wife had the heartache of seeing her 3-year-old brother get hit by a bus and killed and that played on her mind for years, I could always tell when his Birthday was coming up and we would sit there having a wine and then she would start sobbing and say "It's James Birthday today, he would have been......today" and I would try to comfort her, also her mother died when she was young and her father left home and the wife was bought up with her gran & grandad. I have had heartaches over the years too, my youngest niece in Australia committed suicide when she was only 19 years old and that played on my mind as I could always remember her as a wee baby and I would bounce her up and down on my knee. Then when I did my tours of duty in Northern Ireland where we had to go into the Belfast mortuary and do body checks of people that had been killed by explosions or shot dead, when you see young kiddies lying there, some only 2 years old and you knew they would never see life like I was doing. When I left the army I thanked god that I had my wife beside me as I suffered flashbacks for 5 years when I was asleep, crying, sobbing, shaking, and sweating, the wife would wake me up and make sure I was ok. Now I am 73 years old buddy and the wife is 74 come next Friday and we have pushed all of the bad memories behind us as we have a son & daughter who has given us 3 lovely grandsons so we can't think back about the heartaches above, wee Kaiden is staying the night and looking at him fast asleep has bought a smile to me and the wife's faces. As I said, buddy, chin up and say to yourself I am going to reach an old age like that old fart John and smile, thats our son's favourite word he calls me and writes that on my Birthday & Xmas cards "Happy Birthday/Xmas you old fart"

I’m genuinely fucking fuming. Manchester United supporters are being taken for absolute fucking mugs. On Friday, Ten Hag said he only want players for the future to suit his needs. Arnautovic? 33 year old carthorse? Get in the fucking sea. Falcao, Ibra, Ighalo etc. Like Neville said, it’s a pattern and the Glazers are taking everyone for fools. I think you could see genuine full scale mass protests if this continues. What else can you do?

Totally wrong. We need to give a manager like Ten Hag time to build, currently he's having to deal with absolute dogshite players he's inherited. Fred, Dalot and Mctomminey have no place in the starting eleven of any club fighting for trophies. Also touching on Arnautovic, total disgrace. Ten years ago the Poundland Zlatan could have been an option but now, seriously. 33, racist. Clubs gone to the dogs.

Haaland swears on live tv ..again

Arnautovic? Bid rejected apparently.

@Spike That is some story and I think your grandfather was on the level rather than trying to be funny, there is an alternative school of thought on the benefits of urine therapy. I tried it once when fasting by putting a couple of drops of urine into a cup of water and drinking it. I did not feel better yet got a groan from my digestion. Never tried it again. I also saw saw psychotherapist in my 20's, one helped though he said I was fencing with him. I wasn't yet I realised something and I could move on. I also found when younger I was getting facial spots and found it was bacon, if I cut that out the spots went. Though I was only eating bacon because the milk tasted funny and that was because the milk companies had done a deal to use a bovine growth hormone in the milk. Most people could not taste though I asked the milkman who I knew from five-a-side football and he said loads were complaining.

Can look into it

I don't know if it is 'legit' or not but I wouldn't be opposed to WA. I know you and one other person from my hometown...

@Devil-Dick Willie maybe I'm biased but when I was at a bar in the Chicago airport I met a Japanese-American man whose is from Hiroshima originally. Maybe I'm being sentimental but meeting someone whose parents and family were survivors of the nukes is a very confronting reality. He spoke of how 'they didn't know what it was, or that it could happen. Then knew they could be bombed but not like that. The next day my aunts were in the town helping people, looking through the rubble, they didn't know they could get sick from the fallout, they didn't even have cloth masks to wear, they had no protection from it. They didn't need to do that to us'. Goddamn man, it just kills me inside when people are so cold about it. They say it like it is a fact 'it had to be done'. 'They deserved it'. 'They were war criminals'. 'It's for what the did in Asia and Pearl Harbour'. Geez America is fine dishing out divine retribution, but where is the retribution for the Native Americans? Where is the retribution for enslaving humans? It is the holier than thou attitude, the dismissiveness of the actuality of using the most powerful weapon ever on humans.

There is a very real argument that it saved many lives, but the thing that irks me is the lives it saved were of American and Japanese servicemen who had signed their names on the dotted line and knew the risks of combat. In exchange, thousands of civilians died and a generation after suffered from the long term effects of nuclear fall out.

Just heard Martin Tyler's Hillsborough comments. It sounded like when listening back, that he was mentioning Hillsborough and hooliganism as two separate issues that caused a crisis in the game at the time, rather than suggesting hooliganism caused the Hillsborough tragedy.

77 years ago USA nuked Japan twice. And to this day people still say ‘iT hAD to Be DoNE’. That’s some top quality brainwashing. I’m sure of Germany won people would say ‘It HaD tO BE dONe’ as well. It’s an atrocity, there is no other description. Am I the crazy one? I would think the only two times a nuke has been dropped on real humans is one of the worst things to have ever happened in the history of humans.

Man, how Kaiden has grown over the years, from this... to this... No more watching shows like Postman Pat, Bob The Builder, Fireman Sam etc and now using a mobile phone and games and beginning to read books, he is here for a sleepover and will take a couple of these books to bed tonight.

I have no sympathy for any player that joined them this summer. Raphinia, Christianson and Kounde all had good contracts lined up for them at Chelsea but they chose to put on there birdbox cloth over there eyes and chase the Barcelona fantasy that died when Neymar left. The same with Lewandowski who 'fancied a new challenge'. All you have to do is look at how legends of the club have been treated, the mental transfer spending, the way they're forcing out players with smear campaigns and the Frenkie De Jong story to know something is seriously wrong. It needs one of the Governing Bodies to impose some form of transfer ban to save the club from itself. This gambling of a Super League that only three clubs seem willing to participate in at present is crazy and something UEFA shouldn't be best pleased about. If the stories about Martin Braithwaite holding out for his full pay are true then he should be hailed as a hero. He was signed in completely unreasonable circumstances and the smear campaign pointing out his wealth through his property investments is completely unreasonable. If they release him because he won't take a pay cut without paying his wages he's going to get a lot more than the club owe him now at court.

You could still get a 1.78m OLE