(Sorry for how long this ended up being)
I've just spent a half hour reading through this thread to see what I've missed and I'd like to just say something which I hope will inspire people into a different way of thinking.
I'm a 24 year old man with not much experience at being an adult after a strange period of my life where I was in a coma for 3 years from my 18th birthday until I was 21. It's a really strange experience for 3 years of your life to pass you by, at such an important time where I was right in the middle of doing my a levels. My girlfriend (now wife) had stuck by me for the whole 3 years and I have the utmost respect for her as an 18 year old girl to come and see me once a week for the whole 3 years and 4 months, missing just a few weeks. Through those 3 years I missed my niece being born and the deterioration and death of 2 of my grandparents as well as a family dog who I had grown up with and loved very much.
When I 'woke up' it was a strange sensation as I remembered the last things that had happened in my life like they had just happened, but then to be told it was 2012 and I'd missed 3 years of my life; it took months to get over. 3 really important people in my life before my accident had died, I had a niece that was almost 3 who didn't have a clue who her uncle Andy was, and due to timing I had missed out on all of my qualifications.
Needless to say when being told the story by my close friends and family of how my then girlfriend had acted to come into the hospital, read to me, change my clothes, style my hair and even play my favourite songs in my ears through headphones, I took some inheritance from grandparents and bought an engagement ring, took her to Paris and proposed.
When I was ready I went to Liverpool College and did a Journalism BTEC for 2 years which then was followed a NCTJ course which led me to my job that I have now as a researcher for the Liverpool ECHO.
People in this thread have been up to date with the story of my wife having a miscarriage and after the ordeal I had been through and how that had affected me it made it feel as if the 3 years of hard work I had done to get myself back to where I had been as a person and had made some progress into my life in terms of work, qualifications and getting married. When my wife, Kayleigh, had the miscarriage we were both devastated as we felt ready to start our family, she'd given up her modelling career after getting pregnant and it all got to her. She went into a deep deep depression and we resolved the situation by both going to individual therapy sessions and we got the advice to try again, which we did and due to a seemingly high fertility in one or both of us, Kayleigh was pregnant again and although it was a very quick and painful process, it blew over very quickly and we moved on.
The thing I really want people to take from this post is that no matter how dark your situation or even if you are a lifeless lump of bones for three years, you have people there for you. You might not even know them yet, you might have known them your whole life, but you need to trust those people with the responsibility of making you happy again, making you yourself again, because they care for you and love you so much that that is their priority; to see you happy. This ranges from family to friends to your GP to everybody on this thread. People can have this unruly quality of making other people feel brilliant, as bad as it seems your own brain wants to make things.
Now I have a son, a wife, a life, a job and most importantly of all, happiness. And it's absolutely brilliant. This post is to try and persuade people to join me where I am now, it's a long and difficult process but with the help of yourself and the help of others, you can do it! Good luck