OK so I know my story isn't typical but I'd like to share it in hopes that it can help someone who may see light at the end of the dark tunnel and know that there is a chance it's not a train this time.

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I was diagnosed with lupus (if you're not familiar, it's basically the opposite of AIDS) in February 2006, dealt with it pretty well for a little over 2 years and then BOOM; life as I knew it came to an abrupt end in July 2008. At age 27 I found myself in hospital after having a stroke.

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Was in hospital for like 5 weeks and when I got home was when I realized life would never be the same again EVERYTHING was different and WAY harder to do with one side (left side \[thank goodness I am right handed\]) basically useless, I quickly became uncomfortable doing anything, especially walking. Somehow I learned how to go up and down the stairs in my mother's apartment (had to move back in to her place) pretty well. I didn't want to do anything except go to physical therapy which only lasted a couple of years (into early 2010) I had a girlfriend who lived in the Florida panhandle whom I got together with in March of 2008 and after physical therapy ended I started to become withdrawn and less willing to do anything outside of my house. Didn't work after and long story short she didn't like my change in attitude toward life and dumped me. That was the time  when depression really tightened it's grip on me.

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2010 was shitty as was 2011,2012, 2013 and most of 2014 all VERY shitty. SEVERELY depressed, just wanting to sleep all day and abusing ambien to accomplish this.

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In autumn 2014 something amazing happened and I never realized what I was doing until a couple of years later. I think it was sometime in September of 2014 I just decided to go for a walk. I barely got to the end of my block when I turned back. For the most part I remember that it really sucked but I liked it so I decided that later that week I would go for another walk that week and the following week I did the same. At first I walked a full mile in like 75 minutes but slowly I got a little faster. It totally started to snowball sometime in 2015 and sometime that year I started going to a gymnasium specially designed for disableds like myself and  some far worse off than me. I don't know what I was thinking during that time but I didn't realize that something was changing in me as I started to get into better (not great) shape my attitude was changing, I became more invested in and willing to do life again. In 2016 I opened an investment account on Stash invest (more on that in next paragraph) also in 2015 I made it a goal to start going to a regular gymnasium and by mid 2016 I accomplished that goal and had my walking mile time down to something like 45 minutes.

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2015, 2016 and 2017 were great. I started to want to do life again so much that I actually started to look for a job again (there's actually 2 reasons for that) first reason was that I wanted to start to do life again and  because my only income was Social Security disability Insurance, I learned that I could not use that money to put into the Stash investment account I opened which actually lead me to becoming interested in personal finance and investing. In 2017 I started talking to another girl who also lived on the other side of the continent and we started to like one another and after a few months of speaking we decided that since we were not looking for a relationship but by chance started to like one another that we would just go for it so we finally met in March of 2018. While I was looking for work I would take a Lyft or Uber one way or the other home to or from these interviews and I asked a driver one time what was the interview process like for that job and when he said there basically was no interview, only a driving record/background check I knew that was for me. in May 2018 I started driving for/with Lyft and thoroughly liked it.

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side-note: I had got my license back in early 2017 

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so I did Lyft until the end of 2018 and then started driving for Uber until the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. In November of 2019 my Mother went to a friend's party and spoke with her daughter and shared that I had become interested in personal finance and investing and she gave my mother her card, I contacted her and got roped into going to what I thought was a networking event but was more like a recruiting event to to be an independent financial advisor. The event was on December 21 2019 and I dodged the calls from the girl who's card my mother got and passed along to me.   


Ok I'm almost done.  


So since February 16 2020 I've been involved with this company and am on my way to being a fully licensed/certified financial advisor.  


Basically my story is one of a low odds chance way that someone can pull themselves out of depression and almost not even know it until they are totally out of it and realize it 2-3 years after they are away from that mindset.