Hi everyone, let me start off by saying that this is a first for me. I haven't spoken with many other people with CF, nor have I joined any chat forums to discuss my situation. I have a friend with an illness that recommended trying out a CF support website, so I'm hoping that sharing some of my life will feel good to get out. I'm a 25 year old male living with Cystic Fibrosis. Throughout my childhood I was hospitalized 1-2 times a year for 2 week stays do to the illness. Growing up as a child was hard for me, my social skills arent as good as they could be. In school I always felt like an outcast and didn't make many friend. Up until the age of 12 I was fairly sick with the disease, but thankfully my lung capacity and PFT's started getting better instead of worse. Hospital visits were cut down to about every 4-5 years. By age 17 I really started to get depressed, never really feeling like I fit in with anyone. At that point I really didn't care much about my life and I reverted to drug use. As ridiculous as it seems because I have CF, I started smoking pot very heavily. Pot lead to mild drinking and LSD use as well. This went on for almost 2 years. I would be high from morning till night, never coming home (as my parents would not have accepted this.) It wasn't until around 19 when my parents had hard evidence of my drug us that they confronted me about it. I broke down and cried explaining that I was looking at it as a form of slow suicide because I knew it would eventually kill me. I went into drug counseling and was able to completely clean up my act. One thing that helped my decision to quit was the girl I was seeing at the time. I had planned on spending my life with her, and knew my time would be cut short if I had kept up that lifestyle. Her and I ended up together for 5 years (age 18-23.) I broke off my relationship with her because I felt I needed some kind of change in life and I was not happy with myself. I had never really gotten to know the person that I am. I ended up leaving this person for someone that had a 2 year old daughter. At the time it seemed right for me, my emotions quickly became attached to this new person, a person that I had actually been working with as well. Her and I ended up moving in together, even though something always seemed to be wrong with my decision. This person turned into a nightmare, someone I had wished I never met. She resented many things about me and treated me horrible. I over compensated at the time because I knew she had a lot of bad things happen to her throughout her life, so I just thought "well, she's treating me like that because of her past." This relationship was extremely unhealthy for me. One thing I have noticed is that stress and anxiety can often trigger my body into becoming ill. My immune system lowers and the pseudomonas begins to inflare. Within 1 year of being in a relationship with this person I was hospitalized twice, which I haden't been in 4 years. After the second hospitalization I started realizing that something wasn't right, but still did nothing about it. In December of 2002 my doctor had told me that because of the amount my lung capacity has dropped in the past year, she wanted me to go on the list for a double lung transplant. That news hit me like a ton of bricks. Everything seemed gray at the time. I fell into a depression, which I think is understandable. I had been fairly healthy for so many years, and to have this come about took me by surprise. Instead of support from the person I was with I got grief because I was moody and didn't help with her problems as much. By April of this year I ended the relationship, moved out and am now living in an apartment that I built on my parents property. My parents have been tremendous support for me. I have now been single for about 8 months and find myself slowly slipping back into my past. My depression is coming back, my dealing with all of the past years events has been extremely difficult. I have nobody around that can truly understand what I'm going through, that makes it hard to talk with friends and family. I am someone that enjoys being in a relationship and sharing myself with someone, being alone is getting hard. Especially now because of my added health issues with needing a transplant, I fear that I will die alone. It's hard meeting girls now and having to explain my situation, I feel like I have too much baggage. Sadly for me, being in a relationship fill a void in my life, that void is beggining to eat away at me. I know I need to start dealing with things better, but I don't know how. There are days when it concerns me for some of the things I do now, but other days I really don't care what happens to me. If there is anyone out there that would be willing to discuss this further, or if anyone has questions, please post a reply. Feel free to ask anything, I am trying to open up my horizons and communicate on a level that I was not able to years ago. Thanks for listening.