There's a good chance I'm losing my job in the next week, due to either my depression or undiscovered autism. It boils down to numbers management and corporate get to wank off to, except they can't because I can't be assed to interact with cruel and barbaric customers that either outright ignore me or berate and judge me over petty bullshit, or blame me for everything dysfunctional going on. I don't speak to them beyond the dirt minimum because literally anything else just drains me and makes me feel worse because it just goes unheard anyway.
So I don't know if I'll even be able to afford a gym membership. Either way when I'm there I'd probably feel like some sort of disgusting alien that doesn't belong.
That's rough. I know what you mean about not feeling like fitting in there, I felt the exact same for the first couple of weeks. After a while it became a habit, and now I'm a regular. Doesn't mean I know anyone there, but at least I don't feel too weird (I always feel kinda odd in public anyway). In my experience most people are there to do their own thing and focus on their own activities, rather than judge other people. I think in the 4 months I've gone I've had maybe 4 or 5 people strike up conversation or ask me something while I was there. And sometimes it would be helpful stuff, like random people giving tips about what I was doing.
Like Reelya said, there are other options for exercise. I found the gym helpful for getting me started just because it cost money for the membership, so I wanted to make the most out of my money. And the environment helped keep me focused on completing exercises rather than slacking off like when I tried doing body-weight exercises at home.
I think primarily what I was trying to say in my earlier post was that I found it really helpful to set a goal for myself and try to achieve it. That's how I broke out of my depression. I found things I wasn't happy about in my life, the things that made me depressed, and I found what I could do to fix those problems, or alleviate those problems.
For example, I didn't like how I was weak and couldn't rely on myself to do physical activities. Solution, go to the gym and get stronger.
Or I wasn't happy how I didn't have a job. So I started looking, sending out applications, and etc until I got a part time job for a while.
This was basically what all the therapy I tried in the past for my depression told me to do, but because at the time I didn't bother with anything other than show up to therapy appointments, I didn't get anything out of it. And the anti-depressants I tried helped me stop being so miserable I'd lay in bed all day, but unless I started setting goals and trying to straighten things out in my life, the anti-depressants would only be a happy pill I'd be stuck on.
Obviously, depending on the cause of a person's depression, the treatment will vary, and some people may be depressed about problems in life that they can't do much about. But in my experience this was what I did to try to help myself and what I've had the most success with in dealing with my depression. Haven't had professional therapy or anti-depressants in a couple years now.