and just so all alone feeling. I have no close friends--years of depression makes it almost impossible to maintain friendships, yet I was able to sustain a close connection with a  kindred spirit I've known since high school (who also had major depression). He killed himself on my birthday. Within just a few short years I've lost so many. My mother, Grandmother, my older sister, my stepfather, my writing mentor, my father, my dearest uncle, my other older sister, and now my brother has cancer too. I don't know what to do with all this pain, I miss them so much. Everyday. I don't feel like "me" anymore, I am not "me" anymore. My family is shrinking, my heart has died with each death. I sometimes wish I could die and be rid of it. When my 17 year old daughter, who is an addict, went missing for a week last year I nearly gave in. Finally I made myself flush my remaining ambien and the moment I did, I regretted it. I know it was the right thing to do but God there's just no escaping this hurt. I ache. I yearn for them. My eldest sister was my absolute best friend.  We often said we were actually twins, born ten years apart, since Mom was such a procrastinator. We had inside "things"...jokes, sayings, knowledge, intimacy, things that only "we" had experienced through the years. When I was born, she was ten years old--upon bringing me home from the hospital, my mother, who wasn't thrilled about having a fifth child, put me in my sister's arms and said, "Here. She's yours." And I had always been "hers" -- we lived together, we were inseparable, she was my 'tachment as we always called one another. To see her wither away in hospice...I just wanted to crawl up into that bed beside her and go with her. I miss her so much. I miss everyone so acutely, but her, so very, very profoundly. Each night I wonder how I've gotten through another day. I just don't think I can do it any more. I'm exhausted, angry and so very sad.

Wow, what an upbeat post. Please forgive me. I have no one to talk to who really knows how clinical, major depression, let alone this level of grief, feels.