Hello.  I’ll start by saying that I’ve had issues with both depression and anxiety for over 20 years.  I’ve been hospitalized.  In the past, I’ve had to drop out of school and leave work because of my illness.  I’m 44 and still live with my parents.  I recently had another relapse of depression which lasted 4 months.  I have a psychiatrist, but it feels like things have degenerated to simply keeping my symptoms at bay.  Maintenance of my ‘chemistry’ etc.  Whilst I have more or less recovered, its now a situation of feeling utterly lost.  Like I have no purpose or reason for being alive.  Although I have reconnected with some of my friends and spend several hours a day doing my art, the sense of feeling lost, hopeless and ‘I don’t know what to really do with myself’ persists.  During my relapse, my father was rushed to emergency because of a problem with his lungs.  As I watched the ambulance drive away with both my parents inside, my thoughts turned to their eventual death.  Firstly, I had no idea what was truly happening with my father.  Thankfully he’s OK now.  But a day will come when my mother and father will leave this earth.  I feel that reality will crash upon me like a wave.  I will be completely alone.  Because of my illness, I am still dependent on them.  I am not a self-sufficient person.  How will I cope?!  I’ve been having thoughts of suicide and ‘escape’ in response to both of these things.  I plan on speaking to my psychiatrist about these issues when next we meet, but there is no medication he can prescribe for it.  Surely this is an existential problem.  But I feel like I have no answer.

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