I DON’T LIKE ME OR MY LIFE VERY MUCH

DEAR Bel,

I’M VERY concerned about my dark thoughts. I’m 48, still living at home with my parents, with no job, no money and no savings. I haven’t worked for ten years and have endured three open-heart operations and a stroke, and have an aneurysm on my aorta.

I won’t harp on about my health, as it will seem like I’m feeling sorry for myself. But I just don’t like me or my life at all. My confidence is at an all-time low. I’m menopausal, but cannot take HRT.

I have hardly any friends and my boyfriend of three years left me last year for a younger model. We didn’t live together but I loved him — and do still, very much.

Please don’t give me tips on how to forget him, as I don’t want to since he is a part of me. I long for the love between us. Mum (to whom I’m extremely close) says that he ‘killed’ me, as he ghosted and blocked me.

I could easily take my own life. I only stay for my mother as I couldn’t hurt her. But in a way I wish she wasn’t here so I could leave this ‘life’ too. As James Stewart said in It’s A Wonderful Life, I just wish I’d never been born.

This lockdown horror has just served to top it all. Advice columnists say, ‘Find something to cling to’ — but I have nothing. HANNAH

FRANKLY, it’s impossible to read this without feeling very anxious about you, and so I must urge you to seek help as soon as possible. When you feel that life is not worth living, don’t hesitate to call the Samaritans (day or night, for free) on 116 123.

You have multiple health problems to deal with, plus the menopause, plus a broken heart — and as if that were not enough, it’s clear that you have a personality prone to melancholy. In itself that is not unusual; the idea that everybody can and should be ‘happy’ is a modern delusion which does l i ttle to help people.

But at the moment things feel much worse (as you say) for millions of people because of the virus and lockdown. You sound as if you are suffering from very real depression, which is why I ask you to badger your GP for an appointment as soon as possible.

Do you have the will to try to help yourself? Can you see a future? You say you have ‘nothing’ to live for, and yet you love your mother and say you are staying alive for her sake.

That actually negates the bleakness of your last phrase — because you do cling to something. That relationship. You live with both parents, and presumably they need you as much as you need them. That has to be a starting point.

What’s more, you have no idea whether or not you will find love again. You found the last chap relatively late in life — and, even though you’re still grieving the relationship, there is no reason why that shouldn’t happen again.

It will be hard, but please take the first steps for your mother’s sake. I suggest starting a conversation with her about how she felt when she first held you in her arms. What kind of little girl were you? You say you feel ‘dark’. But I wish you courage to step forward into the light.