Three of the people I currently listen to for the words of wisdom and great inspiration were where you've been. Smack flat on the bottom, wishing to die. Too depressed to breathe.

Eckhart Tolle was quite young, living is some squalid human-treehollow in the middle of London, extremely depressed. Well not really living. He had a thought "I can't live with myself anymore", and maybe because he was so messed up it struck him as strange that he can be thinking such a thought. "I"? Who's "I" and how come this "I" can't live with "my self", so who then is "myself". It may seem like just stupid philosophy to you, or stupid play on words without any meaning, but this statement seems to have substance and truth, he really felt that "I cannot live with myself anymore". And rather than offing himself, he went in search of the "I" that was so different from the totally f-up "myself" that it could not tolerate it anymore. By morning he must have found it, because as daylight came in he was overwhelmed by the unbelieveable beauty of everything: a twig, a bird, a crumpled piece of paper. He spend 2 years sitting on a bench in a park, in complete bliss. He writes books now to help us, who are still lost in suffering, depression, worry, loneliness.

This is from a book review:
"So many people live acting through the pain of their past or anxiety about the future. There's this onslaught of inner chatter inside our heads...

I've got to get married by the time I'm 30.
If I just get that job, I'll be happy.
If I can get out of debt then I'll be free.
I've got to make enough money to buy that house.
If I lose weight then I'll be happy.
No man could ever love me.

We become identified with that never-ending voice inside our heads. So we begin to live life unconsciously. We actually become those negative thoughts.

We put enormous amount of stress and anxiety on ourselves because we see life as a means to an end. We're always trying to get something to make us feel better, whether that be a house, car, husband, job, etc.

We define our own worth or success in life by how much money we make, whether or not we're happily married, have enough money, etc. And unfortunately when "that thing" we want never comes, we feel we've failed.

Life becomes a never-ending journey of trying to obtain something in order to be happier or fulfilled.

In other words, we identify with form (our thoughts, material possessions, job and marital status, etc.) instead of being connected with our true inner being at this present moment.

In the book, Eckhart teaches you how to shut off all that inner chatter by learning how to become present. That doesn't mean to deny the fact you need money or want a good husband, job, etc. It also doesn't mean you shouldn't set goals and want to have nice things in life.
What it means is that you acknowledge or become aware of your thoughts -- staying present and recognize that you are not your job status or how much money you make. You are simply the awareness."
( http://www.attackdepression.com/info...art-tolle.html )

I know, I know, you are in torment and I am boring you with some self-improvement guru. You have had probably more of them dumped on you than you can shake a stick at, and they don't help you.

Here is what I think. It's kinda weird, sorry.

All this stuff that you can't manage, the rest of us had some degree of success in. Not all, not 100%, but not the total flat failure like you have been generating. Our partial success keeps us tied to these ideas. We think we suffer because we failed at achieving this or that, so we keep whipping ourselves harder to try more. We do not see that we suffer because we believe these lies.

Is there some part of you that just refuses to fit in in this thing we call reality? What do you know? Do you know that this world is an illusion and those things that your mind has been programmed to believe are necessaru to be happy, are completely unnecessary? Do you know that you could be in heaven, here and now if you could only stop believing that it matters whether you have a degree paper or not, whether someone hires you or not, whether people like and approve of you or not, whether you have a car, a house, a family, money, or a bank account? What do you know?