My junior year of college, one of my roommates was a camp counselor at a camp for kids with diabetes. In arts and crafts, she made each of us something that summarized our essence as she saw it. My gift was a simple block of wood with the word "WHY?" painted on it in yellow script letters. She nailed me but good.

It's 11 freaking 30 at night and I'm freezing (28 degrees, 7 inches of snow on the ground) and I'm so frantic that this could go pretty much anywhere, but at bottom, I'm overwhelmed and that's what always leads to depression for me. Although right now I seem to be working my way into a panic attack.

Today is day 14 of a brand-new everything. I have a new place to live, by myself. I have a new job. I have a new city. And all I can do right now is lay in the dark and ask "WHY?" and cry.

My job is major high stress. I am utterly, completely alone -- a fond wish of mine, till it actually happened. All my friends are a minimum of 250 miles away. I'm having to give up my pdoc of 9 years. My therapist decamped for freaking Tennessee in April, right around the time I moved to my sister's, so I've been without therapy support all that time. I don't have insurance to pay for it again till Dec. 1, and then I only get 20 visits a year, like that's going to help me! Something happened this week to crush my one, teensy-tiny shred of self-confidence, and now I don't even have that. I don't know why I thought I could do this.

I don't know a soul in this town besides my landlady and my officemate. I'm trying to find a new church, but I keep running into repressive ones, instead of the diverse, multicultural, WELCOMING community I had at home. I am well and truly ALONE -- stuck with myself -- and that, right now, is a bad, bad thing.

I'm not suicidal, but I *have* been laying here thinking that I would prefer to be dead rather than alone. This hurts too bad. Not to mention that it is a bad time of year. I have an appointment with a new hematologist on Dec. 5. That is precisely the one-year anniversary of the day I went in the hospital and nearly didn't come out alive. People seem to be compelled to remind me of that. It is not an experience I care to relive. Reading my 150+ page chart from 5 weeks in the hospital was horrendously traumatic, and I know more than I really wanted to because of it. It haunts me, and scares me.

Great. So I'm alone, scared, and depressed, and there is not a soul within this area code I can call to help me through it. WHY did I think turning my life upside down was a good idea?