It's funny or perhaps sad but when I saw the title, I thought this was a thread of mine. I have made similar threads on a few different forums when I was feeling really down. So initially I did not want to look because I feared triggering myself, depending on what I had written the time I felt down. But I saw lots of good advice here. From people relying on faith, to remaining alive for their pets or therapist, to trying to make it just through the day, to reminding themselves that moods pass if you are patient, to ground yourself like by yoga or exercise.

Personally I don't have an answer or practical suggestion. But your post reminded me of my own question before and my own feeling of not feeling cared for or not feeling that I matter. Reminding me of my thoughts that me caring for myself is very hard if I matter to nobody but myself (and even that is far from 100%). I thought about how many people must feel that way at some point in their lives. Depression is so common. It becomes a chore to do even small things. I have not brushed in a week. I sometimes don't shower for a whole week. It's a constant struggle, taking care of yourself takes time and energy. I don't know how I used to do it before. I don't know how others do it. I've tried medications over the years but still limping. This issue became magnified for me after I was traumatized following my sibling's psychiatric hospitalization. I could not deny the feelings any longer. There is something very indifferent and cruel about trauma that it seems to diminish everybody it touches, make people feel they are insignificant and that death and destruction is random and unpredictable and we are powerless in face of it.

But it got me thinking further as to why it mattered to me so much that I should matter to someone else? That person could die too. They too are human just like me. So what if somebody thinks I matter? But I think there is something to it. It's similar with faith. It's this idea of relating to some being outside ourselves, be it people or pets or God, whatever. Consider the two biggest religions: Muslims surrender and submit to God, stop trying to carry the world on their shoulders, and instead live life according to God's rules and for sake of God. Christians too surrender to God's will and talk about Christ living through them. They personify God even further and talk about God as the Father and the Son. Of God saving them. Oh how many of have at one point or another looked for a savior in someone, in a parent, in a romantic partner, in a doctor or therapist....

Whether we matter to God or to our family and friends or to our pets, it seems human life can not be lived solely for oneself. We are social, by nature. That's partly why putting someone in single-cell confinement is considered a kind of torture. That's why also I am making this post now, because I want to matter to you and I feel you matter to me. I don't know you and we are probably very different people but we all hurt. Whether someone attempts suicide or cuts herself or gets high and drunk or does binge eating or promiscuous sex, it may be that all share similar kind of painful feeling of not mattering to others or to the world. That whether we live or die, whether we are healthy or not, we are insignificant. That we are "just" some person, just some patient, just some worker, just some....

At some deep level perhaps it feels our ego is fragile. Our body is fragile. That like a flower stem in a storm, it can not withstand the pressures of life if its only reason it to bloom is for itself. I'm not saying that the flower does not matter without presence of other life forms that care for it. It matters regardless. But that sense of mattering to others is not going to be really felt, unless one feels actively cared for.

In my story the flower in a vase is regularly cared for but the flower has not felt it. Yet on this day, the lady of the house has come down in the rain to take her back inside and safe from the storm. As she sets the vase down, she casually caresses the flower petals and dries the leaves and collects the torn leaves lying by the stem and sighs and stares out the window. The flower who thought nobody cared for her now suddenly tears up and feels love pulsating through her leaves and petals, like sun shining from the very inside, its ruby petals coming to life all bright and lively, like a heart beating strongly and fearlessly against the thunder and lightning raging in the skies.