The word “live” is a word to play with. Obviously, in order to be physically alive I need air, water, food. To be emotionally alive is a trickier question—what do I need to feel emotionally alive? Having had several depressive episodes in my life, one quite bad one, the question comes into my head, “What was I lacking at that point/those points in my life where I felt emotionally dead?” It’s a very difficult question, one that I can only scratch the surface of. For both very bad episodes, someone close to me had died—my mother, my sister—at a time when they seemed so vibrantly “alive”, when both had so much to live for and they exuded that happiness with life. I think subconsciously, at least in the case of my sister’s death, I felt guilty for my being alive because I didn’t feel that same joy in life. I was working hard at an emotionally draining job. I was trying to parent a little girl on my own, feeling when she cried that I was a crap parent, feeling when friends hurt her that i