What things do you think you cannot live without?

 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 it was somehow “my” fault, feeling her school grades were “my” fault. Heck, everything was my fault. But I LIVED through it and lived to feel emotionally well again.

So obviously I was able to live without self-esteem (for awhile), I was able to live without having a loving partner, I was able to live when my credit card debt was sky high, when I was desperately scrambling for a place to live, etc., etc.... I lived through the trying times.

So, when I look at this question, I answer, I can’t live without the things that physically sustain me. And emotionally, well, although I survived the bad times, I think that having loving, stable relationships, having economic security, feeling like my life is (somewhat) in my control, those are all things that make my life so much better. I play a role in that—so many of the things that happened to me after the big losses in my life could have been dealt with in a more sustaining, healthy way. In a way that would have made my life so much happier.

What do I mean? Well, I now know that having someone trustworthy and loving can mitigate so many losses. Can help us see our way through things. Losses are hard but they don’t have to be killing. There’s so much else to the world, I firmly believe we didn’t come into this world by accident, we have a place and a purpose and we will see that place and purpose in the responses we receive from the people—and even animals—around us. Right now, I don’t live a “big” life—I don’t have a career, I don’t hold any heavy duty volunteering job or anything. But I know that I mean something to the people I love, to my dog, even to the teachers that I sub for here and there.

Too many times I play that meaning down and when I am having a pity party I think “well no one cares.” That’s quite silly. I have lived my life in a way that shows that “I” care and because I care, I know that other people care too. Maybe not in the exact way that I would want them to, in that romantic movie type way, but in a way that matters. If I care first....

It’s not so much what I can’t live without, it’s what and how I live—and thrive—WITH. And whom.