I am living a wasted life. Tell me how to live.

Stop hating yourself. You're a fine person. You're a fine person at 350 pounds or whatever you weigh, and if you make lifestyle changes that result in your losing a significant amount of weight, you'll be a fine person at that weight. If you make lifestyle changes and get healthier and don't lose one ounce, you'll be a fine person at that weight. If you make lifestyle changes and get healthier and gain a few pounds, guess what? STILL A FINE PERSON. You are not a number on a scale: you are a human being. If someone else, someone you cared about told you this story, what would you say to them? Would you say "Just give up" or would you say "You're an amazing person with lots to give the world; you just have to care about yourself enough to take care of yourself?" Okay, once again: STOP HATING YOURSELF. How to stop hating yourself? Therapy. But if you can't get to therapy, let me recommend Facing Codependence by Mellody, Miller, and Miller. And anything by Alice Miller (no relation to the other Miller). And anything by Geneen Roth, if you are a compulsive or emotional eater (as many, but not all, people who weigh hundreds of pounds over their preferred weight are). Here's another thing. Get a picture of yourself as a little kid. Think about that little kid, not as OH MY GOD THE HORRIBLE PERSON YOU GREW UP TO BE (note: you are not actually a horrible person, but your brain is trying to convince you of that), but as a little kid. That little kid deserves to be loved, right? That little kid deserves to be taken care of and fed delicious, healthy meals, right? That little kid deserves to do fun things, yes? Well, that little kid is you. You deserve all of that. Yes, you do. I love you, because you are a fellow human who is in pain and reaching out for help and trying to live your life. That's beautiful. You're beautiful. You're trapped in a world of pain and instead of taking it out on other people, you take it out on yourself, and I love you for your consideration of others. But now I want you, anonymous stranger whom I love, to show a little bit of that consideration for yourself. If you can't do it for yourself, do it for the people in your life who love you. If you can't do it for them, do it for me.

I am sad over the end of the marriage, not because I fell out of love, but because it is a wake-up call that I wasted years of my life. I lived years of my life in a marraige, and now that it has ended, nothing has changed. I failed, and I am still the same paralyzed, reclusive, anxious, undependable, scared girl. This attitude would imply that there is some sort of stone tablet that orbits Jupiter that states that it is the God's truth that we must do "something" (always undefined that one is!) with our lives and that if we do not, we are wasting our lives. Such a tablet would also apparently state that there is something wrong with being paralyzed, reclusive, anxious, scared and undependable. There is no tablet. There is no list of things that are right and wrong. All of that comes not from outside, but inside. What you have is powerful, controlling, toxic shame at who you are as a person. You have internalized another's demanding, painful attacks on yourself and turned them into your gut feelings, which you are referencing as the law of the universe. Therapy is in order, because you have avoided these feelings for years. You will have to now feel them. It will be painful, but they will finally pass. And then, you can start to live.

Everyone here has been very, very helpful. But i've been in the horrible black depression pit before, and I got dragged out through hard work, good drugs, good therapists, good friends, and time, and let me tell you the most valuable lesson I learned: Depression lies. Depression lies to you all the time. Depression lies and tells you you're wasting your life. Depression lies and tells you that your weight makes you unloveable, or that you're too screwed up to be a good friend, or that you're a worthless shell of a human being. The worst lie that depression tells, though, is that it's your fault, that maybe in other people depression is a serious mental illness but in you it's a character flaw, that if you just weren't so goddamn lazy you could get yourself to therapy and into a workout routine and get better. You are critically, urgently, possibly even emergently ill. If you are too ill to seek therapy through conventional channels -- and if you are having a hard time making it to your therapy, then you might well be -- I have had really, really good results from going to a local emergency room for help. Take a book and a sandwich; you're going to be there a while because you're pretty low-acuity compared to a stroke or a car accident victim, though you can minimize that by going at 7 AM on a weekday. But I was positively amazed at the sensitive, efficient, caring response I got from going to the ER for a psych evaluation, and how effectively they hooked me up with the appropriate treatment options. If your illness is preventing you from seeking treatment for that illness, the emergency room is an appropriate place to go. DEPRESSION LIES. Cross-stitch it onto a pillow if you have to, but remember that it lies, and lies, and lies, and lies.

This brought me out of some tough times... Wild Geese by Mary Oliver You do not have to be good. You do not have to walk on your knees for a hundred miles through the desert, repenting. You only have to let the soft animal of your body love what it loves. Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine. Meanwhile the world goes on. Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain are moving across the landscapes, over the prairies and the deep trees, the mountains and the rivers. Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air, are heading home again. Whoever you are, no matter how lonely, the world offers itself to your imagination, calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-- over and over announcing your place in the family of things.

Sounds like me! After a decade of antidepressants that didn't do anything (and, as a consequence, neither did I), it suddenly occurred to me: The depression was caused by lack of motivation, constant procrastination, easy distractability, and not the other way around. In other words: ADD. Ritalin did wonders. YMMV.

"Today I got a shower" was the big goal of my day for weeks back in the late summer of 2004, when I was getting untangled from the first Mr. F. Then it was "hey, I did the dishes," and some days, "hey, I got a shower AND I did the dishes." Leaving the house? Didn't even think about it. Getting a job? Ha, bullshit, what job. (NOTE: I was in a financial position to do this. If you're not, that's *very* different and you need to either put "today, I went to work" or "today, I contacted social services" on your list before anything else. MeFites are very good at connecting each other to the right social services in dire straits; if you need that, come back and ask when you have a question.) I did that for a year. Shower, dishes, make sandwich, go back to my room. Sometimes, I'd hang out with my extremely tolerant housemates. Occasional runs out to eat or get groceries or shop. Laundry, when I was feeling adventurous. "Today I'm gonna walk to the mailbox" was a big thing for a while. By spring 2005, I noticed that I was suddenly looking at want ads and college catalogs and apartment listings, and I knew I ought to add "getting out of the house regularly to do something useful" to my list. At that point, I enrolled in community college full-time; by August of '06, I had a steady gig in my field, and by December of '08, I'd graduated from college and ended up in a lead position at my job. I had a therapist for some parts of this, and some of them I just did because I didn't know what else to do at the time. You sound like you need a meds change and possibly a second opinion, OP, and everyone here loves to see a good thyroid-checking, but you might try regarding "today I got a shower" as a Serious Fucking Life Goal for a bit and see if it helps any.

No one can fight another person's battles. Other people can show you technique, they can make you weapons, they can even fight their own battles alongside you, but at the end of the day you're the one who is going to have to wield the sword. Stop feeling self-pity, stop getting caught in the same broken cycles again and again, stop overthinking things, and start acting. Every single person in the world has been where you are, and I hate to say it but there are only two roads out. One is self-destruction, aka continuing on the path you are on, the other is transformation, aka DOING SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR SITUATION. Start huge, find your dream and let nothing stand between you and achieving it. Create a vision for your life, you're still young, you have plenty of time to change, change, and change some more, but create for yourself a framework to help you live your life. Think from the perspective of a life well-lived, at the end of the day, when you've put in your good 120 years on God's great earth, how was the world better off because you lived? I wish I could help you more, but like I said, no one can help you, you have to help yourself.

Yeah, and in fact stimulants are sometimes prescribed for depression. Adderall, fuck yeah.

I've been in and out of depression for the past 20 years or so. I was in therapy, on meds, etc. and I'd get better for a year or so, then right back down again. 6 years ago, I had to move 300 miles away from my hometown, family, and friends for a (great) new job. As winter approached, I knew I could not go back home very frequently, so I went to the local animal shelter and found a wonderful little kitty to keep me company. YMMV, but that little 4-legged angel saved me twice in the past 6 years. I've been off meds for over 7 years, and still have a great job. 4 years ago, when I got the surprise divorce notice, I went down pretty quick - but I was able to keep it together (no meds), and here I am. I still have my days, some pretty dark, but since I got another 4-legged companion a year ago, I'm doing *much* better. My (now) 4-year old rescue dog is such a needy thing compared to the kitty, but we get out and get exercise, which really does help. My two little housemates ask little, are always there for me, and when I'm blue, they sense that, and are very close at those times. Best wishes!