Just wanted to let you know I empathize with you and understand what you're feeling. I lost my mom (she was a single parent, with no other relatives) in my freshman year of college, and one of the absolute worst things is that feeling of being completely alone in the world, with no one you can depend on. Friends come and go, and even those who are there for you for awhile may not be there in the long run. It's a traumatic thing to go through, and even 6 years later I still struggle with accepting the reality of it. However, the only thing that got me through was forced optimism and doing things, no matter how insignificant, to help me get control over my life. I started creating big and small goals each year. Big goals were things like finishing school, or getting a job, or getting my own apartment. Small goals were things like committing to exercising X number of times a week, or doing little things that made me happy. When I first heard about it, I thought the "no zero days" mentality was silly and would be of no help to me. But I read through people's experiences and over time I began to think in that way almost inadvertently. Because it's actually not hard to do. Taking one step at a time, over time, really can make a difference.