When you're mired in the depths of depression, it's impossible to believe that anything can get better, but it can and it will. Seek out low-cost or free counseling. Get help and support from your community and stick with it until you can afford some fancy private shrink. Do anything. Join a church group if you have to. It doesn't have to be about religion, it's about not feeling alone. Also, do not be afraid to go to the emergency room. I've been there.

When you're disappointed romantically - when people evolve or they move on, when somebody doesn't love you in the same way anymore or you don't love somebody in the same way - it's devastating. Just because you leave a relationship doesn't mean that you don't love that person. It doesn't mean that you don't miss that person terribly.

What I really wanted wasn't what I thought I was supposed to want. It wasn't what people had told me I should want or that books and movies and TV had put across. What I really wanted was to be a working artist, which I am.

The biggest strength is being able to have perspective. Get the distance, and it enables you to be able to laugh at yourself.

It's time to hand back responsibility for being an adult to everyone in the situation. You're not helping anybody by staying in a romantic relationship that isn't good for you or staying in a work relationship that sucks or staying in a friendship where you hate the other person. That's not helping anyone.

The world will not give you an endowment for your finger-painting. Your finger-painting may be marvelous, but our government and society do not value art adequately. We should fulminate against that and seek to change it, but in the meantime you have to make choices. If you're an artist who likes to have a steady income for yourself, for your children, for your partner, to help you engage in elder care as you take care of your parents or grandparents, that's a good thing.

If friends are taking more from you than they're giving, it doesn't matter if they are in the throes of addiction. It does not matter if they are suicidal. It does not matter if they were nice to you when you were kids. It doesn't matter if you've told them things you've never told anybody else and only they can relate. If this person is draining you, this person is not right for you.