"Then gather your small family and your friends and tell them what you know. Tell them about the unhappiness and the cancer and ask for their help. You may find that they'll step up and offer the comfort that helps ease the unhappiness without dying. You might find they will miss you horribly, or at the very least they want time with you before you die."

Or perhaps you won't. Perhaps you'll find that your family and your friends are unwilling or unable to help and comfort you. Perhaps they'll stop answering your phone calls.

But then you'll know some important things, won't you? You'll have given these people a chance to help you, they'll have failed you, and then, well, you'll have acted as responsibly as you could towards them, and you'll be free to make some hard decisions about your own fate without feeling guilty about their effect on your supposed love ones.

On the other hand, these people might surprise you. They might stun you with small and large expressions of love and regard that so elevate your soul that the decay of your body would pale into insignificance. Or maybe just one of them would step forward and do this for you. So? How much adoration do you really need to make your heart leap?

Either way, having the guts to level with those close to you - to move beyond your fear of profound disappointment - would certainly show these people great respect. Your choices would then be honorable, and that would be a damned good way to end your life.

What are your thoughts on faith?

Faith could be god.....or the earth....or the way the light shines through your window at daybreak......or yoga....or the feeling that you get when you watch some little kid do something that creates a pure, joyful moment. What speaks to you and only you that makes you feel the sense of something larger than this very personal and seemingly solitary place that you are in now? Faith can also be directly placed in humanity.

As a species and a planet we are all interconnected. We form societies. We depend on the natural world for life. We rely on others for comfort and warmth, if we are lucky then they provide it for us when we need it.

By writing this letter to Cary you have engaged many of us directly. We feel you. We have loved ones who have been lonely, depressed and seemingly unreachable, friends have passed from cancer, we have personally felt ready to give up and move on to the next place at different points in our lives.

Please reach out further. Talk to your doctors. Talk to other cancer patients, be honest with your family. You seem so disconnected and that is simply wrong at any time and particularly at this point in your life.

Perhaps this very difficult challenge has been sent to you in order for you to rediscover your value, your joy and your purpose.

Whatever your beliefs please know that my thoughts and prayers are with you. I wish you strength and courage.

I gotta say, I'm with "no name" on this one.

Maybe it's because it is March, maybe it's because it's March and it's crazy cold outside and there's not enough light and I'm lonely, too, but I can definitely see the appeal of ending it when you want to.

Metaphysically I wonder if it would be something that might bite you in the ass in the next life, though.

For the record, I know many many women who went through chemo and have survived breast cancer and are thriving. I do think they went through severe depression. Just the impact of the treatments on your body is going to take time to fully absorb emotionally. Despair is an appropriate response, as far as I am concerned.

As a fellow lonely woman in the world, though, I want to say "hang in there," because that is what I wish someone would say to me.

I notice the LW said her money is going to her favorite charities, not to a husband, children, nieces or nephews. I also notice this woman is lonely.

I am a divorced woman in my 40s, I have no children, no nieces and nephews, and I'm from a very small family. This is a bad combination when you're out of sorts. It is an awful kind of loneliness. If you hate your job to boot, it's even worse.

LW, please do two things: get on Celexa, a low dose is fine; 10 mg will work. Get yourself to church, even if you're not religious or Christian. Go to a Unitarian Church. You'll see what I mean once you get there.

Do these two things for three months, while you get the chemo, and then make your final decision about life and death.

The joy you bring to others is far greater than you imagine. Don't leave us yet.

Yes, there are two problems. But when I read this headline, "I've got breast cancer and I don't want to live," all I read was "I don't want to live." Not that the cancer is a red herring, but I think these suicidal feelings (and the lw seems to indicate as much) exist(ed) independently of the cancer. The cancer is something that came along, on which to hang those feelings.

I've also known three people who have killed themselves. I've felt like it many times. There are times when assisted suicide, for situations of really, overwhelmingly extreme pain, is understandable. Otherwise, I say: if there is one person that you could help, only one person who would feel pain at your leaving (be honest now--that person you're thinking of, that family member that you're inwardly claiming wouldn't care, what would they really feel?), then you may not do this. You heard me. You have a duty to help people, not to hurt them. Duty shouldn't seem like a dirty word here. Remember, a suicide is also a homicide. You're considering doing away with a good person. If you can bear your crosses and help people to live slightly happier lives instead, you must. You absolutely must.