I feel for you. And so many haters out there! I was abandoned at age 3 by my mother! Can you imagine?

I also lacked a support system (no aunts, uncles, grandparents). I can say I felt totally alone in the world.

For years I went through exactly what you are going through. I can tell you it gets better. Way better. As you age, those around you lose their parents - we all end up orphans! And Cary is spot on - our brains work (overwork) in repeating this 'story' over and over and over. Until its so ingrained there is no other story. ACT therapy - an offshoot of Cognitive Behaviorial Therapy explains what our brains do better than I can in a simple post. I recommend 'Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life' by Steven C. Hayes. You don't have to run this script in your head over and over, in fact it just re-enforces the pain. Antidepressets help as does meditation- anything to jerk your poor mind out of itself. Good luck sweetie. I love this column

I don't think it's cruel or glib to point out that you need to drop the Orphan Exceptionalism. You're cutting yourself off from the larger family of mankind, which is a classic sign of depression.

Your drama-queeniness is off-putting, but you get a pass if you're still, say, under 25, which I suspect you are.

And so is the first letter poster, who suggested a self-help group. You still have ongoing grief issues and this may help you in your struggle to overcome them.

Here's one more idea: look at people you admire and figure out what those qualities are. Are they witty? Generous? Friendly? Grateful? Outgoing? Vivacious? Then figure out what sort of person you want to be, with the qualities you most admire. Then try pretending you are that person, and practice having those qualities, burying your less attractive ones. We all have secret dark thoughts. Try to push those aside. Stop thinking of yourself not as an orphan but as a fully realized adult!

Figure out the person you want to be, and be it. Stop wallowing in your grief and expecting a man to rescue you and try to LIVE for yourself. You can do this. Good luck!

You're right, LW, your own tragic situation is unlikely to exactly duplicated. But you'd be surprised how many adults have had to stop communicating with their violent or abusive families. The effect is the same; these abuse survivors are trying to function without supportive parents around. While it may seem foreign to you, some would be slightly relieved by the death of their abusers-- it would bring closure. You'll find dozens of these survivors in abuse recovery groups. Also check out the gay community, as a fair number of them are estranged by their homophobic families.

I know it sounds trite, but I feel LW's pain.

It seems like part of her problem is the word she is using to describe herself. Orphan conjures up images of abandonment on a Dickensian level. No wonder she feels so lonely and misunderstood.

When I searched on "orphan support group" with Google, I got links to organizations in support of children with AIDS, from third world countries, etc.

When I entered "lost parents at early age", I got links that properly matched LW's situation.

One that I saw, http://counseling.suite101.com/article.cfm/loss_of_a_parent, was especially apropo.

LW, as others have suggested, get thee to Google and start searching...

My father died in front of me. I had just turned 11 and he was 36. Then my mother morphed into a full-blown, full time drunk. She was still alive in the technical sense, but my brother and I felt orphaned. I left home at 15 and never looked back.

Look, maybe this will help, maybe not. This is what I have learned over the past four decades. Life is not fair for lots of people. I am not unique in my life story or in my suffering. Other people suffer from loss of parents or from other traumas. Men will not fill the hole in your soul. Only you and a higher power can do that. You are looking for relief in some external source. Yours is an inside job, but you don't have to do it alone. Find those other orphans or a grief counselor.

Here's a list of the things I do to keep it together and sustain the feeling that I am in the best part of my life: AA meetings; yoga; anasara meditation; swimming; working out; biking; playing guitar; learning French. I have stopped obsessing about a relationship. I take very good care of myself. I eat well, get plenty of sleep, see my dentist and doctor regularly, and work on what I love.

I try to be present for other people. I look for similarities to help break down my propensity to see myself as unique.

I totally understand you. I've been you. But there are solutions. Do you have willingness to do whatever it takes to put yourself on a path of living life fully? I hope so, because it is out there waiting for you.

Good luck.

and I thought this was beautifully put: "And there are so few of us, and we're so powerless. We don't even have our own self-help group. That's how hard it is to be an orphan. I repeat that word because even though we live in a sanitized superpower country where orphans do not technically exist, orphan is orphan whether in the Sudan, Southeast Asia or the U.S."

(Hmm . . . I wonder what it was about this statement that set quite a few people off? There is a universality of experience in being an orphan, as well as aspects of it which are particular, and thus will be very different in different societies, and different for each individual. That's rather . . . obvious. Nowhere does the LW suggest that she has it "as bad as" someone in the Sudan. And earlier, when she asked why she wails "like a Third World widow," I took that to mean that she herself sees how inappropriate and absurd it is for her to be reacting so strongly to relatively minor slights.)

But the main reason I came back was to suggest to the LW that she consider trying an Eastern discipline, such as a martial art, yoga, or meditation.

I thought of this because so many people will tell you that although you can't control what happens to you, you can control your emotional responses to the things that happen to you, or some such, as though it were easily attainable in "12 to 14 therapy sessions." The martial arts, yoga, meditation, and similar disciplines also teach self-mastery, but from a more realistic perspective. It takes a LONG time to achieve this type of inner control. It's so interesting, too, because in the West, Socrates said many of the same things. On the other hand, those who preach a quick fix are probably going to set you up for failure, and self-blame to boot -- a totally ridiculous sequence, in my view.

Please look into this, LW. I want you to start to feel good again.