I can take it back to the very day I received my cancer diagnosis! I was a successful Real Estate Broker but before my 40th birthday, plans for having a great career and family were crushed by news that my treatment would start in 2 days and strip me of my professional appearance and energy and also leave me sterile. I had a 49% chance of survival after 5 years and so my husband suggested that I do something fun such as go back to school for culinary arts and we fantasized about having a restaurant. Over the 5-year wait period, my husband drifted away (I wonder how much was due to my childlessness and this is a whole other emotional roller coaster for me) and I noticed OUR plans for the future gave way to HIS plans which seemed to no longer include me. The restaurant idea dissolved after I graduated as he claimed he was never serious about the idea and we soon broke up. I had always supported him financially and even paid off his credit cards in order to keep the house. I give myself credit for attempting to reconcile for 3 years only to finally give up. I feel lost. I have no family and no possibility of family at this point as he has moved on to more fertile pastures. I have no work and have been supporting myself minimally by renting out a part of my home and doing a few minimum wage jobs (which I hate). I have no enthusiasm over this non-path and I am frustrated by every attempt to dig my way out. I still have my real estate license but the market is difficult for someone who has been as invisible as I have been. I know that the cancer episode is a huge part of changing my path but now that I am 50 and out of the woods for now, I still feel very lost. I have consumed half of the equity in my home and I am about to sell it so that I can consume the remaining 'savings'. I have been trying to restart ever since my diagnosis and I am getting nowhere. Is there any point at 50, 10 years after my diagnosis, to bother trying to do anything? I feel I have been out for far too long. There are too many days when I think I should probably just accept a minimum wage life from now on, sell the house, and just wait to die.