I'm not sure how old you are, but I'm assuming you're on the young side. I'm not going to tell you exactly how old I am, but let's just say there are a lot more years behind me than ahead of me. Unfortunately, I don't have the answers you seek. All I can tell you is what I see from my perspective. And from that perspective I can tell you that yes, it's worth it. It may not seem like it at times. When you're in the middle of the rat race and going thru hard or lonely times, it may not seem like it's worth it. But when a person gets to the point in life of contemplating his own mortality, and must face the fact that the end of this life is not so terribly far away, you tend to look back. There was no one special time that I came to that point. But here is an example. A few years ago, I was cleaning out my house. I had accumulated tons of stuff I really didn't need anymore, so I was giving a lot away and throwing a lot out. Over the years I had collected a bunch of books I never had time to read. I would see a book and think that it really looked interesting and I would buy it to read "someday." When I was cleaning stuff out, I looked at all those books and thought to myself that I will never have enough time to read them all. I had to admit to myself that there weren't enough years left. That's one of those things that makes a person realize that this life is finite. You know that intellectually of course, but you don't REALLY face it till you get a little older. So when I look back on my life, with all the bullshit and hard times, I can still say that yes, it's worth it. My life hasn't been easy. I don't think any boylover has an easy life. But I had and have issues beyond that. Yes I've had hard times, sad times, lonely times. Everyone has. Some have more bad times than others. But I, like everyone, also have joys and good times. And even if the bad times outweigh the joys, I wouldn't give it up for the world.

Garth Brooks has a song called "The Dance" where he contemplates a love gone bad. In it he reflects that sure he could have avoided the pain, but then he would have had to miss the dance, meaning the dance (the love he experienced) was worth the pain. Same for life. The best advice I can give you is that when you are going thru bad times, try to reflect on the joys of the past. Also, try to look for the joys in the present, even if they are little joys. There are little joys in everyone's life. But sometimes they can be hard to see if you're concentrating too hard on the bad.

Dakota