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A brief timeline of recent events:

August 2016: Graduated from university, the culmination of several years of intense and prolonged hard work towards a goal.  I feel proud, but also at loose ends.  What to do now?

September 2016: Boss offers me a nice apartment, only a five-minute walk from the office instead of a forty-five minute bike ride.  This is great, or would be, except that I still think that it's okay to eat two cheeseburgers, a big bag of Calbee chips, two tallboys of Yebisu, and an ice cream for dinner, despite no longer burning off 1600 calories a day in exercise.  Weight begins to creep up.

October 2016: My father dies after a four-year-long battle with cancer.  I can't be there.  I decide that a good response to this is to cut out the cheeseburgers and ice cream from my regular meals and replace them with another couple of tinnies at night.  Every night.

November 2016: The worst president in the history of the United States of America cheats his way into the office.  I add pizza to my evening meals.

December 2016: Christmas in Japan, a nation that traditionally treats Christmas as a sort of dating holiday.  So if you're depressive, single, and without any family or friends around, well, at least you can eat.

January 2017: Towards the end of the month, I wake up one morning, drink a venti black coffee at Starbucks, and a blood vessel near the base of my skull goes, and I quote, "pop."  I spend a week at home in bed, unable to get up or even sit up properly, before the boss comes and orders me to the hospital.  I grudgingly go to the ER, insisting that it's only a sinus infection, before a CAT scan reveals the truth.

February 2017: I spend a large portion of this month in the hospital learning how to walk again.  To this day, I still occasionally have the slightest bit of trouble walking up and down stairs.

March 2017: I am cold all the time.  I go to the gym every single night and eat very little.  I walk with a cane for a little while, and then throw it out.

April 2017: I turn 53.  I've managed to lose some weight and I'm looking better.  As long as I stick to this strict diet, everything will be okay.  No drinking, no chips, very little carbs, lots and lots of exercise.  I don't lose the weight very quickly, but it's coming off.

May 2017: Struggling with my weight, struggling with depression, struggling with loneliness.  Still on the strict diet, plus I wake up every morning at 6 AM and ride my bike for an hour.  Hit the gym at night.  I hate the way I look, but I'm seeing progress.

June 2017: I maybe look... okay.  I go to commencement and walk for my diploma, even though I graduated the previous year.  I wish Dad could have seen this.

July 2017: An old friend from high school and my 20s and 30s just completely loses his shit, seemingly overnight, and ends up killing himself.  Shit.  He had a good job and had just paid off his house and had loads of friends.  What if that happens to me?

August 2017:  Mom is in a home and has been there since before Dad died.  She has been losing her memory for some time now.  She's lived a lot of her life in fear, and now she's lost and even more afraid.  I won't even be able to retire.

September 2017: The boss, who has been watching over me like a second father for several years, dies suddenly in an accident at the beach, along with his nephew, another one of the company directors.  The company is not thrown into chaos, but none of us really have a chance to deal with it, as we have to keep our customers happy while reorganizing the operation and making sure everything stays together.

October 2017: I don't remember anything here except just being sad all the time.

November 2017:  Ditto:

December 2017: I manage to make it through Christmas somehow.  I'm not going to the gym any more, but I've discovered running.  Running is great.  It just shuts off all the other parts of my brain, all the worrying parts, all the thinking parts, all the parts that just run wild and imagine horrible scenarios that never come to pass.  All I can think of while I'm running are simple things like, "Lady, please get out of the way," and "I wonder what a ruptured aorta feels like?"

January 2018: My best friend Mike comes to visit for the New Year's holiday.  This is wonderful.  We go places and have fun and eat food and drink and watch RiffTrax and play Xbox and all sorts of other stuff.  The downside is that I start having panic attacks pretty much the minute I pick him up at the airport, thinking, "Oh, he'll be leaving in 14 days."  I start talking to him and realize that I haven't been able to properly talk to anyone, at all, about any of this.  The words come out and don't stop.  Mike is really good at listening.  He eventually returns to Seattle and I go back to work, trying to complete a big project.  We get it completed, but I'm only barely holding it together.

February 2018: Things get, words fail me, bad.  I gained a bunch of weight over the holidays and I can't burn it off, even when running every single night.  I can't make it through the day without crying.

March 2018: I look back on the previous month with fond nostalgia for a time when I wasn't experiencing suicidal ideation on a daily basis.  Running more.

April 2018: I turn 54.  I'm single, broke with horrible student loan debt.  My job has been reorganized out of existence and into something I don't care for.  I look back on my life and realize that pretty much everything I've ever set out to do has been half-assed or a complete failure.  People tell me, "You're too hard on yourself," which a) reminds me terribly of my father, and b) is patently untrue, because otherwise I would be achieving my goals, wouldn't I? 

May 2018: Mike suggests that perhaps I could get a bit more support and some better options if I moved back to Seattle, and I agree almost instantly, desperate for any sort of lifeline that I can grab.
Towards the end of the month, I injure my leg while running, in a scary way that means maybe I can't run for several weeks.  (I still haven't started up again.)  I put in my notice and start applying for jobs in Seattle, a daunting process.  I've never really had to apply for work; it's always just sort of found me.  Now I have to deal with HR people and constant rejection, which is just like dating.  Yay.

June 2018: I still can't run.  I'm trying to keep some sort of exercise going so I don't balloon up like a Macy's Thanksgiving Day float.  I'm trying to arrange to ship my stuff back to the US, but I don't really have any place to live or a job, so I'm just shipping stuff to a friend's house in West Seattle.  If I eat four ounces of food, I gain three pounds.  I'm rapidly running out of money and I don't know how long I'll be able to survive in Seattle.  I stress-ate a huge bag of 7-Eleven cookies the other night and gained two pounds the next day.  I don't know what sort of job I want or what sort of job I'm qualified for.  I'm aging, alone, unattractive, and have not so much a safety net as a safety Dixie cup half-full of water.  I'm scared of losing my mind, scared of losing what little health I have left, and scared of spending the rest of my life being scared and alone and missing out on some really great stuff as a result. I'm scared that I won't be able to run any more and scared that I won't be able to ship my guitars back to the US safely.  I broke my TV by accident last night and I was going to sell it for a little money.  I'm scared of dying and I'm scared of being alive and I'm terrified that I'm too damaged to be a decent partner to someone, even if, mirabile dictu, I was able to find someone.  Everything is completely and utterly fucked, and I have two ways out, and neither of them is very appealing.

That bag of cookies is not the problem, is my point.