My girlfriend broke up with me on Sunday. We weren't together for very long and we both still want to be friends, but that doesn't make this hurt any less. We both really, really like each other, but she's still very busy with school and feels guilty for not being able to devote the time that she feels I deserve.

Before I met her through my church's fellowship group, I had been single for 12 years -- it was just one rejection after another. I'm at a point in my life where all of my friends are either engaged or married with children, and I have nobody. My greatest wish in this life is to be a father and a husband, but I feel like my window of opportunity has closed. All of the Catholic women my age seem to be already married, are pursuing religious vocations, or are too devoted to their careers to have room in their lives for a man.

The thought of having to spend the next 50+ years on my own causes me enough anguish that I sometimes wish I had died in the womb.

All I wanted for Christmas this year (and every year, really) was to not be single any more. I can't eat, I can't sleep, I can't focus on work, and at this point I'm so emotionally exhausted that I can't even cry anymore.

It's written that "The Lord is near to the brokenhearted, and saves the crushed in spirit" (Psalm 34:18).

Please pray that the Lord will help me find some kind of consolation in all this. My situation feels so hopeless.