Loneliness is eating me. Help!

(it's a bit long, but I tried my best to make is easy to read. It may be easier to read the summary first and extend to the other details )

(summary)
I feel very lonely, and this feeling is eating me painfully. I have depression.

Depression - loneliness, how they link, relate, cause each other, vice versa,.... etc etc...., that's another subject, for NOW, i want to focus on how to DEAL with loneliness.

A little on my background:
*I have depression, is taking meds (free). No money to see counselling coz I have been out of jobs.

*I am very lack of motivation and energy. (even I don’t want to be lack of motivation and energy. I even mad at myself for not able to keep myself clean. I just don’t go out when I have not clean myself).

*I can get depress by small things. Little things can affect me and then will go down into deep depression and can take a long time to be okay again. I am trying to feeling okay usually. Feeling okay is already good for me. (I don't want to let things affect me and get depress, what can I do ? )

*I tried not get to more depress than that. If 5 is fine and 1 is very depress, I think I am 2.5 (or 2) and is trying hard to keep myself at 2.5 and not get any lower.

*I mostly stay at home. I volunteer every Thursday.

*I live with my family, but I don't have a good relationship with them. I tried not to communicate with them so much, coz it often cause me feel depress. Coz they don't really listen to me when I am talking. They will change topic, not listen or talk while I am talking. But when they talk me to, they force me to talk to them. I am the black sheep in the family.

*I don't go to church. I did that, didn't work out (not the matter of faith but problem socialing people in the church)

*And have no friends. I have a long time friend but she is oversea, but she is very busy and rarely have time to email me. / There was a casual friend I used to hang out with her once a while, I gotta say it makes me feel better to have some casual interact and chit chat. But she moved to another cities. (lack opportunity and weak economy in my city =.= )

*Like I say do volunteer every Thursday. But I have hard time interacting with people there. I dunno what to say. I still go, so I don’t get totally disconnected to the world, and it won’t look more worse on my resume.

*There’s not much hobby or interest group in my city. I tried, but … e.g. I am not interested in sports. Scrapbooking, it’s expensive, I don’t have to money to do that.

(summary)

Please give me some suggestion:

How can I live peacefully with loneliness, and not have it eating me and biting me painfully every second ? (it's effecting my motivation badly)

How can I learn to be alone and still feeling okay?

What can I do to ease the loneliness? (sth to do by myself, something I have better control of instead of depending on others) And it’s not like I can suddenly have friends to hang out with. (I don't think it's a good idea to have expectation on people. And isn't it what many said too. )

I tried reading, it works a for a while, but now it's failing….

lonely ←→ depress ←→ lack of motivation & energy ，what can I do ?

I am really writing what exactly is it the situation I am in. I did tried many methods, that I can think of, before and now.

Thank you for reading.

Hi noidea,
loneliness has been pretty common throughout my life...when i was in college and i felt exactly as you now speak, i would ask God, what am i here for, what do you want from me?

I am telling you this, not to make you religious, but to realize that a mission in life, is that what motivates us to move forward, despite the loneliness, despite our limitations.

what is your mission, what is your calling? we all have one, and is an amazing project,
to dig into yourself and to pursue it.
start by asking what do you like, what makes you smile?
is like a boat without direction in the middle of the sea, when you start looking for directions,
even if you have to turn around a couple of times, you will find something about yourself...actually you will find yourself!

for example to me it was easier to define what i do not like!, what i am not...
so that left lots of possibilities to build on.

through these difficult moments in my life, i have learned that other people felt as lonely as i felt, but maybe they did not have the family or the financial help, etc.
what i am trying to say is that your debility today will enable you tomorrow to be there for others...

you do great doing voluntary work, i do too. there are lots of things to do within the conditions that you may find easier to perform....do you rather work alone, do you rather work a couple of hours,
how do you handle stress, etc...do you like animals? maybe you can do something different another day of the week, think of something that gives you peace,...if you do not have the answer,
then look for it!!