Purpose?

Is there a purpose to peoples' lives?  I've wondered this since I was a child.  Religion has one believe there is a purpose... but given the amount of people I've seen profess that life has a guided purpose and the ways those people have lived their lives, I've become very skeptical.  The most I can believe is that, if there is a creator, he has created people with potential only; aptitudes.  People have abilities, and one would believe that the purpose of those abilities is to use them, which then transfer purpose to people.  But as far as people having a purpose and a destiny... it's a good wish, I'm not seeing it though.

I feel like I've missed my purpose.  Having wanted to believe in a purpose so long, I searched for it, I looked for portents and signs, and after years of searching, I've turned up empty handed.  I don't know my purpose.  I don't know that there is one.  People tell themselves little lies to get through the day, but I'm tired of lying.  I don't even really lie to myself, I just tell myself that if such a thing exists, then I should act as if it exists, so that I may come to know it. 

I just realized the real question I have, the buried one I haven't been able to see, is, "Am I worthy of being liked, respected, and loved?"  I feel like, without knowing my purpose, I'm failing, I'm floating on a sea of Nihilism.  I believe in Existentialism, that we create our own existence, and I'm a fan of post-Existentialism, that things have meaning because we imbue them with meaning.  Without direction, without purpose of some kind, I feel like I'm some stagnant nothing. 

The question deserves an answer, and the obvious one is "yes."  But, it feels like a hollow answer.  "Yes," is the answer we desire, the answer we desperately want to believe... but do we believe it?  If you can lead a horse to water, though can't make him drink, then you can come to the correct answer without truly internalizing it and believing it.  It remains an empty answer. 

Now I'm going to try to believe it.