I had the same symptoms of what is happening to your car right now. Look under the dash on the drivers side and look at the pedal assembly. Look at the clutch pedal, toward the top of the pedal you SHOULD see a rubber piece that presses a switch when you fully depress the pedal. if you see a open hole where something should be, that might be your issue. being a 15+ year old car that rubber piece dries out and eventually just falls apart. It happened to me about a year ago and I was freaking out. What I did was unplug the switch and put a paperclip into the female plug to close the circuit a ghetto way. Now i dont have to depress my clutch anymore to start the car, just remember to be in neural when you start the car.
you can either find something to re-fill that hole so it can properly depress the switch or do what I did.