The One Where I Complain

Thanks so much for all your emails and text messages. Unfortunately, not one of you has rescued me yet, so I am still here and not in Cancun. Many of you wondered what was wrong. Oh, the 'What is wrong?' to a depressed person is mind-boggling. Not a thing is wrong. Everything is wrong.

Not a thing is wrong and I have every reason to be thanking my lucky stars that I am the most fortunate girl ever. No one close to me is terminally ill, neither Jamie or I are having an affair and we get along better than many other married couples, we have a roof over our heads, and lots of friends and support, we're intelligent, witty, young and beautious.

Also everything is wrong. What is my problem exactly? I have been contemplating this. Last night all I knew was that I have a problem, but putting my finger on what it is more complicated. Here goes.

The weather is awful. I hate the winter with all of my heart. I don't even love the snow anymore because it means an entire load of laundry in the span of a couple of hours. Whatever that seasonal depression thing is, I have it. Once it rained here for something like 21 out of 23 days and I thought I was having a mid-life crisis, um, early. I get depressed in the winter. I can't help it.

I have panic attacks almost every night. I am afraid that there isn't a God and that all souls are lost. I tried to go to a therapist about this, but she was atheist and that only exacerbated the problem.

There is no money. We're in credit card debt again somehow. I don't even know how this happened. I spend all of our extra money trying to pay off the debt, but it seems to be futile. Jamie wants to use our savings to pay it off, but I disagree.

Jamie is sad. He's been sad his whole life. He is sad about his childhood and I can't fix it. It's frustrating. When he gets really sad about it he gets distant. And guess what my defense mechanism for this is, folks? Detach! I don't know how to turn it off and it's not helpful when both people are getting distant.

The house is a disgusting wreck. It's terribly overwhelming. Why do we have so much stuff? I can't keep up with it all. I hate cleaning. I hate doing laundry and dishes. I feel like I need more help from the people I live with.

I am not the weight that I want to be. Where the hell do people with kids find time to exercise? Weight loss is slow going when you're not breastfeeding. Who stole my 16-year-old metabolism? I want it back. I think Thomas took it.

I feel smothered and enslaved recently. I find myself longing for more freedom, an extended vacation, and you all (my long lost friends).

Okay, here is what I am going to do about this:
1. I think there is a light thing to battle the seasonal depression. I need to look into this.
2. I need some sort of spiritual counseling.
3. I need to make a budget to figure out the money issue.
4. I can't think of anything I can do to help Jamie get over his bad childhood. I can't think of anything I can do to stop myself from detaching when Jamie gets distant. Any ideas here?
5. The house needs to be cleaned and we need to get rid of all this crap. I need to ask the people I live with to do concrete things that will help.
6. I will make time to exercise more and continue to watch what I eat. Boo.
7. I am going carve out more time for myself somehow and set up time for me to hang out with people that I don't live with.

Wow, I feel a lot better already.

Any suggestions are readily appreciated, especially with #4. Which one do you think is the most pressing problem?