Not Doing So Hot

Boy, is Captain Black Cloud ever following me around lately. I'm really trying hard to keep my head up, but it just seems to get harder every day. It's not so much the bad stuff -- I'm used to bad stuff happening to me, and on a regular basis at that -- bad stuff is just part of being poor. Not to harp on it, or anything, but when you've got no money, you've got no recourse.
Even so, I know lots of people in the same general state of desperation as myself, and they don't seem to be as miserable as I am. Oh, they get upset and unhappy when the bad stuff comes down, same as me, but then a day or so later things have somehow worked out again. It's just not that way for me. I can't seem to find anything that takes my mind off the constant worries that I have -- money, my kids, my marriage, nothing to unusual. Just constant. I can't sit through a movie or read a book when my mind keeps obsessively returning to the problem at hand, the way you find yourself scratching and picking at a scab even though you know damn well you shouldn't. It's been this way for a long time now, and for most of that time I just accepted it as normal. But now, even I can't hide from the negative impact it's having on all of my relationships, the ones with my wife and kids that really matter AND the ones with people at work that I really couldn't care less about. I don't want being around me to be bad for my wife and kids, but I know it is, and that makes it all worse somehow. I know I shouldn't take it out on them, because they're not the ones at fault, but somehow it just keeps happening and I don't see it until it's too late.
I'm not trying to be melodramatic or anything, because attention really isn't what I'm craving here (if it was, I suppose I could find a couch in an office somewhere to whine my heart out on). I just have to say it to myself, out loud AND in writing:
Life just doesn't seem worth it any more.
Oh, I'm not planning any high dives off a bridge (there aren't any that would really do the trick around here, anyway) or anything like that. It just seems like all the things that really made me want to get up and see another day are gone, or have turned into flat grey imitations of themselves, like getting a xeroxed picture of a great meal instead of the real thing.
I keep telling myself that it's my job's fault, that I'm really unhappy there and that it's just poisoning the rest of my life, but even when I'm just whispering it in the back of my head instead of writing it, it still feels like a lie. This is something that starts with me, that is welling up out of some black pit at the bottom of my mind like sewage leaking into drinking water.
Since I work in the medical education profession, I am constantly surrounded by doctors. I'm sure any one of them would be the first to say, "Oh, you're just depressed! Take one of these pills every day, and sorry about the side effects." Fact is, I don't think that's a way out for me. Number one, I've given antidepressants a try, and they're less effective than Haagen-Daz ice cream. Number two, it's a good rule of thumb to be skeptical of any drug whose pharmacology statement begins thus:
'the primary mode of action of this compound SEEMS to be...' Trust me, if they don't know exactly what it's doing to you, they can't tell you if the results will be good or not. That's why they say that they 'might have to play around with the dosage a little, or try another drug if this one doesn't work.' Personally, I think they'd be just as far ahead to give you a nice fat shot of heroin for depression. That way, when you went screaming to them that you are an addict now and need a fix, they can grin and say, "Well, yeah, but I bet you're not depressed anymore!"
Anyway, now I've exposed my shame here for any and all to read (not that anyone will, thank god). And so I now move on to the wait for the next bad thing to fall on me.
Cheers!