Inhaling thrills through twenty dollar bills.

Inhaling thrills through twenty dollar bills.

It's bad when you drive to work and red lights bring you to tears. This might have something to do with putting The Postal Service's highly depressing "This Place is a Prison" on constant repeat as you drive in darkness trying to get there early enough to clean up a project by an unreasonable deadline you agreed to without enough information. Or maybe the whole world is against you, including the computer chips that control the traffic lights.

It's bad when one of your best friends tells you you were the high mark in an otherwise dismal 2004, and that makes you feel warm and fuzzy and very very happy, but then every conversation you have with them since then can never measure up to that moment and that makes you a little sad and paranoid and over-analytical. For the love of all that is holy, Julia. Someone just told you the nicest thing ever and you manage to ruin it.

It's bad when you go to bed not for the rejuvenation of sleep, but just so yesterday will be over.

It's bad when you sit in a coffee shop on a Sunday afternoon by yourself pretending to get some work done only as a partially-subconscious excuse to get out of the house and be alone, but then the people at the next table over are quoting Napoleon Dynamite and you just sort of want to be friends with them and join in.

I'm going through another one of my little spells. Everything around me is surprisingly wonderful. I have a fabulous, loving husband, amazing friends, a deep relationship with God, and other little momentary happinesses like when sweet baby Grace thinks my purse is called Julia and plays with the little faux-leather flower decorations and the zipper with her tiny fingertips singing "ju-la, ju-la, ju-la" to the purse, over and over again.

However, I still manage to find something, somehow, to be melancholy about. I'm such a fucking spoil-sport and I need to snap out of it, now. The good news is that I've felt like this before, and it will indeed pass.

I feel like any emblem of happiness is scarred by my own psyche telling me that it's not as good as it feels. That I'm not as happy as I should be. That I'm not as loved as I think I am.

My cup runneth over and all I can think of is the waste and the mess.

What does it take, how long must I wait?