Stop reading right now. There’s no reason to read this, unless you really hate yourself. You’ve been warned.

If you lookup “self destructive behavior” you will find a blank staring picture of me. It’s the look I assume after staying up half the night staring into oblivion, avoiding the sleep that will deliver me all too quickly to the horrifying place you know as “the next morning.” What reason could I have for fearing the near term future? What could a credit card carrying homeowner have to fear, besides higher interest rates? At some point the minutiae of everyday life became tedious. It’s not any one thing… just death by a thousand paper cuts.

Mostly I’m just disappointed with myself. I’ve failed my daughter in so many ways it’s hard to keep track. From my genes she’s inherited a propensity for mental illness, allergies, and a birth defect that required major surgery. From my laissez-faire approach to nearly everything, and a closely related problem with procrastination, she has suffered a year with a bad teacher. From my temper and poor excuse for patience, she gets a weekly Sybil like performance when my cork finally pops and I lose all control over the volume of my voice.

I think I’d feel better if I had someone else I could blame for all this. The American dream is to make a lot of money and have someone else to blame for your problems, and I can’t get either one right. How fucked am I?