Things are bad.

I'm living with my sister and sleeping on an uncomfortable air mattress in her dining room. I'm working part-time for the holidays at Macy's. My sister is laid off, and her unemployed alcoholic ex-boyfriend is living and drinking in the basement. My sister is starting to realize that he's not going to leave until she definitively kicks him out.

I decided to stay here instead of with my parents in the midwest because it's closer the the area where I want to end up. I decided to take the Maryland bar instead, and have enrolled in a bar review course in Baltimore, which is 50 miles away.

It's cold.

I don't know how I can manage to concentrate on studying in this situation. I might go stay with my aunt after the holidays, when her kids go back home after their holiday visit, and my class starts.

I'm not making enough money at Macy's. I can't believe I graduated from law school and I'm more broke and my life is more fucked up than ever. I've been job hunting for more than a year, and while I still have hope of finding a temporary paralegal or document review job in Baltimore, I'm not holding my breath. Last month I interviewed for a job that I thought I was uniquely well-qualified for, and they never bothered to call my references or to communicate with me about the job -- not so much as a thanks but no thanks. I'm starting to fear that there's something fundamentally wrong with me as a job candidate that I can't see or understand.

I have no health insurance. I wish I could get back on Wellbutrin, which would help me get up and face every day with my chin up, but I can't afford it.

I like Baltimore, but when we visited on 40th birthday a couple of weeks ago, my sister's truck got broken into.

My aunt told us some things about my suicidal grandfather that we hadn't heard before. She was in the house with him when he shot himself. She said that he went on some kind of anti-depressant medication in the late 1950s - early 1960s, and that because of it he was a different kind of father for her than he was for my dad. He took the younger kids on trips and didn't seem depressed. But, she says that he lost his job and was reduced to unloading boxcars when he was somewhere in his mid/late forties, which triggered the depression that caused him to end his life. He felt like a failure.