Have you ever noticed that the great holiday movie classics are about people with depression? What’s up with that?

George Bailey, the father with a passel of noisy kids in It’s a Wonderful Life tries to kill himself on Christmas Eve. The mom in Miracle on 34th Street is definitely not a happy woman (and Santa himself ends up in Bellevue Hospital.) Scrooge and Charlie Brown with his pathetic little tree. The Grinch definitely has some has kind of disorder. There’s Elvis singing Blue Christmas and that country song about the little boy who wants to buy his dying momma some shoes.

Enough already.

I don’t know what to make of this. They all have happy endings, too. (Except I think that kid’s momma died.) I wish I had a bumbling angel like Clarence, who would show me what the world have been like had I not been born, like he does for George Bailey in It’s a Wonderful Life. Wouldn’t it be wonderful if Clarence would swoop down when you’re depressed and feeling like the everyone would be better off without you, and show you what the world would be like had you not been born? I sometimes wonder what my life would be like had I not gotten sober. What would my daughter be like now? Would I still have a job? What would life be like now had I not surrendered and admitted I needed medication and therapy? What would I look like? Yikes.

I probably would be the female Scrooge. A real bee-otch and I would still be having those horrible dreams I used to have before I started therapy, my meds and got sober. I would be like that mom in Miracle on 34th Street and I would sit on my pity pot like a self-absorbed Charlie Brown and ruin everyone else’s Christmas like The Grinch.

I guess I don’t need Clarence. Tonight I am glad I was born and made it this far. In the words of George Bailey, I am “the richest girl in town.”

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From Psych Central's website:
PsychCentral (December 20, 2009)

    Last reviewed: 20 Dec 2009