Pretty much your entire letter concerned continuing--and highly unproductive--conflict about decisions that are over and done. This is no way to live a life. Perhaps if your parents had it to do over, they would have saved more. Perhaps you would have gone to a state school and lived more sparely while in school. Perhaps you would have had a smaller wedding (or none at all). Or perhaps not. It doesn't matter. These things are in the past.

I trust there is a lot more to your relationship than what is contained in your letter. What you have described sounds petty and joyless. The present realities are all known: the extent of debt, the quirks of your parents and his parents, the wedding arrangements. Moreover, there is no mystery about how to pay off debt. You work up a plan and follow it. That's a piece of cake compared to living happily together. Your husband's parents may have taught him to manage money, but they don't seem to have taught him much about living joyfully in the face of adversity, sharing burdens, or revering the inlaws who raised the wife he loves. If your marriage is to survive, these things must be learned by both of you starting now. No recriminations. It is what it is. This is how we are committed to moving forward.

See a good marriage counselor. Don't wait until its too late and see the counselor as a last ditch effort to save a marriage that is already lost. See the counselor when you still--hopefully--have a lot of good things to say about one another.

Mark Warner is needed in the Senate and for that reason alone not a good VP candidate. This will give him a stage he deserves as he heads into what I trust will be a long and productive run in the Senate.

There are limitless numbers of things in the world to be angry or depressed about. Frankly, many more worthwhile than a statistically tied election resolved peacefully through a legal process. The truth is you're not depressed by the 2000 election, however much you found the result wrong. If you were fully healthy you wouldn't be able to let this election, or any event, keep you down, no matter how much you tried.

Not a lot of depressed people attribute their depression to brain chemistry--even if they know intellectually that that is the cause. Rather they attribute their feelings to some external cause, and most people don't challenge them on it. I learned well back when I would have PMS how something that could be an intolerable "cause" of anxiety on one day, couldn't dim the sunshine on another day. In my case, the world became very, very stupid a couple of days a month. In your case, the world appears to be stupid throughout the entire month.

Anti-depressants can help but have their limits. Talking to a therapist can help, but its no miracle either. First, stop looking for people to reinforce the notion that an external event is causing your depression. Second, get outside for 30 minutes a day. Third, get off of the computer. Fill your iPod (or some CDs) with the happiest, most upbeat songs you know. Listen to them. Exercise to them. Whatever makes you laugh, listen to it. For me, its the radio program "Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me."

Sitting at the computer tonight, those things seem small. However, I think of how I feel when I'm out in the sunshine, walking somewhere on an errand listening to a Wait, Wait episode and some happy songs and its just a really great feeling. You just have to string those moments of good feeling together. One day at a time.

I'm not sure what Cary expects who to say to this man when he says to tell him the "whole situation", but don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. Don't. You are a professional. This is a professional relationship. Make sure it stays that way. If you say anything, 2 options: he takes it badly and life/work is hell, he takes it well and you like him better than ever. Neither scenario is an improvement over the status quo.

I reread your letter a few times and it is obvious that you know what to do. You create a life for yourself outside of work, look for other employment and perhaps a new setting. You wrote to Cary not because you don't know what to do, but because you know its going to hurt like hell to do it. Just get started. It's a project. Do a good job. Reconnect with every girlfriend, every family member, every neighbor, you've let slide. It will take a lot of conversations with a lot of different people to fill this void, but you can fill it in time.

And re-read Jane Eyre, fairy tale that it is.