I am sick. It came on in the middle of last night. This is my first time being sick without Noah around since 2015 when I was on the road trip. This is awful.

That said, I have a wonderful son who brought me a banana and toast and home made apple sauce for breakfast. He knows what to do when a great many things go sideways in life. He’s had good home training. I feel an outstanding amount of pride in him.

I am starting to move old Facebook posts over here. There’s going to be an incredibly large amount of backdated postings. I am still trying to decide if I want to move writing from the other social media site. I’m still nervous about spooking vanillas.

I am really struggling with feeling like a liar because I am not publicly and boldly admitting everything that I am doing. I am in a different place with different expectations and I am scared of how I should be adapting to this set and setting. I’m scared to not be open. I am scared to be open in the next 10 years.

I am losing my mind in a lot of ways. Life is feeling really hard in ways that make me feel like a pathetic whiner. My life is not as hard as other peoples lives and I feel enormous shame around that.

I talked to the SSA yesterday. As long as the US government holds we will be find for the next 10 years. I don’t know yet how I am going to bridge the gap between my kids aging out of support and reaching full retirement age but that’s a bridge I can burn later.

Yesterday I had dinner with a new friend. They spent a bunch of time telling me how my writing is overwhelming and they think I should find a different hobby for managing my feelings. I am really struggling with that. I don’t talk about my feelings much when I’m in a room with anyone. I know that I am too much. I know that people don’t actually want to hear it. I feel slapped really hard. I feel like I was told I don’t even deserve to talk about my feelings to myself when I’m alone in a room. That hurts really badly.

I am trying to find my way back to writing with more boldness and self assurance. It’s going to be hard. For so long I depended on Noah or the other Archivists wanting to see my writing to justify me doing it. I don’t have that crutch anymore. Now I need to believe it just by myself and I am struggling.

There are a lot of patterns I want to lay out and pick apart. I can’t though. I’m afraid. I’m afraid of judgment. I’m afraid of punishment. I’m afraid of rejection, mostly for my children. It is not my childrens’ fault that I am their mother.

I am struggling really hard with the expectation that I be fun or I shouldn’t exist.

I’m struggling with my identity and getting my needs met. I’m struggling with feeling like people like me really shouldn’t exist at all.

I’m struggling.