I want....notes on why no one wants to be my friend. Cause it’s unbelievably frustrating to watch the people you thought you were getting along well with all be at an Easter dinner without you. I just, don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing in order to be someone people want to hang out with. 

It would have hurt so much less, I think, if the show was botched right off the bat. The fact that I liked season 1 so much & thought it was near perfect is what's making this feel so much worse. It's like they didn't understand or didn't care about Alina's character arc & the last two books in the trilogy. It's like they were rushing & diluting everything just to get to Six of Crows at the end, & it's just broke my heart. I thought they got it, & understood these characters. I thought they wanted to do it all justice. Trying to write 3 books into 8 episodes is a fool's errand. You can't do it well & I'm heartbroken by what came out of it.

It's such a stupid thing to shed tears over, especially when I said going in that I didn't care as much anymore, but it feels like someone's stolen my comfort characters & made fools of them all.

One of our new hires was in my office today looking at all my Disney decorations, & she asked me if I had kids. She said if I did they would be lucky to have a mom who would enjoy taking them to Disney World. I'm at the age where I've been asked that a handful of times & usually it doesn't bother me. I have my answer, which today was my usual "No but I have a younger brother I practically raised" & I gestured to the pictures of him on my bookshelves.

But I'm having a hard time, for no reason as usual, & it struck me that it's probably going to be my answer forever. I don't think I can marry or have my own in good conscience, & I don't think I can have them otherwise in good conscience either. & I did get the experience. I was aware of & present for the baby, toddler, young child, & awful teenage years. I taught him to ride a bike & read, held him when he cried, & did what needed to be done when he struggled. I stopped a vicious cycle & got him the help I didn't have. I got him tested & called the therapists & coaches & joined the Facebook support groups. I went to all the school & therapist meetings & pushed for anything he could possibly need. I even did the internet scouring & got a group together to do whatever it took to get the Xbox he asked for 2 years ago, because no one else listened when he asked for one. This year we worked for hours together on his application for the special program he wanted to do, & soon I will watch him graduate, continue to have our weekly calls, & eventually help with whatever he wants to do next.

So I did it, but I'm never going to be mom & when it turns around & I need help, it's not going to be him. It'll be my job to care for my parents when the time comes, I know that. But I'm never going to have anyone like that. Maybe someday I'll have a niece or nephew by my other brother, but nothing like what my great aunt had. I won't have a family. And I've proven myself to be really bad at finding any of my own. I've taken really good care of the people I've felt responsible for, I know that. But I can't trust myself with a full time child, I've proven as much by barely managing to care for a dog.

I refuse to be a mother who has days where she can barely move or speak, where her temper is so short that walking the dog is inconvenient. I refuse to be a mom who shuts down & can't start tasks because she feels as though she'll explode from emotion. I already despise being a leader with these qualities. My mom made mistakes, but she was always at our disposal when I was young. I never doubted her ability to handle anything until I was much older & dealing with problems her generation wasn't prepared for. I'm unsure if I could manage to feed a kid every day, let alone be there for them in the way she was every day.

I wish so often I could ask my great aunt how she dealt with these feelings. Did it scare her to be alone? Did she feel regret when people asked her if she had children? Did she worry she was missing out? Anyone with eyes could see how she adored my brother & I, it seems unlikely that she never thought of having any of her own. I stand by the fact that she didn't die alone, as my mother said she did, because I feel that can't be true with how much I loved her, but I wonder if she would have thought so. She prepared her finances so that no one would ever have to financially sustain her, because she knew she didn't have anyone besides her brother, who had his own family. Did that weigh on her like it already does on me?

I care about everything & everyone so much it tears me apart, so much that I think it's what makes me shut down, because I can't feel it all anymore. It makes me want to not exist, because what is the point if not to care about something that much? So how do you navigate a world where you cannot have those things that would make your life feel important? I used to want to replace them with meaningful work & accomplishments, but now it seems like all that holds me afloat is the fear of missing out on being a witness to other people's greatness. I am alive to be a bystander to miracles & magic & never get to have any of my own, & sometimes that still hurts so bad that I don't know if it's worth it.

Surprise, surprise - she comes back to tumblr just to talk about being sad because where else is that actually okay? In real life I just sound like a goddamn broken record. 

Today, and on more than just today, I’ve thought about this one meltdown I had before one of my shifts at my first job. I don’t even remember what it was about, just that I was so upset and emotional that I ended up stuck in the entryway of my house with my father screaming at me that I had to leave NOW. My brother was driving us, because we worked at the same place, so he was standing there waiting and I was just crying and saying that I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t go to work that day. It felt like I was paralyzed there and couldn’t move unless I wanted to fully shatter into pieces on the floor, as if walking out the door would irreparably break me. I understand how crazy I must have looked, how completely unhinged. I even understand why he was yelling because nothing out of my mouth was making any sense. But I couldn’t move and he just kept screaming that I needed to leave and get in the car and pull myself together. Eventually I think my brother led me out the door, or maybe I did summon something inside me to do it myself. I tried to explain in the car that I just didn’t feel right and my brother, to his credit, just kind of nodded along. I knew he agreed with my dad, but he also knew that I’d already heard that opinion as loud as was needed.

I often hear that argument in my head when I get trapped in that place again, where my brain just puts on loop “you can’t do this” when I’m trying to go to a social event, or even just to work during a bad week. I heard it today when I cancelled my plans this morning, and as I’m avoiding packing or doing work that would make the next 3 days easier for me. Unfortunately, I’m never as convincing as my dad or brother. I can scream at myself in my head all day long but the voice that paralyzes me always wins. I know the things it tells me not to do are probably never going to break me the way I think they will, and that there is a history to prove that. I’ve made it through a lot of work days were I spent the full eight hours feeling like I might cry, and haven’t. I’ve gone to social events and put on a brave face, even when I didn’t feel my best. Sometimes though, it feels so unbelievably impossible that I just lose and it always has repercussions - it always makes it worse in the long run. It’d probably turn out better if there was someone to force me, because I know nothing awful happened to me when I did get to work that day. 

Sometimes I just don’t know how I’m supposed to build a life when that voice can stop me at any moment. How am I going to make friends when I know I can lie my way out of any event? How can I be a good leader when you can’t rely on me to show up? How could I be a parent someday? What would I do if the voice told me that there was no way I could take them to school that day? Or make them dinner?

I’ve been trying to start over and do better, and I feel like it’s already being ruined. That argument was awful, and I hated looking like that in front of two people I loved, but it got me out the door. Sometimes I wish there was someone besides me to get me out the door.  

I wish I could ask you if it's better where you are.

"I've suffered enough to be free" - haven't I? I feel like I know now that I won't find my meaning in work & I can't have a family so I don't know. What do you do when it seems like the only reason you're still alive is solely to not ruin someone else's life?

Recovery is a fucking joke.

Little Wonders 1/13 & 1/14

- found out that I didn’t get a job that I had been interviewing for, but when I was talking to my boss about it on the phone he made me feel a lot better about it. He told me a lot that I already knew - I got screwed with how fast they threw the interviews at me and they’d made up their minds before the last interview - but it was nice to hear it from someone else. He also said that he’d be looking for more opportunities in bigger cities and that we’d prepare better next time, and I really appreciated that. We also talked shit about my office’s new billing team for a while and yeah, it was actually a fun phone call. I really respect how he leads his team and I think we’re kind of similar in our leadership styles so it’s nice to finally have an actual role model after 3 years of complete incompetence. - had an awful day yesterday and ended up needing to finish payroll ASAP, so I spent my whole Friday night in the office. Once I started to calm down though, it ended up being okay. I like doing payroll by myself when I can be the only one with all of the dates and times in my head, and I listened to the entirety of The Greatest Showman and Wicked soundtracks while I worked. I always forget how comforting the Wicked soundtrack is to me but it’s such a staple of my childhood that every time I listen, it feels like talking to an old friend. I didn’t leave the office until 11:30 PM, but I think we’re in a better place now and hopefully if the worst should happen someone would be able to finish payroll on Monday

Savannah Trip 2021-22

I had such a wonderful time on this trip :) I was so stressed leading up to leaving that I was worried I wouldn’t enjoy myself, but getting to hang out with my brother and @onaquestforhappiness made me forget all of that. Our little group of four was pretty perfect, and it made exploring a new city even more fun than usual. Highlights included -  - being so glad that we split the driving up so it wasn’t all on one day. We did half the drive on the 30th and half on the 31st and it made the whole travel process easy and kind of fun. My brother picked a great place for our first night too; it was in a small town and very secluded, but had everything we needed as well as board games. We spent our first night playing Life, drinking a little, and eating a lot of chips and dip - getting ready for NYE was super fun and I think we all looked really nice! We went downtown for a bit and found what would become our favorite place of the trip - a bar that served alcoholic slushies. We spent the rest of the night on the river cruise we paid for, which was super fun. The music and food were great, we got to be on the top deck, and even saw fireworks at the end of the night. It was a great way to ring in the new year - made the breakfast of dreams on Saturday morning then rallied to go walk around the city for a while. We ended up at the Prohibition Museum, which wouldn’t have been something I would have chosen myself, but ended up being really interesting. We also found our favorite quote of the trip there, and it got us out of the heat for a bit. Afterwards we hung out at a beer garden for a bit and though our service was pretty slow, it was still a good time  - stayed in on Saturday since we were out the night before and I’m really glad I took that time to just chill out because I needed it. I re-watched Encanto, drank some more champagne, then started on Mulan once @onaquestforhappiness gave up on trying to sleep and joined me. My brother and his gf came back shortly after and his gf and us watched the end of the movie together, which was nice. I posted something on here, but this was the first time in a while where watching a Disney movie felt comforting to me, and the first time in a while where I remembered how much I love them. It’s a feeling I’ve really missed and that whole night was honestly a highlight of the trip for me. It was the small break I needed from the vacation - hung out with my brother and his girlfriend yesterday after onaquestforhappiness left (and made it back to Guatemala - yay!) I was nervous that they wouldn’t want me tagging along, but we had a really nice day so I’m glad I went. We did a little more shopping downtown, then hung out at a rooftop bar for a bit and later had dinner on another rooftop restaurant. The whole city has so many great views, and the food was excellent.  - went on a ghost tour, which wasn’t the best but we did get to walk around the city and that was fun. Afterwards, we found our my brother and his gf’s flight was cancelled so they didn’t have to go to bed early and we just stayed up drinking champagne and chatting :)

All in all, it was a fantastic weekend and even if one of us catches the dreaded illness, we decided that it was probably worth it and that’s all you can really ask at this point I guess. I really loved getting to have extended time to hang out with my best friend and brother, as well as get to know his girlfriend a bit better. Also Savannah is great - I might start job hunting there as well this week.