I am trying to figure out what my future is going to mean. Noah and I don’t have a lot of time to talk. I mean, we are together discussing minutiae all day long, but the heady conversations… occasionally we steal an hour or so from sleep but I feel so lonely a lot of the time. It’s hard to keep up appropriate boundaries with the kids when I don’t have adults to talk to.

And writing is so fraught. I am constantly worried that if I am honest about how I am feeling I am going to destroy what friendships I have left because my feelings are inappropriate. How dare I feel disappointed in people. How dare I get angry when people say things that hurt me. I should understand that they are trying and they are good people.

How dare I misunderstand or over react or not have the set of emotions they think I should have. I am such a bitch.

My reactions are based on my life experiences. How dare I not act like your life experiences are the Real True Appropriate life experiences.

And it doesn’t matter which “you” I’m talking about. It’s everyone.

I am just wrong. I shouldn’t have lived through the shit I lived through so that I can go on making other peoples lives difficult.

I am aware that most of the places I am going… the way I trauma bond will be a problem. Most cultures are private with their pain in a way that Californians… aren’t. I mean, even for a Californian I am extreme…. but I’m extreme not from another planet. I’m on the spectrum, just way out at the edge of the bell curve.

I am grieving so many people and events and situations. And there isn’t a way to have space for me to really feel all the full intensity of my feelings. I am in constant suppression mode. I am not allowed to have big feelings in front of my kids. But all I am is big feelings. So I feel like I am bad in just about every minute of every day.

How dare I react to my life experiences.

I feel so very sad.

Yes, I know that my problems are my fault. If only I had conformed more. If only I had been more like other people.

When would that have been possible? Where? How?