I had a realization yesterday about pieces of the anxiety going away: I don’t see white men anymore. I don’t have to be ready to fight at any given moment. When I say that my anxiety is less, that’s what I mean. Violent crime is really low here. As a white person, the police would be very eager to help me deal with any problem I had with a citizen as a matter of national pride. If I showed up visibly assaulted to a police station… they would take it seriously.

In the US they would tell me that they won’t ruin that nice boy’s life over me.

So that’s a huge component of my day to day anxiety. I am afraid of white men for very good reasons. Like with my shitty neighbor: I had to kick him over and over and bruise his ribs to get him to let go of my upper thigh. That’s just life in the US. That won’t happen to me here. I can’t imagine a Japanese man thinking he had the right to do that. Sure, they might try to look up my skirt. I hear about issues of gropings on trains, but walking down the street it isn’t going to happen and I’m avoiding trains.

But I am afraid of my friendships. I am afraid of messing them up more than I do by existing. I am afraid that if I advocate for myself that people won’t want to be in my life anymore. I am afraid that if someone asks me for an overwhelming kind of support I will hurt myself to give it because they are more important than me. I am afraid that it isn’t ok for me to ask for any support. So I am not asking for support.

I haven’t talked to anyone on a video chat in a couple of weeks because I would want to dump my emotional pain and I don’t have the right.

I need to just try to shove this shit in a hole and try to get back to “appearing happy” because that is all people want from me.

If I can’t spend a phone call asking questions about their life and supporting them I don’t have the right to have a phone call at all. Right now I don’t have anything to give so I am not calling anyone. I am having brief internet chats because it is slightly easier for me to shove my crap down and not bring it up as much… but I’m not even doing as well at that as I should be. I feel so much shame for every mention of feeling bad.

How dare I think my feelings are important. Just shut up. You are centering yourself again you stupid white bitch.

Eldest Child hurt her knee the day we arrived in Japan. She spent a few days walking on it and now she is waking up with it swollen. Yesterday it felt better by the afternoon so she wanted to walk to a restaurant. I shouldn’t have allowed it. I won’t allow it today. We are applying ice. She is taking ibuprofen. When she takes the ibuprofen she feels fine and she wants to play. She needs to bloody sit still for a day or three. Clearly nothing is broken. Clearly she doesn’t have a torn tendon or anything. She just won’t let it rest and walking to a restaurant means a good 2 mile walk roundtrip at minimum. Today I will be carrying all of our food home for everybody. I have carried most of it home for the past few days.

Noah is doing less of the food prep here. He has a serious need to spread out and I can cope with neatly preparing things on a tiny counter better than he can. So I’m doing it. It’s not my favorite but it’s important in this space. So I’m doing a lot of fetching and prepping food many times a day on top of my normal workload. He’s doing more baby care while I do the prep but that means she is wandering around his feet while he’s on the computer. (He has a presentation in 9 days that is kinda the entire point of his job and is why he gets paid the big bucks. He needs to be working a lot and I get that. He’s not being lazy nor rude.)

The big kids are frustrating in the extreme because I have to beg, cajole, and push them through even doing the dishes. They truly want to do nothing for anyone. They don’t want to do basic hygiene unless I stand over them glaring. They don’t want to wash dishes (we have a plate, utensils, a bowl, and a cup per person along with a knife and cutting board used per meal–it’s way less than they used to cope with at home) or sweep or do anything unless I am aggressive and kind of mean. They want to play, demand sugar, and say that I should be entertaining them more. As my work load has increased.

I am struggling to keep my temper. I am not yelling or screaming mostly because it would be so abominably shameful to do here. Wheeeeeee.

I feel really bad about myself. I feel like a failure on almost every level. I feel stupid. I feel worthless. I feel like a tool that is nearing its breaking point so I should be thrown away and replaced.

I don’t feel valuable or loved. Noah is trying, but I feel near constant guilt that I’m not pouncing him for sex the minute the baby goes to sleep because don’t I owe him that too? I am really scared I am going to get to Scotland and I will have to avoid Jenny’s family entirely or risk being anything other than perfectly nice so that I deserve them hating me. I can’t lose Jenny right now. Not right on the heels of losing Sarah. So maybe I can’t risk contact with her or her family while I am such a fucking stupid cunt.

I have to cry on the toilet because there is literally no other place for me to be.

I am trying to be light and perky and giving because I know that is what is expected of me.

But I am empty.