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I’ve been putting myself out there to make friends, and I think L would be really proud of me. It’s one of those moments where you want to pick up the phone and call someone to tell them about your life, but you can’t. That’s okay though. Holding the knowing that she would be proud, that she would be happy for me, is still meaningful. To be able to believe that is meaningful. I know I was kind of forced into this spot in my life. In a way. So it’s not like this was some perfe

I haven’t really had the cognitive ability to reflect and write the last couple of days. I can’t access the deep thinking like I normally can. Which has been nice, in that I don’t suffer as much emotionally when I can’t think. I’ve had grief pop up, but not for more than a minute at a time, so it’s been a lot lighter. My sleep has been a shit show the last couple of weeks. Or maybe just a week? I don’t know, hard to say. I just woke up from a nap, but I feel groggy. I have be

I have so much shame wrapped up in me as a person. Especially from this last year, and letting myself go there today. Letting myself recall everything. It just floods me with different voices yelling different things. Part of me wants to be able to hold empathy, while another part is pissed that I would do that. That I would put myself in a position to have my empathy used against me. As if holding empathy means I’m at fault. Because another part of me spirals into self-blame

You know what I hate the most about my bad therapy experience this year? That it left me with a bitter taste toward the profession at large. When I hear the words clinician or therapist, I sometimes scuff internally in the same way I do about religion. And that bothers me, because I’ve had a long-standing issue with how I judge religion and people who are religious. I find it hypocritical to lump an entire group of people together in my mind and treat them as one and the same

I’m sitting in deep and heavy grief tonight for many people, many situations, many reasons. I’ve talked about all of them. Many times. So many times my own eyes, ears, thumbs are tired of going over it. Because talking about it doesn’t stop it from hurting. So I’m not going to recount who I’m grieving. What situations I’m grieving. The reasons I’m grieving. I’m not going to talk about all the love trapped within me that I can’t express. I’m just going to let it stay heavy. An

This is random, but aren’t all of my posts? I’m reading a book right now, Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar, and the main character, Cyrus, is relatable in ways that really touch my tender heart. In ways that make me feel seen. So far, this specific part of the book has really stayed with me because of the subtle flavor of humor and the way it touched on exactly how I feel. Also, it kind of made a good point that I had never considered before. Here is the excerpt: A year and a half ago,

I spent the day with my family. I drank beer. I laughed. I had fun. My aunt, the one who always baked for every family gathering, passed away last month. Today, my uncle found a bag of her cookies in the freezer. I don’t have a word for what that felt like. To taste something made by someone who is no longer here is different than tasting it while they’re alive. It holds weight. It asks something of you. I noticed a subtle lemon flavor I had never noticed before. Maybe it was

Life has looked different this last month. I’ve been spending more time with friends. I like them. I enjoy being with them. And still, my mind and my heart keep drifting back to her. We decided to keep living together. There are practical reasons. Emotional reasons. History reasons. In some ways, it makes things easier. In other ways, it makes everything harder. I have to keep reminding myself that staying home just to be around her isn’t healthy for me. That even though we’r

I think I have a really activated core wound right now. The one that screams at me that I’m a horrible person. Over the last couple of years, my life has shifted in ways that feel like failings to me. Things have happened that I have trouble forgiving myself for. And I’m struggling to not let that wound eat me alive. I know punishing myself doesn’t change the past or make anything different. But it’s not so much that I’m trying to punish myself — I just genuinely feel like a

This is what I mean when I talk about shifting. I think maybe I’m always shifting because if I stayed in this level of pain and distress without any breaks, I would probably go crazy. So something in me moves. Pulls away. Goes numb. Goes quiet. And then comes back later like nothing happened. But right now it feels like my entire life has blown up. I don’t recognize myself. I don’t know who I am. I feel dead inside. It’s not dramatic. It’s flat. Empty. Like all the parts of m

The weight of the grief around not being able to talk to L has been heavy. This weekend has been heavy. I’m having a hard time. I know logically that there’s nothing wrong with feeling love. I know that love, in itself, isn’t a moral failure or a mistake. And still, I can’t help but feel wrong for feeling it. As if loving too deeply is some kind of flaw. As if my heart didn’t get the memo that this chapter is closed. There are moments where I don’t want to let the love go at

I realize how vague my last post was and I wanted to offer a little more transparency. I’m trying to walk a narrow line here. Between not making assumptions and not allowing this space to be undermined. This project matters to me. It was created to be community-oriented, authentic, and grounded in integrity. That means acting in good faith whenever possible. That’s why, when the first review came in that countered my own experience, I approved it. Because who am I to decide t

I’ve been trying to remain quiet. Humble. Dignified. But the feelings inside me have been building in the silence. This website was born because I was silenced, by fake voices. My voice was buried and removed. And now I’m watching the same pattern try to repeat itself within the very platform I built so truth and integrity could exist. I’m not sure if anyone assumed that because I approved the first review that came in, I would keep allowing it, that I would look the other wa

The last couple of hours my thoughts completely shifted. That familiar frustration crept in. How am I supposed to find myself when everything always feels different? I was spiraling around identity again. Questioning my grounding. Questioning whether I was “losing myself”. Then it hit me. Bro. Did you even eat? No. No, I did not. And suddenly the mystery unraveled. This wasn’t an existential crisis. This was hunger. 🤭 Sometimes the work isn’t soul-searching. It’s food.

I still feel out of it. Like I’m suspended in the air, spinning a little, not fully grounded. But for the first time in a while, I don’t feel like I’m up here alone. I won’t have therapy again for two weeks because of the holidays. But I know I have someone I feel comfortable talking to when I meet with them again. I didn’t realize how much weight not being able to talk to someone had been adding to everything until now. It wasn’t that my previous therapist wasn’t present or

I finally found someone my body can be with. I can talk to her without getting stuck in my words or having to constantly clarify what I mean. I don’t feel misunderstood, and I don’t feel like I have to work hard to be understood. She’s actually there with me. She’s structured and she’s kind. And she has a very specific way of putting things into words that works really well for my autistic brain. When she reflects things back, it helps organize what feels messy or hard to hol

Sometimes I feel like I’m on the verge of a complete mental breakdown. I don’t know if that’s the beginning of a panic attack or if it’s me just completely losing it. I feel like a balloon floating in a room, bouncing from wall to wall, from floor to ceiling. I don’t feel grounded. I don’t feel like I’m standing on anything. I feel like I’m just drifting, with no way to pull myself back in. I feel like I don’t know who I am. I don’t know what I want out of life. I don’t know

Realizing I was autistic was something that took me a long time to feel okay with. It helped that the person who helped me figure it out was also autistic. That made it feel less exposing, less scary, while I was trying to understand what was going on. Still, after all of the assessments, all I really felt was embarrassment. I don’t think I engaged with the reality of being autistic at all for many months after that. And even now, I still haven’t fully. I probably won’t tell

I’m having what feels like a slip into a depressive episode. Not that life has been peachy or happy anyway, but this feels worse than it has been. Another thing that’s been weighing on me is that the more mindful I become, the more I slow down with language and interactions, the more I realize how mismatched I often am when communicating with people. How often I don’t understand what they’re trying to say, and how often I’m misunderstood in return. And it’s frustrating. It’s

I’m still struggling. And I think I might be for a long time. I know I’m not great at showing how much I love people. I’ve never been good at translating what I feel on the inside into something visible or reassuring on the outside. But that doesn’t mean the love isn’t there. The depth of it is overwhelming sometimes. And I don’t know what to do with all of the love I still have for her. I don’t know how to hold it. Today I donated plasma. Then I spent time with friends. I fo