I feel good right now and that's fucking noteworthy. I finally got set up at Wishwood and it's been a warm day and Arizona pointed me to this (NSFW) which made me feel hopeful that the world is not irreparably fucked up (the ubiquitous exploitative 'sexuality' surrounding me is one of the biggest drains on my energy) -- obv not all of it is my kink but seeing desire and joy together is nourishing.

I keep daydreaming about escaping. I know there's really nowhere to escape to (all of this racist sexist ableist looksist bullshit is everywhere), but pretending there is gives me a kind of comfort.

I've now been medicated for about two weeks and it seems to be helping. I can now push back a little instead of instantly falling into deep despair at the slightest bump. I feel like the meds are a dome over this part of my self which has been wounded really badly -- it still hurts but at least it's not getting worse every day, and maybe it can heal. I didn't even realize that feeling suicidal day after day would cause cumulative damage. I am so grateful that warmth is coming.

It's so fucking trippy to be in the house that has featured in so many of my dreams. I really thought I would never live here again and it makes it harder to believe that things are real. It also is hard to believe that people are real because I don't spend much time with them in comparison to last year. And it's hard to believe that I am real because the depression makes my body more numb so sometimes when I pinch myself to see if I'm dreaming, I can barely feel it. And it's hard to believe that life is real because so many of the things I cared deeply about I just have no interest in. Obligation is the primary reason for most of what I do lately, which is so shitty, but life would become infinitely more shitty if I did not follow through on those obligations... fuck.

and yet! I told the psychiatrist when we met that if it weren't for the depression, I'd be the happiest I've ever been. It's SO FUCKED that I can't feel the happiness I should be having. I feel completely nourished with Topaz, AND rarely drained. I was doing really well in school and in activist stuff, but some of that got fucked up by the depression and I put responsibility down before I made too much damage to be able to recover it... maybe. I can't fret about it right now, I have to just try to become okay, and I have to be patient or it won't work.

Topaz' family is huge and deeply intertwined with each other. I've gone to several family gatherings and it keeps bringing up old stuff from my ex-partner's family. I realized that they were more my family than my biofamily, who were emotionally just employers from the time I realized kind treatment from them was contingent on unquestioning obedience. I adopted my ex-partner's family and for the five years I was best friends with Rebecca, they adopted me, mostly. But then I hurt the golden child and compounded that by stealing the oldest boy and then I got weird, so they excluded me after that. For years I hoped to be treated like "real family" but when my ex-partner replaced me with a nice christian straight monogamous girly girl, they just didn't talk to me anymore. I'm sure it's partly due to my behavior but I was acting like a child and expecting them to reach out first. I have a super-visceral memory of the day I gave up on ever being part of them; it was some kind of anniversary/birthday party and I went without my partner (because ze was coming later) and when I got there, all anyone said to me was "where's [ex-partner]?" or "hi" depending on the person. I was taken aback but it was watching the slideshow of photos over the years and seeing so few photos of me, seeing photos I had taken as the one "non-family" person on various family trips, while seeing more photos of Rebecca's husband (who had been around 2 years to my 10+ years)... that made me feel profoundly rejected. All those years on the outside. That was a few months before the ex-partner ended it. So now, with Topaz' family, they seem so warm and welcoming and I want to be part of that, I want to be accepted as deeply connected with Topaz and also as myself, but what if it's going to be another decade of wishing and always being on the outside?