Oh, hey. I have a car again.

With that comes the ability to get places again, but not much of anywhere to go other than the grocery store and work right now because of covid. It also means costs — car payments, insurance, gas. I also had to move in the middle of a pandemic, so that was fun. My rent cost went up, while I’m on reduced hours and pay at work and waiting to hear back from the state to see if I’m going to get any of the work share money I’m supposed to qualify for. They’re apparently hella backlogged, so that’s a joy. Thank fuck I’d been saving up to make a down payment on a car — I put less down to start than I wanted, because I needed to get into a car, but didn’t feel safe enough not to have the cushion anymore.

I want to scream into the void about everything going on. But I feel like I can’t offer any new insight, that there isn’t anything I can add to the discourse that isn’t articulated better by someone else. Online I’ve surrounded myself with people who believe similar things I do, so I never really have to finish a rant, they already are headed down the path themselves and we just walk together. Offline, I feel like I’m surrounded by people who are so selfish they can’t see past the end of their noses, so beat down by the system they have no fight left in them, or literal assholes. It goes so far as all three groups will roll their eyes at me if I say something — and I’m not good at holding my tongue, so I do say a lot of things. It’s so bad that when I do encounter someone in meat space that doesn’t immediately recoil when I so much as breath half a sentence of political opinion, I almost immediately want to pinch myself.

I feel a need to write. It’s visceral. But I don’t know what I need to say. Do I need to write fiction, non-fiction? I can’t find coherent thoughts, threads to spin and weave from. I have a video appointment for tomorrow to see if maybe I need medication, if maybe this fight I feel like I’m constantly having with my brain is ADHD or something. If I make sure I have caffeine daily, it feels like it’s easier to wrangle my brain into doing the things I need to do, but it also feels like it’s still enough of a fight that when I finish doing enough of what I need to do, I just can’t do anymore. And I feel trapped, because I don’t have a safety net. I question my choice to cut off my family, wonder if maybe having their support would help — but then I remember that I didn’t feel supported. I was made to feel like I was lazy, because I didn’t do what they wanted me to the way they wanted me to. It didn’t occur to them that maybe there was a reason for the way I was behaving. There really is nothing like struggling just to face people, only to get a passive aggressive, ‘it’s about fucking time’ in response to my emerging from my room. To not even considering that maybe I needed to get help with what I was facing, because I was made to believe that I was just fucking lazy and needed to pull myself up by my bootstraps.

I sit here, so upset over things I can’t change. So frustrated that I feel all alone in the world. I have my online friends, they’ll talk to me when I need it… but sometimes I need more, you know? Having a voice on the other end of an internet pipe isn’t the same as someone who you’re sharing a meal with, or someone who will just do the small things for you when you can’t find it in you to do them yourself. A person to argue the rules of a board game with, or stand in a parking lot for three hours after the game store closes just shooting the shit because neither of you want to go home.

I feel so fucking alone. I feel like I’m standing on the edge of the void, and one misstep and I fall in.

It fucking terrifies me.