i choose to live and grow

one thing i somehow forgot about working in animal hospitals is how good it is for putting ego aside. 

you can't make anything about yourself. you can't ruminate and drown in your thoughts and feel sorry for yourself. there's no time.

you have to be present and engaged and on top of it all. it doesn't matter how tired you are, and it especially doesn't give a fuck that you're tired for the wrong reasons. there's no time. 

you can't sit in your own sadness, as there's always someone there suffering with something so much more tangible and heartbreaking. it can't be about you. there's no time. 

once you get home, that's another story. but i will always be grateful for what emergency veterinary medicine has taught and continues to teach me every day. time is what you make of her.

i'm just a little star in this vast galaxy. as it should be.

can't always get what you want

 i'm actively working super hard to stay positive and grow and appreciate everything, even though 2025 has been a nightmare so far. i'm training at a new job and so grateful for it, even though it means a pay cut for a lot of difficulty. i'm also really confused, as i'm feeling more on an island than i have been for ages. i thought i was setting the right boundaries for myself in order to take the space i needed to learn about myself, but lately it feels like i've detached from people who do care because i made the wrong choices. 

i can survive alone; i have before and will again. it's just tough to acknowledge that i finally let myself trust and sometimes that trust means what you get from it is trust is sometimes accepting that people give you  what you need and not what makes you feel better. 

in shadows

 it's 2025 now. most of my soul is grateful that i'm still here. the rest of it is kind of confused as the handful of people i've reached out to with genuine vulnerability in my unsteadiness are either frustrated with me for not being who they want me to be, or here only as much as i can be there for them, or not in a place where they can healthily listen to my bullshit (that one's understandable). 

what about me, though? i know the goal is to not need anyone else's approval, but sometimes we all need to hear we're okay and enough, right? that's not weakness, it's humanity. 

on grace

 in a few hours, it will be the fourth anniversary of the day my dad died. my dark humored self calls it my dead dadiversary. whatever gets you through, right? i'm grateful thanksgiving was so late this year to where i just got back to new orleans from visiting my family the last couple days. a lot of things have gone wrong this week, but the little things that went right outweigh them all. i could complain, but i won't. i am going to instead refocus on the bits of kindness this past year have given me and helped me to round myself. i'm nothing if not grateful. 

thank god that you love at all

i spent most of today worrying about the three or four things i had agreed to do and attend and how i normally would have just done them whether i wanted to or not out of obligation. but i'm learning boundaries and paying attention to what i need to survive and took care of myself alone at home instead. i'm feeling more centered now and somehow incredibly not wanting to be alone anymore, but i also don't think i can take a big group without putting a mask on. 

i'm okay though! i'm always okay. i'll figure it out. i always do. it's just especially a tough realization always when you do reach out for guidance or help to those you hold closest and finally understand that they have to do the same for themselves and can't always bend to your every whim, no matter how much they have your best interests at heart. i'd like to absorb that comprehension as a solid acknowledgment of growth, yet it doesn't make the aloneness any easier. 

and so it goes. i think i'm gonna order a pizza or some shit because i don't eat enough unless someone makes me these days. until then, i'll stay sprawled on this little blanket outside and watch the sky stay still. 

getting the point

timing is everything. and sometimes that means understanding that you can mean nothing. that's okay too. the metaphorical you exists, even when you don't feel up to it. the whole point of this journal is to try not to disappear, no matter how much i feel i do or want to, even when i try so hard and no one gives a shit. sometimes it's intentional because they don't want you to. gotta learn to accept it.

bless me and release

my memaw died last night. i've only let a few of y'all know; mostly to get work shifts covered or explain why i have to bow out of something this week. nearly everyone has had the exact same response about how they're sorry because they know it's hard, even when expected or anticipated. i have said the same thing and i believe it when y'all say it.

it's kinda bullshit in practice, unfortunately. 

i am struggling in a way far beyond what i expected. i don't want to ruminate too hard about how i knew it was a possibility that when this inevitably happened i would not be busy enough to be appropriately distracted and have to actually process it and finally accept that now i've lost dad and her and that string between us has unraveled into a different plane. also, damn if my nature toward adverbs isn't ridiculous. always qualifying/quantifying actions, i guess. 

i've spent most of the day staring at my ceiling acknowledging the imperfections in the paint and trying to make myself function like a normal human being as best as i can pretend i am even when i know i am not and never have been. i've had some moments of hope thinking i've met people who also feel different in this world that can relate to me, but it always seems to come to some point where my little community seems to either expect differently or better of me or put me on some weird pedestal or think i don't see them as they are and therefore will hurt me. all of that is overthought nonsense and is infinitely harder on me (not a criticism or fault, just how i intake it) more than just being here for me as best they can. if only the people i let myself be vulnerable to understood or saw how i see them. the number of you is far less than what people assume. nearly everyone thinks they know me better than they do.

my biological family keeps dying off, so its probably part of why i keep trying so hard  to build a chosen one; a small, cultivated network of people there by choice instead of blood. i want those i love to know that i don't have expectations of who they are or should be. i try to show empathy for everyone, but i don't let anyone in or become close to me with an idea that they'll be different or better someday. if you're already that far, you're wonderful to me just the way you are, and i see you more than you understand. we don't have to have similar outlook or emotional development to be there for each other. it's more so from a selfish viewpoint that i'm in that vaguely desperate place again and trying to hard to not feel alone. 

i'm hoping i've rounded and leveled enough strength to power forward and continue on as i do. it's just so overwhelming and so hard to catch my breath sometimes. i'm forever grateful for the handful of you who follow up with me here when y'all know i deflect and can't or won't say things out loud. i promise with all of my heart that i am grateful. 

sometimes i feel everything, and sometimes i feel nothing at all. they're equally as scary and difficult to manage. life is weird, but i have to actively remind myself it's worth it, even as a weird alien flat on her back in the grass in her nightgown in the backyard, desperately trying to pretend the airplanes are stars that might hear her little wishes. i'm not sure what i'm wishing for anymore. 

i really don't need much, but it would be super nice to have even a few minutes where i felt cared for and safe and relaxed enough to not have to worry for a bit and get some good rest. my bones and heart are exhausted.