I’ve been feeling okay. I have. I just keep thinking about a penis across my face, in my mouth, inside me.

I feel the tears pushing their way out, over, down my face. I can’t stop them. I can’t stop anything. I’m so tired of this fucking existence, but no one cares. No one. I’m all alone because everyone’s always so wrapped up, so wrapped up, always telling me later. I feel like a stupid little girl pulling on her mother’s skirt, calling for her attention. Reality itself is playing Mommy. I’m all alone. I want it all to stop hurting, but it won’t.

It hasn’t even been so bad lately. Lately, it’s only every few hours. It isn’t the whole day like it used to be. I don’t spend the whole day feeling like I do as I write this.

Frightened senseless, little me is standing in a big world. And like a child, I want someone to hold my hand in this loud place. I don’t understand what’s going on. I want someone to hold me and tell me, it’s going to be okay.

But that’s childish. I’ve learned that waiting for someone to help me is like waiting for Godot. In waiting, I suffer and increase the likelihood I’ll continue the passivity ensuring my continued suffering.

It’s why I’ve started eating better, visiting my doctors, and started therapy back up in the last week: that realization. If I don’t do something, I’m only allowing the suffering to continue. In other words, I’m hurting myself.

So, today, I threw away the remaining half of last week’s birthday cake, I took the medication to clear my long-endured sinusitis symptoms, and I ate breakfast before noon. Yesterday, I cleaned my apartment, had sex with my boyfriend, and worked out. My glutes hurt, but I’ve only had three panic attacks today, none of which were paralyzing, more like five-minute bouts of light crying—not even sobbing.

I’m laughing at how ridiculous it is that three bouts of sadness constitute a good day, observing the standard of living I can currently expect from life, and I’m struggling to accept who I am, where I am.

I’ve had the realization that I’m at the beginning.  I can either accept that and keep working hard, doing all the things I know I’m supposed to do—exercising, having new experiences, pushing the current boundaries of my awareness until they break—or I can sit back with bitterness born over my lousy childhood.  I can be my own mother, or I can be a child.

I’m struggling to make healthy choices.  I’m struggling to be okay with my mind as it grapples with the consequences of these choices.  I’m struggling to be okay with struggling.

Thank you, all the people that help me get through my days.