Pursuing Calefaction

I don’t really know how to cope with the despair some days. One foot in front of the other, fake smile, showing up for other people’s children while the demands of just keeping up pull me in every direction except with the people I want to spend more time with: friends, my fambly.

A therapist won’t help, because the problem isn’t me–it’s the society that demands that we work harder and longer for less vacation and shittier healthcare than pretty much any other developed nation. It’s the people who are taking money produced by the labor of others and squirreling it away, piling it up, and making laws to make that easier and more institutionalized–and having the temerity to call a return to an equitable system “sociualism” as if it’s a crime. Meds for my ADHD have marginal returns when I don’t need to focus on writing something, because the irritability of an untenable work environment comes out on the children in a magnified way. And again, I shouldn’t have to take meds just to cope with externalia.

I miss everyone I have ever been friends with. As the Echo reminds me to get ready to go–a life-changing addition to our household, for which I am suremely grateful–I feel compelled to let my son sleep for just a bit more. Just writing these words is helping, and that is my only recourse. I’ve been trying to avoid going on about internal states, but I am not sure that walling up is what we need anymore. We need some fucking breathing room. We need to be able to have downtime, to be seen as human, to be in a flawed space. And I feel like I’m not allowed to do that right now.