I am surviving this week of Family Gatherings All Day Every Day...but I’m not doing it happily, and it’s taking more than what emotional/mental energy I have but what else can you do except Do The Thing Anyway? They are not good family--they aren’t even my family. (Not that my family is good either. They’re very not). The only real option is to pretend everything is Normal and Fine and fake my way through it all. I’m just. Burned out and beyond. Nothing but ashes. Smile and do the thing anyway!!! And I don’t like being angry and negative this way, I really deeply don’t, which only makes that feeling worse. And wearing this mask of Normal and fakeness and denial of self so much so often is so exhausting and also a really hard habit to switch on and switch off. It is very hard to hold on to who I am, under the fake bullshit. I’ve only just recently realized that it is a mask, and how to take it off, and am working on how to be genuine and...vulnerable (these are almost the same thing for me) and I can feel my brain wanting to relapse back into bad habits and old thinking and I don’t have the energy to maintain good habits and be Normal!:D and take care of myself and do things to make me happy and I’m still sick. And. My husband is stressed out of all the family stuff also and being utterly awful. No surprise there, just. More weight to carry. I really don’t like being angry and feeling so...bitter about things. It’s just...hard. It’s hard and it’s just going to be hard, for a while, and I’m trying this new thing of, hey, Ghost, maybe you should get some of this badness out instead of holding it all inside and... It’s a good thing but doesn’t feel like a good thing, it feels like...how dare you complain and burden others. It feels that so strongly that it’s almost a trigger. But I know in my brain that’s just the mental illness, even if I can’t make my heart believe it.  I need to be away from these people. Even though that will mean no people. Far far better than bad people. One more year. One more year. One day at a time.  ((aaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh))