This was my memory of the day, Barb and me after dinner at Gianna Via’s in 2017. Barb insisted on wearing her sunglasses for the picture and I am positive that I am in the middle of mocking her here. I really really really miss her and her not being here still feels wrong, fake news, just a bad dream.

Henry performed some sort of emotional probe on me late last night which I guess I really needed because I started sobbing uncontrollably for a good hour, just so much death this year, the guilt of not being able to save Bambi weighing on me every minute of every day, the faking it until I make it because I feel like my window of time to talk about these things closed many months ago. And so on and so forth as my first grade teacher would say.

I really don’t know what else I need to be ok at this point. I’m in therapy. Time has passed. I cry every day. Every time I feel like maybe I’m getting better, I have a bad day that sets me back.

It’s not quite as bad as it was over the summer where I spent every day wishing I was dead and the only reason I didn’t act on it was because I was afraid Chooch wouldn’t go to college. I admitted that out loud last night for the first time and then wanted to throw up.

But I will say that I still feel like a shell, I feel like a visitor in my own skin, nothing is familiar. I wake up in the middle of the night feeling panicked. When does that stop.

Then today, one of my Buddys was killed on the street in front of our house. Henry picked him up off the street and buried him, and I really love him for that.

Fuck everything lol. I know–it could be so much worse and I should be grateful that it’s not but I can’t get a grip on these feelings, believe me, I’m trying.