If you know me.

Please don’t ever tell me you’ve read this.

It was supposed to be a fun travel blog, initially. A way to document the fact that I actually went somewhere and did something. Once. On my own. It was supposed to be happy.

It wasn’t supposed to be this, which is basically an online diary because I find the idea of typing something and hitting publish way less scary than physically writing it down somewhere my closest people could find it.

“But this has your name on it.” Yup. “You had people sign up in a newsletter if they wanted to follow along.” I did do that. And I sent out a few newsletters when it was still happy, but I have stopped doing that. “You’re literally publishing it online, wanting no one to see it defeats the purpose.” Ah, but I want a void to yell into, not faces to yell at.

So I don’t want to know if you’ve read this. I don’t want to know that means you can now see past the mask, please just let’s both pretend it’s fine and let me keep it on.

I let you keep yours on. I don’t tell people that I know they’re actually sad, because, aren’t most of us sad? And we’re all really good at pretending we’re not. I go on my silly little coffee walks with my coworkers, I reply to the group chats with memes. I show up for family events and only cry a little bit each time. It’s fine. I’m fine. We’re all fine.

Until we’re not. Until we’re doing EMDR practices that an energy reader taught us on tiktok because we’ve accidentally repressed all of the actual EMDR therapy sessions. Until we’re sick and crying in the shower scared to go to the doctor in case it’s serious and we have to tell our mom, or in case it’s not serious and we have to deal with the embarrassment of continuing to be alive. (it wasn’t serious).

Until we’re admitting to trying things that an energy reader on the internet taught us, to the void. Or the audience of people who actually know me, in which case, please don’t know me.