I am back in Tanzania again, for this week. This work requires my full attention and i'm so glad to be immersed in it, it feels important and engaging and rewarding in ways that nothing else is right now and afterwards I want only to go to my hotel room at night and collapse into exhausted, dreamless sleep.

Alas. No matter what time I go to sleep, I wake up at 1am because of jetlag and then i spend hours awake just killing time until my day starts again and i can immerse myself in work. This seems imbalanced. I sink deeper into work distractions and do not think about it.

My sister sends a series of photos from Vancouver. My parents are visiting her, my godfather was there last weekend too. My dad held the baby for 5 hours yesterday. There he is, almost 80, holding the baby and reading the paper. My heart is full, I love them. My heart is breaking, am i really not going to have any of that? Or at the very least - the insurmountable distance from this hotel room to a warm apartment with family all around. My therapist asks, "what does that image represent to you?" and i don't know how to separate it all out so i push it to a corner to be dealt with later. later. later.

I don't know what to do about any of this, the basics of self-care suddenly eluding me.

update 2 hours later: my sister messages me to ask if i talked to dad about drinking when i was home over christmas and that's a whole other slowly unfolding nightmare and god can i tell you, diaryland, i don't know what i look like on this flip side of this year.

9:53 a.m. - 2018-02-22