July 15: Instead of camping with my extended family (40+ people, my favourite annual family event), I am at R's making congee because he has hand foot mouth disease and 16 canker sores in his mouth. I'm a little terrified i'm going to get what he has. Feeling very virtuous and selfless. I took a couple of days off.. I'd planned for vacation days but switched to "family leave" and with full gratitude for my organization's supportive policies. We've been stuck in this apartment since Sunday night and I have to say we are remarkably chill. R's in so much pain but he's very self-contained with it, and i quite admire his restraint. I'd be much crankier. cankier? Sorry.

It would have been beautiful to be out in the forest this week.. the weather is perfect - not hot, not cool, not rainy, and probably not that buggy. Alas. Mostly i just wanted to play with my niece and nephew. I don't get excited about too many other people these days.

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July 20: in therapy, we keep circling around to the idea of *wanting something*. It seems so banal, but it's tied up in everything: i had a boyfriend, who i loved, even though it was sometimes very hard, and i wanted to have a child with him. I wanted us to live in a little house with a garden in the city where my sister lives, and where all our friends live. I got pregnant and my boyfriend of nine years turned into a dick who i didn't know, very cold, very absent, completely self-absorbed. It became clear that there was not going to be a little house with a garden and a baby and friends nearby, and I didn't know what to do. I told myself: this is too hard. I told myself: even if i could do it, and i'm not sure i could, I don't want this hard and lonely life, just me and a baby. I don't like babies. I'm afraid of them. I thought about how i had just started my new job, and how much i loved it, and how i was just starting to make friends and a life. I would need to quit and move home to live with my parents, and then what? I lay in that rented room with the beautiful light, nauseous and exhausted and unable to move, and there was no one there to help me. I didn't have the energy or words to ask for help and I don't know who i would have asked anyway. Or what i would have asked: "please, please help me make this possible". I thought of my sister's baby and how *hard* it was and how tired my sister was, even with the most supportive partner in the world and savings and 18 months of maternity leave. I was sick and tired and heartbroken and overwhelmed and living far from family and friends, and i terminated. i don't know if it was the right decision or not, and i can't ever know. But since that moment i haven't been able to hope for anything.

R tells me wants to be someone i can count on.

i need to be someone i can count on. i need to forgive myself for breaking my own heart.

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July 21: I fell in the shower on Sunday and hit my head and took to bed for several days. It became difficult to separate the mild-concussion-malaise from the life-malaise. I have a real shiner where my left eye should be. But yesterday i roused myself to make a broccoli soup. And today it is beautiful out - warm and windy and grey. The leaves are rustling and i think my headache is gone, and i am relieved to find that it was mostly concussion-malaise after all.

2:10 p.m. - 2022-07-15