Hi.

I know what you’re thinking. “Oh god, here she goes again. It’ll be up for a day, then she’ll yank it, or go private.” Totally fair. Totally possible. But I need to try something, because other things aren’t really working. I have been struggling with dark, difficult feelings, and I know that in the past, blogging has saved me. So let’s see what happens.

First I want to explain why I’m even prepared to try. There are three main reasons.

Of late I have discovered some content creators (YouTube) who are kind of saving my life. To be totally meta (and briefly self-aggrandizing) about it, I think they are doing for me what I have done for some of you in the past: made you feel okay about certain of your experiences. These creators are speaking to things that I have gone through—am going through—in such perfect parallel to my emotional life, that I felt seen and understood and deeply gratified. They are making me understand that I’m not alone and I’m not crazy. I guess it is a condition of my CPTSD or my autism (or both), that I ever would feel alone in any human experience—because it’s absurd to think that of ourselves. But there we are and here I am.
Anyway, thanks to them I feel safer to step back into the light.
I received an absolutely stunning piece of encouragement from a reader, about a week ago. Now, over the years I have been sent dozens of incredible messages. I have them all saved, and I reread them often. The general imprint they have left on me is “What you have done with your writing matters, and it helped me.” And I’m indescribably grateful for that. It’s made me realize that yeah, I actually have had an identifiable career. And it is meaningful—more so than any paid job I could have or hope to have.
But this letter came at a very black moment for me. I don’t know how much I’m going to get into it, but for now I’ll just say it was black. And the letter was like a pinhole of light I could see at the end of a very long tunnel. And I know that if I can just scrape along, just crawl forward however slowly, that eventually I can step out of the tunnel and enjoy more of that light. Maybe.
I am hoping she will not mind if I share it:

I'm so glad to see your site still up. It has been a while since I checked it, and I brace a little each time because the thought of it being gone entirely would cause a bit of internal collapse for me. I want to request that if you go to a subscription or login model, I be part of that! I have written you before, and you have graciously responded, and I admire your writing so deeply, and wish that I had printed everything you wrote out, and made a book, and I still hope that you do this, but either way, your words and life have become part of my life in such a strange way. I don't know much about the nature of this reality, but it's funny to me that a person living across the country and who lived such a different experience from mine, speaks to my inner truth in such a profound way. I think of you often and wish that all is going well for you. We smartniks are outliers and life is somehow harder and richer for it, and when I feel alone, I know I have a comrade in arms that I have never met.
It’s impossible to read something like that and not want to be the person she sees in me.
I don’t care anymore. About anything (other than my health, my sanity, and the health & sanity of my friends). And that is both wonderful and terrible. It is wonderful because attachment (including to outcome) is the root of all suffering. It is terrible because apathy is a death sentence.
I don’t care anymore about how I am perceived. And that is because while I have long suspected it’s not me, it’s the world around me—finally the proof of that is ubiquitous and indisputable. Nothing is okay anymore, anywhere, for anyone. There are no safe harbors. No one gets out alive, no matter how much money they have. If you don’t suffer in X way, you suffer in Y way.
I want to talk without shame about all the ways in which I’m struggling, because I know that no matter how well they hide it or lie to themselves, everyone around me is struggling, too. I mean Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ.

So that’s what’s up. I want to talk again. I don’t even know about what. Everything. Nothing. I don’t know. But I’m here and alive, and I want to be, and that’s a pinhole of light I can see, however tiny.