Journal 22

Hello! I’m alive! I survived! The houseguests have left and I am almost done cleaning. Today’s lunch was the first normal meal in a week: onion, garlic, pepper, tomato, split chicken breast curry with pasta. It was a late lunch, but things are just starting to feel normal again. Food really helps.

Recently, an extremely sad thing happened. I was reminded that despite my problems, I am incredibly fortunate. I have my problems with housing and extended family, but I am lucky. Meanwhile, there is suffering so much worse than mine. Probably on my same street, and in so many places on this planet. Humans hurting humans and hurting everything else too. Men committing the worst crimes, but women also padding the suffering in between.

So this week, through weird third party orchestration, houseguests came. I was happy to see them and say hello. But over our decade of knowing each other, a lot happened. ...I don’t want to knock anyone. But I wonder how much more I am expected to take. I am the “out-law” in the situation, so I float in a strange space. If being here was temporary, and my partner and feline and I could all go home at the end of the day, this would not be worth complaining about.

But living here has been difficult. (Understatement.) There were some good times when I felt more comfortable than others. But I was never quite able to speak my mind. Over the years, I never had someone external like a friend or my own relatives to talk to. My partner is there completely on my side. Now it is enough, but when I was younger, I craved a friend so badly. It would have made such a difference to be able to exchange rants and laugh over everything.

Anyway, thankfully the week went smoothly. The houseguests respectfully took off their shoes, and this made a world of difference for me. Afterwards, cleaning was easy. My standard is: when my cat grooms herself, it has to be so clean that I wouldn’t feel grossed out if I was a cat.

One surprising thing did happen this week: I was caught in an intimate moment with my partner. I never thought something like that would happen to me. Haha, it was like out of a movie. Sensational things like that don’t really happen to me. I still don’t think my brain has processed that it happened. Thankfully, afterwards everyone left me alone.

Thank you so much for reading. Please have a safe, healthy, happy week.

Asya