Forcing myself to write here since I haven't been doing good.  Expelling thoughts is a good practice for these times, though I considered retreating into my shell by hiding them a bit more.  That was until I remembered that one of the main reasons I continue to write here is because I believe in the importance of normalizing the not so happy parts of life as well as the pretty ones.

Today was a day mostly filled with errands -- including a grocery store run.  Those always seem to bring me some amount of joy; so many possibilities to work with and be excited about.  I left the stores somehow already with plans to return for additional ingredients for next time.  But I'll have to get through this first batch of stuff first.  With how much I've been enjoying food I guess it really isn't a surprise that this/these years would be the ones when I came out of being "very underweight" and got to "underweight".  I'm happy that I have found people in my life who appreciate my cooking as well, that is not something that I'd like to take for granted.

I've got another ALTTPR tourney race on Sunday which I'll need to practice a bit more for.  Will brush up on a few route timing questions I have down in my notes and then do some more seeds as well, probably including an expert mode seed to make sure I'm in the habit of being mindful of my health and tight with my execution.  I've lost my last 3 ladder races, which doesn't really feel great, but with each one I'm hopefully gaining more experience to try and avoid repeating the same mistakes when it comes to decision-making as well as execution.

Sometimes the pain comes unexpectedly, as it did today.  I did a good job, was in a safe space, and knew the path forward.  Yet, in that moment life felt so painful, in all respects.  The heat of the room coming at me from all sides through my shirt, the emotional barriers closing in on me as I realized that I was disassociating from myself as a poor man's anesthesia.  I'm reminded of how acutely Tobias's stories resonated with me as I reread his chapters in the Animorphs books -- Tobias, who physically disassociated from his emotions by returning to his hawk form.  Tobias, who would later morph into a human during a moment of breaking down, because "hawks don't cry".

The release date on Rhythm Quest gets pushed back one more time, this time to "Early 2023", purely as a practical measure to throw myself a bone in anticipation of the stuff that I'll have to deal with.  No sense in giving myself one more thing to worry about.

For now I'm just left with the spiral of inadequacy, of feeling "not good enough".  I know that my emotions are not unfounded, because on one hand, I really was not good enough, and never will be.  And on the other hand, I may very well not be good enough.  It's easy to try and wave away those fears as irrational, but it doesn't work because they are in fact very rational fears to have.  I worry that I have become irredeemable through my mistakes, because that may be the truth.  I may still be saved, might still care to accept myself, but that seems nothing but a pyrrhic victory in the end.

I already accepted once that my past will never return to me.  Please, don't make me do it again.  I can't take it anymore.