How do I?

 I haven't been able to eat all that much today. I had breakfast, then a light lunch, and I couldn't have dinner: the back of my throat felt like if I had any more than just a bite or two, I would be gagging. I was super tired today, feeling like I had the flu. A tension type headache all over my head but also behind my eyes that pulses when I move, thirsty, feeling like my eyes were made of sand. Pretty sure it's the exhaustion. I'm just so beyond tired that I could barely function in the morning. 

Then, in the afternoon, it eased, and I could do some laundry. Had cereal with yoghurt. A while later, crash again. And yeah, tried to have dinner, but... inconclusive. I'm typing this while eating one of those cups that have chocolate spread on one compartment and those long biscuits on the other. Literally never have them usually, but any food is good to fuel this body of mine. I hate, though, that I had to take antiemetics again. I'm abusing this shit and I hope metopimazine isn't harmful when taken for too long. Or causes physical dependence. Damn if I have to get a drug addiction from this...

So outside I went. I love evening walks. I went to the park that is close to the quarters. I enjoy going there when it's been hot, or when I just need some distraction. There are a few sequoia trees notably, originally seven, but five have been taken down due to illness. A different species was planted, but the two ones that still stand... I'm in awe of them.

I fucking love sequoia trees. I love how ancient they are. Tall. Immovable. I also love cedars, pines... and yet I'm a tropical girl. But sequoia trees. They are... something.

Coming back, though... a thought sprung like water in my mind.

I need to get out of here.

It killed me. I have people who like me there. The team likes me. I'm not just talking about Cepheus' team, I'm talking about my own. Capella, Minerva, Hera, Passiflora... Esme even if she's on leave before actually moving, Chara... Blue, Patty, the others I haven't mentioned... I'm liked here. I have Tane, too. I have my other friend who does tattooing. I have this job. I have my room. 

But to picture my return at work just makes me sad. It feels like something is permanently broken. I could go to the snack bar to get salads for lunch and I was shaking so hard yesterday when I went that I'm afraid of going back. I love the quarters, but I was almost afraid of coming back, even as nobody will attack me at this hour. Hopoe is home, somewhere around, not too far away from here. She won't just come to the quarters to mess with me. Plus, the buildings are magnificent in this evening light. I wish I could show the picture I've taken, but that would be doxxing myself, so... no. I might draw it though, if I find the strength.

Where would I go, anyway? Back to my mom's place? Knowing that she doesn't want me to abandon the life I started to build? Disappointing her? Having her paint me in her mind as the "disabled daughter" she once portrayed me as? The fragile, "Aspergers" (because for a while, when I was a teen, she thought I had Aspergers even as I never showed any autism symptoms as a baby/toddler), "disabled" daughter who "needs accomodations" because the world is "too much for her". At the same time, this is a safer place. I may have endured a ton there, but it's not as charged anymore.

And how about Hokulea's group? I want to join it still, but how do I even hold on long enough to? And Tane? I want him to tattoo the story with Hopoe on my arm. I was about to ask him about when he has a free spot in the next months when he went on a week of leave lol. May he enjoy his motorcycle road trip. 

It would be, just like when I went to college, leaving home only to come back merely months later because something happened that traumatized me and my body begs me to run away. Like I'm too weak. Like perhaps this idea she had, that "the world is too much for me", and that I'm "always in danger", always to be protected, is real. Insane how your parents' projection can stay with you and just... program you. I want to prove it wrong, to prove it to myself that I'm not this child that absolutely has to be protected like a precious object from a world that's too cruel. 

I'm... I don't want to make an impulsive decision. I want to be able to reclaim my room. Reclaim this place. I want to feel at least somewhat safe here again. In the evenings I'm sure not to be attacked. That said, I think the snack bar is only open on lunchtimes? The mess hall is also open in the evenings but eating in public, which is already a lot for me considering I've got trauma around it dating back to the Korean frenemy, isn't exactly an option. 

I want to be able to reclaim the city. Even as it doesn't feel like home. It's starting to be familiar, it's where I got my habits... and I've moved around so much when I was a child, just to find myself in the south for 13 years where I never quite adapted, please let me for once have a stable place. Let it not be my prison. Stability is being in a city I can at least halfway tolerate without it feeling like the only place I'm allowed to live, or where it's even possible to, for me.

I want to live, but how do I? 

I don't want to die again, but I'm so scared... I'm so scared that given that my system tends to sound the suicide signal when I am trapped in any way, I'll be back to an ER or something. It feels like I try to live all the time and life never quite allows me to. I mean, this entry itself is proof I want to live.

Goddamn. Maybe I'm just tired and tiredness amplifies anxiety, and I haven't been eating a whole lot, but I feel trapped... last time I felt trapped in a place, I had anxiety that got so bad it made me non-functional for months, then once I started getting better, it was the moment I had those three nights without ANY sleep at all, then trouble with sleep and still massive anxiety. I literally moved to my dad's place, like... please let it not be like that again holy shit. I don't want to have to literally exit an environment to calm down. 

How do I keep my independence? How do I keep what I've got... without destroying myself for good in the process? 

Why does it feel that I'm always in a lose-lose situation?...