One small improvement I can make is to keep hoping everything will be all right.

So. I have three core friends that I consider my besties: Chele, J, and Reffie. They’re all phenomenal people. Kind, wicked smart, and have all known me at least a decade now.

They have all had positive impacts on my life in their own ways.

I don’t actually know if I have a good answer to this. I’m female presenting, so there are limits to my supposed freedoms. I don’t consider myself a person of color, and POC face even harsher realities than I do just from the systemic terror placed on them.

Freedom is an illusion. One that could shatter like thinly poured isomalt, which is used for fake glass.

Honestly, not enough in my local area.

If I could do any job for a day, I’d be a bartender. I always wanted to be one growing up. I suppose that’s a carry over from Cocktail being one of my late mother’s comfort movies.

There are actually many positive moments that stick out to me. I’m trying to pin one down, but it’s hard.

I think maybe the time my card declined when I was trying to buy bread, peanut butter, and grape jelly so I’d have something to eat. I was homeless again. Someone paid for me, even added a bottle of water for me. They didn’t know me. Wouldn’t tell me their name. Just asked for me to pay to forward for someone else some day.

I have, several times over, but I still try and keep a few singles in my wallet at all times for panhandlers and the like.

I think the decision to move back to the Midwest helped me grow as a person post-divorce.

The bottom of the Mariana Trench because who the fuck knows what is living down there.

My family, be it chosen or blood, has done right by me by loving me despite my flaws.