#and i just can't fucking afford it with as outrageous as rent is now

[transmulier]

Ah, it's that time again.

[impetusofadream]

Do you ever look at your life and just think "How the fuck did we get here?" Like this was NOT the plan, by any stretch of the imagination and even though you lived through every moment of it, you can't really pin point how you got from Point A to Point So Far Off the Rails We're Not Even on the Map Anymore.

I am 37 years old and I'm still living in the house my parents own. I pay them rent but I'm definitely not proud of this fact. I just somehow ended up as another idiot with a completely useless BFA in a town where I can't even afford a studio apartment on my slightly above local minimum wage income. (And our minimum wage is like $15. This is also not taking into account the fact my anxiety requires a door that locks to my bedroom).

I'm not sure I was ever capable of imagining my life past 30 as a teenager (I was too desperate to get away from how miserable the here and now was making me at the time.) But I always thought I'd be... more?

I definitely didn't picture myself alone, with barely a half dozen people I've dated over the last 20 years and none of them ever developing into an actual relationship. (To be fair to my younger self, she hadn't realized she was ace-spec yet.) Which yeah finding someone willing to accommodate potentially never having sex again... is exceeding difficult and emotionally draining. And honestly more often than not ends up feeling kind of degrading. Esp when your dating ocean is more like a small pond.

That gnawing loneliness that underlined honestly 90% of my life past about age 6, I didn't expect that well of pain to keep overflowing instead of finally being capped. Unexpected, but unsurprisingly it just get worse when all your friends start getting married and having kids and you realize that everyone else has at least one person who outrages you on thier priority list. The universe suddenly materializes as this massive cunt for not having the grace to make you aro on top of ace so you could at least wrinkle your nose at the entire concept of nonplatonic relationships.

But no, that bitch made you a MASSIVE sap, which when compounded with your deeply touch starved upbringing means you DESPERATELY crave intimacy... but you live in a world where a large percentage of society believes that kind of intimacy only comes from romantic/sexual relationships past a certain age.

So you find your 37 year old self awake at 2 in the morning in the same room that she used to sob into a Minnie Mouse pillow to about being bullied by the popular kids, now quietly crying into a capybara squishmallow because it's the only thing that doesn't complain about 5 seconds in your life about being held onto; Wondering to yourself, "how did I get here?"

.

.

.

and wondering if maybe you really are broken and deficient in some way everyone else can perceive except you.