CW: Cancer stuff. c-PTSD stuff. (This one for subscribers because it's very personal) "For my next trick, I'll need a volunteer."

additional CW: this is a whine.

I have to say, I’m not coping well emotionally right now. I was doing pretty well holding it together until after surgery and pathology, but the next stage of uncertainty and change when I thought I knew what the plan was is really throwing me. I’m scared and I have a lot of trauma response kicking in.

I’ve had, well, a pretty rough six years or so. Some of it is everybody’s experience—creeping fascism, global pandemic—and some of it is life adjustments, a flare of a chronic illness, an unusual overabundance of free-roaming toxic people wandering through my life and work environment and having to be evicted or endured, moving, family medical stuff, work setbacks, three different editors moving on from positions where I was working with them to positions where I am not working with them anymore and having to get used to new work dynamics… I think if I took one of those stress tests right now it would tell me I was actually engaged in spontaneous human combustion right this very second.

There have been wonderful things as well, of course, including marrying Scott, living in this ridiculous old house, dear friends, a beautiful community of colleagues and fans, amazing cats, a very fluffy and affectionate horse, and way too many fountain pens…. And I write a lot of gratitude lists when I get too fucking stressed to imagine coping.