It’s 12:05 a.m. on a Tuesday morning, and I’m the only one awake in the house. I’m 41, overweight, blistered with red ant bites on my ankles and hormonal acne at my jawline. My breasts (ample DDs) point to the sides, so it looks like I’m flat chested if I’m not wearing a bra. My stomach rolls are more pronounced by this terrible position I’m slumped into on the couch. My feet are compulsively tapping, ankles crossed and toes playing into each other. There’s a slightly loose Band-Aid on the sole of my left foot, THE foot, the foot that has been fucking me over for the past year with its fungal toenail and plantar warts and strange pains that make me wonder to myself if they’re going to have to amputate something in the end, just like they did with my father.

I’ve been crying. It started with nothing, a little bit of a hitch in my breath, a fullness in my chest. My cheeks flushed. I was in bed, checking my emails one last time before bed, and received an email from someone about a volunteer copyediting job that I spent five hours working on tonight. I was lightly reprimanded for doing something wrong. It was a kind-ish comment. A “just so you know, this isn’t how we do it here” comment. It made sense. It wasn’t cruel. It wasn’t a critique of my humanity or anything. It was just a request to use a different method next time. They were offering me a next time, even!

But something seemed unfair. I was maybe a little bit annoyed. OK, more than annoyed. It’s all well and good to tell someone how you’d like them to do a thing, but if you have rules, give them up front. Tell the person before they do the thing. How are they supposed to know what you want if you don’t inform them? I keep experiencing that. People give me a task, expect me to know exactly what they want, then I do it wrong, and it’s all my fault. But I already ask so many questions, and people act like I’m out of control with the information I request. I just like for things to be orderly and to make sense, and every day this entire goddamn farce of a world makes even less sense than it did the day before.

I’m so tired. Isn’t it possible for anyone to ever offer to help me? I’d like some guidance. I’d like some rules. I’d like a script to follow for a little while, so I can get a break. And all of the feelings rolled into and over and through me, and I became overwhelmed. So here I sit on the couch, with my Walter Anderson shirt sopping up my tears, trying to figure out what to do next. I’m trying to start my own freelancing business, but if I get this heartbroken over one silly email for a non-paying job, is it worth trying to do this for a living?

I think the underlying problem is that it’s hard to learn to be more resilient when I don’t really want to BE. I’m very tired. The thought that I might have another 40 years left of this thing is just far too much to bear right now. I hope I can get some sleep before I have to wake up and do this shit over again tomorrow.

It’s 12:28 a.m. I took Benadryl for the ant bites (and the sleeplessness), and the tears are starting to dry up. Sometimes, in my imagination, I go to places I’ve loved in my past. Tonight, just for a second, I was driving on Lakeshore Drive at night, with Lake Michigan to my right, and the lights of the city to my left. God, I miss that place. I miss the person I didn’t grow up to be.

See, I told you this would be pointless.