I babysit my two-year-old niece every weekday and I often have to push aside my negative feelings to put on a happy face for her.

My family takes up a lot of energy, particularly my mom who suffers from mental illness and just needs a lot of extra help. I’m often acting as her rock. I try to push her towards professional help but I can’t exactly force her.

Work obviously requires me to have discipline and put my feelings aside.

My closest friend like.. led me on for an ego boost and then rejected me in favor of someone else, and they both are in my core friend group and follow all my social media so I stubbornly don’t really want to show my bad days around friends or online or anything.

When I’m alone I feel like I need to be working on my portfolio so I’m not just stuck in dead end work or an unsatisfying life forever, though by then I’m usually so drained that that’s kind of when the sadness starts to creep in anyway. I end up drinking to try to drive those feelings away because I just don’t have time. I have chronic depression and I know that when I indulge it it tends to consume me completely.

Sometimes late at night I’m able to cry or express myself, but somehow it just never really scratches the itch or it only works for a short period of time. I really could use a therapist but I also could use money, you know? I want to shake off the crap and just put my head down and do something with my life, but I’m so tired all of the time that I can barely even sit up at my desk. If I lie down with my work, though, that helps. I’m trying to do that.

I just want love. Not even necessarily romantic, but the kind that holds you for hours and neither of you has to say anything or be anything. I fantasize about that a lot and it just makes me feel hollow.