so long, and thanks for all the fish

this is what I get for picking and peeling it off the last time I painted them lmao. I know better than to literally pull layers of healthy keratin off my nails, but nevertheless my obsessive-compulsive tendencies persisted

just gonna have to suck it up and have short painted nails at some point this week or next, since it's looking like I won't be able to grow them out any longer for a while otherwise. the nice thing is, I've taken such good care of my nails over the past 3-ish years that they don't give me weird hand dysmorphia anymore when I paint them short. why have I, a transmasc, historically had weird dysphoria around having short painted nails even into my transition? couldn't fuckin tell you, and yet here we are

I accidentally tore a giant hole in my parents' air mattress and I felt really awful about it... immediately went to go tell them and they were like "damn that sucks. shit happens though; we're not upset with you" so that helped, but I still felt shitty about wrecking their nice air mattress as a guest in their home

then a couple minutes later, I noticed that one of my nails had broken during the process of trying to prevent the air mattress from being destroyed. and my brain's immediate response, instead of the usual Oh No Things Got Worse Meltdown Time, was "lmaooo can't catch a break today huh? oh well; hey, at least this is a problem that we CAN fix" and I started feeling better after that. good brains in the face of bad brain and overtaking it (: we love to see it (: (:

and my brain is trying very hard to go into ADHD "event upcoming; cancel all other processes" mode but you know what?? joke's on my brain because I still got up and did most of my morning routine despite all that :3 I think I'll brush my teeth, too

having stupid anxiety dreams about being chased through endless hallways by a weird evil being again! they're not even scary enough to set off my adrenaline or get me jolting awake in bed, I just gently come to consciousness feeling exhausted like I've been working out.

some part of me always realizes it's a dream in the moment (which I think is why it never activates my fight-or-flight instinct), but I haven't yet been able to take advantage of that cognizance and turn the dream into something else. that's okay though, I have individual talk therapy today and EMDR tomorrow-- and both of those guys love to hear about it when I'm having weird anxious dreams

we dove into this today, and it led to a breakthrough regarding my inner child and the fact that they're only just now finding the ability to voice their fears aloud. I can't even describe how relieving it is to feel that connection to myself again.