Monday is therapy day for me. It maybe doesn’t seem like a good idea to stack lifelong trauma work and mental health check-ins at the start of a new week in the hellscape we’re all living through… but somehow it works. I get just enough distance from the last week to reflect and reset before stepping into the new one.

The hitch is recovery time. When sessions go deep, it’s hard to crawl back into my cocoon of regulation before the rest of the week starts standing on my toes or climbing down my throat.

Today in therapy something escaped. A truth I’d kept locked in the dark corner of my mind with all the other shame-shaped things. I told my therapist that I feel like my chronic illness makes me harder to like… and harder to love. That I’m a drain. That I take too much.

And lately, for the past few years really, that’s been my daily reality.

I haven’t written about this here because… well, because I’m embarrassed. Because I don’t want advice from strangers. Because I don’t have the language yet. Because even though I know something’s wrong, I don’t have the tidy label that says this is what’s happening and here’s how to fix it.

For all my talk about transparency, this one has stayed hidden.

Because even while I’m waving my Autism flag and trying to show you who I really am, I’ve been hanging beautiful curtains over the window that looks out on my exhaustion.

And behind those curtains? The truth is that my thyroid and I are in an ongoing argument. My immune system keeps adding new foods and materials to its “absolutely not” list. Perimenopause showed up with a bag of chaos and no forwarding address.

But I kept pretending I wasn’t sick.

Part of that is masking… not the social kind, but the survival kind. The kind where you convince yourself you’re fine because the alternative feels like failure. The kind where you worry that acknowledging your needs might take something away from someone who needs more than you do.

So I shrink. I smile. I keep my voice light even when my bones feel heavy.

And in doing that, I’ve built a different kind of mask… one made not of social scripts but of self-erasure.

It’s funny how quickly the line blurs between coping and pretending.

Between self-preservation and self-betrayal.

I’m still figuring it out.

Maybe you are too.

But if you’ve ever worried that your illness, or your exhaustion, or your difference makes you too much… this is your reminder:

You are not a burden for having needs.
You are not unlovable for being unwell.
And you do not have to earn rest by pretending to be okay.

Sometimes the bravest thing we can do is stop masking the pain long enough to see what it’s trying to teach us. And honestly… I’d rather not start crying again, so I’m just going to post this and walk away.

Love to you, darlings.