The truth is that I AM broken.
It hurts to write about.

Tonight I met some nice, friendly people, two sisters of 20 and 33 and their uncle.
We chatted in the beer garden and they were fun. Nice.
The uncle invited me to join them for dinner.

Me being me, I was so grateful for their kind sociability and proceeded to chat and move into the bistro with them.
Then the uncle insisted on buying me a drink, , , and he bought the nieces one too.

It was going okay, until my brain kind of flipped, and all my trauma came flooding back. I was thinking ‘what if he puts something into my drink?’ ‘What if this is a set up?’ and also all this kind of stress about not ‘showing up’ to see Astro at the cusp of this year.

It kind of spiralled from there. . . I couldn’t lighten up after that. And the uncle called me on it. . . ‘just smile’ he was saying. . . and asking difficult questions about my support job. . .

He seemed to be in it for a potential hookup. . . it was the last thing I felt like doing.

And so, I am left behind. . . I think I will never let a strange man nito my world again.

And when I went to the bathroom, the trauma came flooding back and I started to cry. . .

One niece was cutting up steak in small pieces for her dog, and it was just the end of me.