Day 81 was fairly uneventful on all sides, apart from gluten-free baking.

Unfortunately, the results of the baking made me sick—not because the bread was bad, it was quite good, but I’m allergic to some compenent(s) in gluten-free making. Really allergic. Like I’d eaten a tub of real ice cream allergic (lactose intolerance, whee). I got quite ill.

I’m fine(ish) now, enough so that I ate my usual porridge breakfast, and am on the ferry to work—late, but I think I can handle it.

The problem, though, is that I feel incredibly vulnerable now. My body feels like it’s confusing the bout of sickness with the one brought on by the extreme anxiety of the depths of my PTSD. But I also remember that my father used illness as justification for further abuse, so I never got a break when I was sick during my time with them.

It was a strange play of good-cop bad-cop, or maybe good-parent bad-parent; my mother nursed me to health, my father screamed at me and did a little light beating so that I would get off my lazy ass and stop “acting sick.” And my mother didn’t stop him or argue with him.

So you can imagine what I think of myself when I get sick.

I think I’ll just hug Ike for the rest of the day. I feel exhausted already.