Profoundly great therapy session. A realisation: have spent my entire life trying to hide who I really am from people who actually LIKE who I really am, and instead strive towards some neurotypical idea of what someone like me SHOULD be, and beating myself up for not reaching a standard I will never reach set by people who I don’t respect and who will never respect me anyway.

And being terrified that my constant failure to reach that standard means my actual loved ones will abandon me because I’m unable to be what I was always told I needed to be.

Simultaneously grossly overestimating my ability to mask myself from people I share my life and bed with, and actually being a bit insulting to them and myself for believing that I needed to do that, because nobody would ever actually want ME.

And I know why I did that. It was something I needed to do to survive a landscape where my synapses would hoard the neurotransmitters needed to prevent my own subconscious constantly whispering self hatred into my thoughts.

But I don’t need that any more. I’ve made them give up their precious monoamines.

And I can be me.

And stop apologising for it.

Because who I am is not only good enough; who I am is loved.

By people I love.