October 20, 2021:

"Give me remorse"
she says, hair undone, boots unlaced.
Counts to one hundred,
sighs her sworn truths:
in figures of figs and oleanders:
"All love ends in ashes,
didn't you know?"

October 19, 2021:

My colleague is gregarious to the point of insensitivity. She insists on photos at every occasion, gainsaying or pooh-poohing or flatly denying my emphatically expressed discomfort.

She's the colleague I feel most friendly toward: the one whose personal life I'm most comfortable discussing and to a degree being part of. She means only well — in fact she means to reciprocate by pushing me into some sense of ease with my own skin. What she ignores is how deep my depression runs.

In photos I see struggle. Clearly, unambiguously. My colleagues perhaps see a disheveled mad scientist type, an Einstein let's say whose chaotic appearance reflects lack of focus on the superficial. I see fear, and failure, and frailty.

My supervisor praises me for "ownership" — taking responsibility for the problems that arise. That's kind, but misses the point. To me, these problems are shelters: refuges. They allow me an external focus which takes me away from myself long enough and thoroughly enough to heal, even just a little bit. Photos of myself yank me violently back inward, in destructive, ugly downward spirals. I see the pain and the fear, and one or more than one of my inner voices begin to speak with frighteningly negative language.

October 18, 2021:

Heroism, not by choice, by necessity.

You're in every meeting, or the meeting will fail. Where your necessary role is to hand-hold the employees who will cause that failure, or in the more dramatic case do their jobs for them.

Unsustainable. Either replace this human mess with competent professionals, or remove yourself to some context where that's unnecessary.