Madness string 122796

Random mermaid
I am fifty-two, and all my life I have put my foot in my mouth and offended people with comments I thought were funny or cute or silly. It did not go over well, and so I masked super hard and walked on eggshells around anyone I did not know very well. So most everyone. It's not just tiring, it's also lonely to never be yourself because 'Oops, I did it again'. So I hold back and hold back and it's unbelievably hard to make friends when you are masking.
I don't know if it's even possible to take it all in without breaking. I feel so guilty turning away from the news, but every day there's a dozen new nightmares, new atrocities all over the world. There's these all-or-nothing idiots online who claim that if you don't watch it all unfold you're complicit and a terrible person, but when you're just sitting there feeling powerless, knowing there's no way you can stop their pain, the distress sends you slowly mad. I know it's nothing compared to what they're going through, but fuck, I just can't. I have to distance myself from it.