happy birthday, my love

m happy birthday, adult in the eyes of the law~ i'm very proud of you for making it to eighteen. you had a lot of moments in the past few years that made you question this birthday, but here you are. instead of projecting feelings i want you to have in this moment, i want to tell you how i feel in THIS moment. i'm in talks to become a lead in the fall. this is a big thing for me, because it feels like i finnaly beleive i deserve something more than the bare minimum. it feels like other people beleive in my abilities to succeed. people i actually care about. when i told my mother about it, she stole my joy and made me not want to do it anymore. so i told her i wasn't going to do it anymore. i believed it when i told her that, but my mind was changed in solitude. there's something she does with things that her children own. she steals them and twists them to make them fit her understanding of life, and hands them back, drained of anything life-giving. she drains the life from her children's ambition. i'm escaping that. she tried to make me think of my future in a way digestable for her. and for me, that's the complete opposite of what i want. i don't need that noise. i would really like to make desicions without people's opinions ringing in my ears. i want to feel deeply. i want to be able to own my mistakes and my progress. not feel like i owe it to others. i came out to hannah on june 1. it wasn't planned and was purely organic. i cried and so did she. i think she understands me more than she did before, and i think i am less confusing and alltruistic to her now. after telling her, telling others felt so easy and natural, and getting normal responses just as if i had said i liked french bread, has been refreshingly sweet and unmonumental. max got an infection on his shoulder last week, and that has consumed most of my free time. i quit my classes to devote more time to work, myself, and max. the amount of money i've had to spend on this child is unbeleiveable and i must love him so much to do it for him. i was laying with him tonight and singing to calm him down. i realized in that moment that we have grown up, both of us, so much in the past (exactly) 8 months i've had him. we've had trials and tribulations. he's been a mirror to my anxiety and depression, somehow always having an issue when i was in deep. i've never had someone who has been in my life without leaving this long, aside from family. and that is insane to think of. i have to do my laundry so i have something to wear tomorrow. i used to dread work and have deep deep anxiety about it, and i'm really grateful i've gotten over that. i don't have the feeling that i have a hole in my chest every time i think about work. it's more of a calm feeling. i love you. and i hope you're okay. and i hope that you know a little more about yourself on your eighteenth than you did on your seventeenth.