I am working to build queer community in my Southern red state. It’s hard, and everyone wants more from me than I can deliver. Trying to help a volunteer write a grant proposal. Trying to keep my shit together. Trying to move a thousand small boulders up a thousand small hills.

I do feel valued when I see my son, and he comes running up to me, and gives me a huge hug, which will happen tonight.

But I am also terribly lonely, and it’s the kind where plenty of people are around me, but I am still lonely, because I am not able to be open and authentic to them. They want a leader . Being vulnerable has caused problems with that.

Every once in a while I can buy a bag of weed and then, for a while, none of it matters and I can just roll the boulders all day.