Your not having access to joy is not optimal for _my_ mental health - let alone yours, bc my people deserve good lives, and therefore I will continue to work against it. But if survival has to be the goal for now, then it has to be the goal.

If you were a plant, adult failure to thrive would look like not getting fertilizer for multiple years, getting slowly more root-bound in your pot, your leaves not being glossy and a slightly anemic yellow-green instead of that shiny healthy emerald that so many plants in the South have. I want you to not have to bonsai yourself to live.