The trick is not to mind that it hurts.

I am tired and wounded and weepy and not at all the vision of myself that I project. I don't like to admit it. It's ugly weakness. The most despicable kind of frailty. My tears make me angry. And in the background of it, there is that guilty feeling that I will regret it all, let them all down, miss some opportunity that will haunt me when the ships have all sunk and the night is no longer a precursor to a dawn of any sort. I tell myself I never asked for this. And yet I also tell myself that everything -- all of it -- is my fault.

I am reading The Little Friend. In the later chapters, Harriet cries a lot. And I keep finding that I am crying with her.

I'm either going to toughen up or withdraw into a shell of some sort. It seems inevitable. This sensitive, emotional, tear-soaked me is no good to anyone.