Since our crisis, I have been non-stop busy. Busy in my actions but also busy in my mind. Going over all sorts of recruitment posts, sending messages to maybe 100 people by now, over the course of a few days, and holding all the information in my head. Which recruits would be better? What was my discussion with which one like? Did I remember to tell each one all the relevant information? Did I communicate all my findings to shandare? Have I set up times for interviews with him? What classes do we need now again? Is anyone going to flake, should I have looked more into one class or did I look too much into another?

Also, there are people supporting me, doing what they can to help me and help us make it past this crisis safe and allow our raiders to suffer as little as possible. And I am so grateful to them. So I want to give back what they give me. I want to help them too. They do this not for themselves, they sacrifice themselves to do this, for me, for us. So I am happy to do what I can for them. So I’ve been busy helping them with things as well.

All in all, every waking second, almost 100% of my brain has been spent on this. Even when I work, I catch myself distracted, thinking of this.

It’s been an intense few days.

And now that I finally have some time to rest, not to sleep, but simply to rest. I am entirely up to date on all recruitment sites, am aware of the situation of all 100 or so of the recruits we reached out to, have spent several hours today helping out those who give generously to us, and know that they currently aren’t around to need more help…. After all this I finally have a moment of nothing to do, nothing to think of.

And it’s awful. When I cannot fill my mind with things to do, my mind returns to pain and hatred of myself. I did my best to do well by others, but my best was simply not enough. People will continue to think we did not do well enough. People will continue to think that the problems were caused by us. And it is true. If I could somehow have done better, if I could have just been more patient, more empathetic, focused less on how I was being hurt, I probably could have handled things better. If I weren’t in this mental situation, I would not have burdened others with the fact that I could not handle being vented to. And I once more come up against how my personal failures have caused all these problems. I should not have come back if I weren’t strong, my weakness has spilled over and affected others, affected the raid.

And I can feel the dangers of my suicidal depression swell up again. I won’t commit suicide this time, because I won’t hurt others just to ease my pain. But the thoughts are dangerous nonetheless, and the pain feels so profound, so vast. In writing this I feel like I’m screaming into the void, screaming for someone in this world of 6 billion people to help save me from myself. Silly, huh.

So, I should not rest. My brain does not do good things when I rest.