And We All Fall Down

**written 18/11**

My diary doesn't go back any further than five years. After 2011, I had to start a new one or risk being triggered every time I opened it. But looking at my memories on this day over the past five years, things haven't improved much at all.

Five years ago, we had finally got out of a very triggering area after spending several weeks there due to a lack of money. My dad applied for a job without discussing it with us first. It ended up not working out.

Four years ago, a friend told me I couldn't bring Sparkie to their house (she had just started her assistance dog training) because the landlord wouldn't allow it. After all those times turning down the requests to visit, because of anxiety, in the end the one thing that made it possible for me to do it was also the thing that made it impossible. I was never invited again. And on this day exactly, we tried to help someone save their dogs and were told to stop, that it didn't matter, and that they had "made peace with" the subsequent death of their two young puppies, that could have been prevented if they had just accepted our help. We were also searching for a job and two potential places had just fallen through.

Three years ago, we were waiting for things to sort out between our new boss and his previous workers. The police got involved, while we stayed at a camp in the bus half an hour away. It was a crazy stressful time.

Two years ago, we had tickets to another country, that we canceled a few days later. I was still reeling from walking a five day old Jersey bull calf out to the calf truck over a month before. I don't know where he ended up. Honestly, nowhere good. I begged and bargained for his life for those five days but nobody would listen. And he trusted me and I felt like I betrayed him.

A year ago, I was struggling with a boss who overworked and underpaid me, treated us all like incompetent children, on a property where anyone was allowed to come and go as they pleased without letting us know what was going on. Vehicles would come in at all hours, we'd have cattle on our lawn, he'd put cows and newborn calves in with our calves without asking (making feeding our calves dangerous because the mothers could be protective of their babies), several times he shifted our calves into a different paddock without permission.

Today, I am exhausted in all the ways. Tired of fighting, tired of being depressed, tired from being depressed, tired of getting my hopes up only for everything to fall through. We're trying. But nothing is working out. I just want all this to be over.