Thanks! I don't like having the gun but I'm glad i do. I took a class and everything. I hadn't ever owned one, but the first month I lived here, my house was burglarized, and the sheriffs deputies told me to get a gun and a dog. They were quite serious. "There are weirdos in the woods," one said.

I don't know anyone here. I had one friend for about a year, he ghosted a year ago. On Facebook I see he has been hanging out with a woman who looks like me, doing the same things. I'm going to unfollow right now, if I can quit drinking I can do that too.

I left everyone I knew in California, and my neighbors here have made it very clear that I'm an outsider. Like, "all the homos from California are ruining my mountain," that sort of thing. The only person I know out here is my mother. It's not ideal.

She isn't well, her doctor just told her she has been having small heart attacks. She has been thinking about suicide (she has talked about it since I was a child), and took all her family photos down and packed the frames "so it would be easier," and I know what that means, so that's another stressor.