At about eight o’clock in the mornings I wake up, brush my teeth, splash cold water on my face. I’ve been washing my face with african black soap, rinsing with hot water, and then rubbing a couple of drops of sweet almond oil into my pores. This is my entire skincare routine, and the acne which hasn’t gotten better since I was eleven has mostly gone away. I also think having any skincare routine whatsoever is a good place to start, which I – didn’t, for a long time.

No makeup yet. I have, somewhat uncharacteristically, started using a little highlighter, bronzer, mascara, and lip gloss around dinner time. There is a fun shade of reddish orange lipstick which is sometimes fun on the days when I am excruciatingly bored.

I never wore makeup until an entire school of children started reminding each other not to call me “miss,” which feels right to me. They were so good about that and it meant the world to me.

I get dressed in blue jeans, a tank top, a cable knit sweater or a button down shirt, and sometimes ski socks for when the apartment is cold.

I measure about three big tablespoons of creamer into a ceramic mug and then pour in about a cup of freshly brewed coffee, just up to the brim. Adding the creamer first makes it frothy. We just got a coffee grinder and we’ve been grinding roasted coffee beans in the evenings, which makes our tiny kitchen smell good. Medium roast.

I sip the coffee while re-reading a favorite book. Then, when ready, chores – make the bed, feed the cat and change the water in her bowl, scoop her box, empty the dishwasher, start laundry. The kitchen is still clean from the night before.

An exercise routine consists of a few minutes of yoga, then 75 crunches and 25 modified pushups with my knees on the floor – Steve teasingly wanted me to know that in the american south those are known as “girl pushups,” I fucking hate the american south – and then like 25 squats. All of this four times – twice in the morning, twice in the evening.

My fitness goal this year is to be able to literally bench press my partner, who weighs like 120 lbs soaking wet. There are advantages to dating a petite guy – my shirt collection almost doubled overnight, and when he’s being cute I can just pick him up and carry him around – like a russian lumberjack mother of five who won’t take shit from anybody and sometimes fights wolves in the forest with her bare hands.

Breakfast is usually scrambled eggs and vegetables cooked in a buttery frying pan. Mushrooms, onions, spinach, pickled jalapeños, and the little cubes of sweet potatoes I roast in a sheetpan with salt and olive oil every weekend. Toasted six seed bread from the bakery at the grocery store is good. Always, always hot sauce. My favorite is Sriracha but there’s a local company called Karma Sauce which is also very good. I am learning to like spicy food.

Whoever checks their phone first during a meal has to wash the dishes. This is nearly always me, and I don’t mind.

Sometimes we get out to the gym and the grocery store. I weigh more now than I ever have, which – I think for somebody with a history of disordered eating, this might bother me more than it does. But, listen – we started a drinking hiatus in January, and also – because of the consistent exercise on the living room floor, and because of consistent trips to the gym – I can lift heavier things now than I’ve ever been able to lift before in my life. My biceps look amazing. I finally learned how to dress muself in clothes that look good on my body. Grocery bags and vacuum cleaners and men are all much easier to pick up and carry around than they were last summer. I am getting so strong. I can also run on the elliptical for about two miles in twenty minutes – I want to learn my way around my local wooded park on foot by the end of the year.

Dinner is at six. We got an air fryer and then proceeded to raid the frozen food section at the grocery store for anything interesting that we could find to put in an air fryer and then dip in BBQ ranch, with exciting results. We also make hecking lovely salads. Burrios and cheesy fries from Taco Bell are only for days when we don’t get home in time to cook, which isn’t often. Food is vegetarian for him and pescatarian for me, as I still can’t give up the idea of tunafish salad or smoked salmon on a bagel.

In the evenings there are video games, or episodes of a neat show that one of us wants to show the other, or a podcast while we work on a jigsaw puzzle on the round glass table. We can sit at the “dining room” table because we finally have dining room chairs – thanks mom and dad.

Bedtime – brush teeth, wash face, make a pot of coffee for tomorrow, play with the cat, who is most awake at that time. Read a book of poetry, or rest with his chest supporting my shoulder and talk about anything and everything until we get tired enough to fall asleep. Like a sleepover that never ends.

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A year ago, I could not get up out of bed before noon. I did not have the strength to brush my teeth for weeks at a time. I had perpetual red scars on my face from picking at my acne too much, which was an unshakable compulsion for years. I could not even lift the idea of a dumbbell. I would lay in bed and stare at the wall and think of all the reasons that everyone probably hated me, or I thought about worse things that I’d rather not discuss right now, and I was rude and unpleasant to everyone all the time because I was in a lot of constant pain – when I wasn’t rude and unpleasant I was distant, or I couldn’t find the right words to tell anyone what was happening or how I was feeling or what I needed. Sometimes I tried, but it didn’t often seem to work. I felt lonely. And even when I did let people into my life, I didn’t want to tell them what was going on. I sometimes had the mental energy to show up and be a friend and laugh with people, talk with people, ask good questions about their work and lives, be present and loving and mostly just kind, if I could be. I really do think that making those memories with people who mattered to me sustained me through some of the toughest moments of discouragement.

And it had been – like that – for a long time – last year, and the year before, and the year before that, and the year before that, and the year before that. Since years before walking in the camps, if I’m being honest.

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I am getting so strong, now.

“In more ways than one.”