I'm doing pretty good. Been talking to a psychologist and we're unpacking a lot of stuff from when I was a kid.
He thinks that my lowered affect is a learned behavior because I had to be stable when living alone with my very unstable single mother. I think he's probably right. She used this thing called "emotional blackmail" to get her way, and more importantly, to get as much of my attention as possible. I spent so much of my time just trying to get away from her. It's probably why I ended up with so many late nights on the internet, because it was the only time I could really get time to myself with how needy she was. Then, if I ever confronted her about it, she would have a full on breakdown and not recover until I'd "snuggle" with her for literal hours. It wasn't anything incestuous (on my end at least, and hopefully hers, god willing) but still really fucking weird for a 14 year old. I don't think that she realized how much she was really asking from me. So she'd be a crying mess and I'd be stonefaced, letting her cling to me on the couch, just trying to figure out when I can finally get away.

It's hard to think about this kind of thing.