I’m having a lot of feelings today.  Anger.  Frustration.  Sadness.  Irritation.  Elation.  Joy.  Contentment.  Excitement.  Fascination.  Ambitious.  Cockiness.

It all just depends what part of the story you tell, doesn’t it?  Isn’t all of life that way?  Today is my biological mother’s birthday.  I love you mom.  I hope that today brings you some joy.  I hope there are people out there who can find joy in your continued life.

Do you know what moving on means?  It means you go do something else.  I’m not going to take joy in my mother’s continued existence today.  I am going to go talk to my psychiatrist instead.  I’m going to talk to her about how the cessation of smoking is going.  Cold turkey didn’t happen and shouldn’t, in my opinion.  I’m too volatile right now.  Changing any habit is easier when done in steps.  I’m trying to figure out what the best steps are.

The Ativan is a mixed blessing.  It completely wipes me out.  It makes me non-functional.  And it just makes me tired and sad instead of angry and sad.  So who knows.  Not sure it is the best choice ever.  The best choice ever is to move the fuck on with my life and stop using any drug.  I’m not there yet. Honestly the reason I haven’t stopped smoking is because it is a mild mood enhancer I can have any time.  I need an instant jump of ‘more cheerful’ a few times a day if I don’t want to freak out around the kids.  And it makes me feel more distractible from my thoughts.  I don’t get into thought loops around old emotional patterns.

Pot allows me to feel more engaged in the moment because I’m constantly getting distracted and needing to refocus.  It’s counter-intuitive, but it does help.  But it also gives me a lot of time to just sit in the garage by myself.  I dislike smoking.  Most of the time I’m out here I am not smoking.  I’m trying to get to the point where the alone time is as effective as the smoking.  It tends to mean I have to be mentally working on something.  I also think that the pot allows me to not feel guilty about taking the alone time.  I won’t let the kids be near the smoking so that gives me an effective barrier and reason for needing to be alone.  It’s harder to defend the barrier of my space if I just want it because I want it.

I think that is a lot of the problem, right there.  Hunh.  I’m using drugs in order to be allowed private space.  Well, I suppose that was the only separation I had from my mother and sister’s lives.  They kept that completely away from me and otherwise I was totally enmeshed and treated like an adult partner.  Is this really what it means to be an adult?  That you have to be stoned to bear your life?  That kind of sucks.

But that’s not the whole story.  I don’t have to be stoned to enjoy my life.  But I do have to be fully engaged in what I am doing.  Most of my life is treading water.  I’m sorry, but I have the housewife thing down.  It’s boring.  It’s monotonous and it gives me time to run my gears and think intense thoughts but it leaves me with no time or energy to act on any of the things I’m thinking and I get frustrated and angry.  It’s not working.  I can outsource that shit.  Because I am a privileged asshole.

I do have to be stoned to be a hippy housewife.  It’s fucking boring.  I am losing my mind.  But I still want to homeschool.  And I still want to be the primary person hanging out with my kids.  Tricksy.  This will be interesting to navigate.

I’m having a lot of intense thoughts about how my choices are telling me a lot about my childhood.  Most of the women in my family were trapped with children and they had nowhere to go and nothing to do and no money and no help.  If I had to spend the next ten years stuck with my kids with nothing to do and nothing to think about I would be full of rage and victimization too.  I would need to be stoned to deal with that.  I’m to the point where I can say that honestly.  That’s a lot of what I’ve been working through for the past few years.  What do my choices about parenting ideals mean in the context of my life?

It’s an interesting journey.  From here on out I need to stop apologizing for the fact that moving on means having too many things to think about to dwell on the past.  I need to accept that for myself.  I can’t do this live-in-the-moment thing the way other people do.  I can’t just sit here and do what I have always done.  I have to go write my story.  The pattern I’m starting with is broken.

I’m worried about my broken compass.  I’m worried about ignoring my kids in favor of other things.  I think my main focus needs to remain my kids for a long time.  Watching them is allowing me to forgive myself for the things I can’t change.  The things I had no control over.  I used to think I was so powerful.  I wasn’t.

It’s amazing to spend most of my time with my kids because I’m watching them navigate life and I’m talking to them actively about the fact that their agency is increasing day by day.  I talk to them about the fact that right now, they really don’t get to have much control and the reason is because they can’t see the larger pattern.  I’m always making my decisions for them with an eye on the larger pattern.  I try very hard to make every word out of my mouth something that I will think was the right thing to say in retrospect.  It’s a lot of pressure.  I don’t talk much on days when I’m being bitchy in my head.

So I have to have better things to think about.

There is a part of the story where Noah asked me to marry him that I don’t talk about much.  He also asked me to be his slave.  I told him I would marry him, but I wouldn’t be his slave yet.  I am taking the long-term-view of training your own top.  I want someone who has had the kind of experiences I am creating in our life.  I want something very specific.  Owning a slave is complicated.  I want to ensure that he is up for the process.  He’s not yet.

But he’s getting closer.  It’s interesting to me how having that as a thread in the tapestry changes a lot of the story.  My personal goals.  What I will put up with on the side.

It’s interesting trying to figure out what being a main character means in my life.  I want to homeschool my kids and watch them grow up.  I want to grow.  I have things I need to do.  I have so much nervous energy that I need to go do something with it or I will explode my life.  Just for spite.  I will and I know it.  And Noah knows it too.  So he’s handing me good shoes and telling me to sprint.  It’s weird thinking about the evolution of a person.  Trying to change the direction of it consciously.  In order to direct who I will become I have to think very carefully about who I was made to be.  I have to think about how to change the patterns in my life.  I have to figure out what my default reactions are before I can usefully change them.

I have this broken compass.  I think.  I call it.  Why do I call it a broken compass?  Because it was pointing me in the wrong directions.  Is it really broken though?  I got out.  I have gone far.  I followed nothing but my own internal drive to get the fuck away.  Looking at where I am in my life compared to where I came from… is it really broken?

Other people tell me that I don’t have to be how I am.  I could choose to be different.  Well, yes.  What’s your point?  Usually that they don’t think they would make the same choices as me.  That’s fine.  What’s your point?

You take the opportunities you see.  You follow the life path that appears before you.  Or you sit at home waiting.  This kind of thing is largely determined by who you know.  That’s just how life works.  If I’m going to move on from the spot I am in that will involve contact with communities I can’t join with kids.  That’s my life path.  I want to have the grown-up-only life.  I’m trying to figure out how that will work.

I am not going to serve someone until that someone has things for me to manage that are worthy of my time and attention.  I am not a house slave.  Sorry.  It’s not my forté.  I have other skills.  I know I do.  I need to hone them.  I need to figure out what I really have to offer.  I need to find out what it is like when I am taking up as much space as I need to take up.  I don’t even know.

This is going to be hard because I need to go make mistakes.  Fast.  In a hurry.  In a lot of different parts of my life and I need to figure out how to be accountable for them.  It’s not all that fun.

So many different threads through the tapestry.  So many feelings.  How do I tell the story in a way that is respectful to everyone involved?  I haven’t touched on a lot of why I’m having feelings.  I can’t.  I don’t know how to tell the truth about those things yet and I don’t want to lie.  That’s kind of weird to admit.

I smoked very little this morning because I need to drive up to the city.  Instead I’ve babbled too much about nothing at all.  So many feelings.  I should probably go take a shower now.  It’s time to move on.