second chances

There are a bunch of people I “should” email right now but I’m not going to.  I don’t have a lot of time free today and I have stuff in my head I want to get out.  Maybe I’ll respond to emails later.

I have screwed up a lot of money stuff this month.  I’m experiencing a lot of anxiety around that.  It’s all stuff that will even out and be ok in the long run.  I feel stupid though.  I feel wasteful and inattentive and bad.  I think it might be harder that Noah isn’t mad.  I spend a lot of time feeling like I don’t deserve someone who will be this nice to me.  He really is just plain nice.  I feel like this nasty bitch he got saddled with.  I can’t understand why he would take pleasure in the company of a miserable harpy.  That’s what I feel like when I get to the point of being able to loudly put my foot down about my boundaries.  I don’t know how to do it in a friendly and loving way.

I ignore things until I blow up.  That’s not useful.  I’m handling things badly with Sarah because I don’t know what to do.  I’ve said my part of things, badly and with hostility because I’m a piece of shit, and now I wait.  There is nothing else I can do.  I’m not good at waiting.  Waiting makes me edgy.  Waiting makes me feel like someone doesn’t think I deserve to be answered which escalates my fuss.  I feel ignored and unimportant.  Ignoring a situation I am heavily involved with means that I feel ignored.  And that makes me angrier and harder to talk to.  It’s not a great cycle.

I’m reading a book about successful marriages.  I’m generalizing a lot of the advice to other areas of my life.  I’m not very good at a lot of parts of relationships.  That makes sense.  You learn how to have relationships by watching the people in your family.  I’m worried about my explosive anger because even if I never do anything that qualifies as textbook abuse to my kids I’m still teaching them how to be an adult.  I’m still teaching them how to have relationships.  I feel quite guilty that someone as fucked up and pathetic as me is their example.  I’m sorry I’m not better at this.

When I was pregnant with Shanna a long time friend told me that she thought someone with my emotional problems has no business being a mother.  I don’t think I will ever get that out of my head.  I feel like such a horrible person.  How dare someone as pathetic and awful and broken as me think they have the right to pass on how to be a person.  It seems like such a horrible offense.  It can never be taken back.

It’s hard knowing that I’m not the only person who thinks I am a piece of shit.  I’m not the only person who thinks I am awful.  I’m not the only person who thinks I am bad.  I don’t really want my children to grow up knowing beyond the shadow of a doubt that someone like them deserves to be looked down on and loathed.

One of the things I fucked up this month was billpay.  I sent extra checks to the maid who quit in December.  I sent her emails asking her to not deposit the money.  She deposited the money and told me it was all my fault and I brought it on myself.  I investigated my options.  I probably can’t get the money back.  She is currently in a homeless shelter.  I could press charges and make it so she can’t get a decent job.  She graduates from college in February.  I can’t have that on my soul.  I can’t take her life away from her over this.  She broke the law.  She committed a crime.  But I think she committed the kind of crime I can’t judge her for.  She is trying desperately to survive.  I can’t turn around and make that harder for her.  The deck is already stacked against her in every way.  I can’t live with having ruined her life.  Yes, she brought it on herself.  I still get to decide what kind of person I am.

I don’t want to be angry.  I don’t want to go after vengeance.  Justice, sure.  Not vengeance.  I can’t get justice by ruining the life of a twenty year old homeless girl.  That’s not justice.

I have a hard time feeling like I’m a sucker.  I’m doing this because when I was fifteen the police officer told me very clearly that he should arrest me for grand theft auto.  Instead he called my mom.  That was a time and a place where punishing me wouldn’t have improved my life.  If I had been “held accountable” for my actions it probably would have prevented most of the good that came later.  I was given a chance.  I was told very clearly what the consequences of my actions should be.  Then he let me go home and sob and cry and feel like a terrible person.  I have never fucked up that big again.  From that day forward it wouldn’t be a mistake again.  It wouldn’t be a fuck up.  It would be a choice to not care about how my actions affect other people.  I can’t live with that on my conscious.

It’s going to be hard to stop reacting to Sarah in angry ways but I need to do it.  I need to do it for me first and foremost.  Sarah is one of my closest friends and I don’t want to lose her.  I love her very much.  The fact that I can’t handle living with her does not make her a piece of shit.  It just means I can’t live with her.  I’m having a hard time because with my family in order to keep myself safe from them I have to be actively angry.  When something isn’t working for me I don’t know how to stop it other than this extreme anger.  I have to feel like my personhood is being insulted.  But Sarah isn’t insulting me.  She isn’t trying to hurt me.  She is trying to get through her life as best she can.  Sometimes her ways don’t work for me.  If I manage to remove the franticness from my longing for family I can feel ok with the fact that I just can’t live with Sarah.

Sarah is amazing and wonderful.  She is talented and kind.  She is patient.  She is also not me.  Her priorities are not mine.  That’s probably a good thing.  As I am going full-speed-ahead on my life I can’t expect someone with wildly different priorities to be able to just do the things I want done.  It’s not reasonable.  A lot of why I am so angry is because I wanted this to work so much.  I feel so much disappointment.  I don’t react to that well.  That’s on the long list of things I need to improve on and fast.  I have already done major damage to our relationship.  If I don’t want to be responsible for ending our friendship I need to get my shit together now.  Sarah will not be able to survive my hostility.  She doesn’t have that in her.  If I want to still have her in my life in ten years I need to grow the fuck up.

What do I want from a relationship with Sarah?  Instead of being so angry about the parts I don’t want it is time for me to figure out what I really get from the relationship and work towards that.  There is so much good there.  I’m really not in a place in my life where I should be pissing all over a good thing.

Breakfast is ready.  Cinnamon bread french toast.  My husband loves me.

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