Ack. My screen looks different. It’s annoying how these geeks keep wanting to “update their look”. Despite being married to someone who cares about such things I still don’t really get it.

I have updated my “profile pictures” most places to reflect my current hair length. I look quite butch. It feels weird. People keep telling me that it looks good on me. And then I uploaded pictures to here in separate short posts because I am not awake enough to figure out embedding today. I’m really tired. I had therapy last night and then Noah and I stayed awake talking until 10:30 and then Shanna woke up. She was hurting. I think she was growing. She had a rough night. Then I had my normal every night interruption of needing to use the bathroom. I wish that my “regular” as a grown up wasn’t 3:30 am. It’s annoying. Then I decided to spring sex on Noah. About twenty minutes after we finished Calli woke up and needed me for a while. By the time I left her room it was after 5:00am. I might as well just be up. When did I become this person?

I feel increasingly perplexed by myself. Who am I? What am I capable of? What do I actually need? What do I want? How are these things different?

My therapist doesn’t interrupt my ranting much. I get the impression I am intense for her. Ha. Last night she interrupted me once to say, “That was an interesting question.” I had just asked “When will I stop missing people who have never and will never be in my life?” She doesn’t interrupt me much. That makes it a challenge for me to remember that question and think about it.

There are so many things I’m afraid to really jump in and do. Humble, stupid shit. I really need to fix the grout in my bath tub. I can watch videos online and read tutorials. It’s really not a complicated task. But I feel this inner resistance. I don’t trust myself as an autodidact. I always feel like I need a teacher for the first time I do things. I want to be an assistant. I want to be the competent assistant who helps someone build things they can’t build alone. I feel comfortable in that role. I can’t serve an idiot. I really liked my scene shop boss in college. He was very talented and he taught me how to work hard. No, that’s not true. He was a hard worker and he was happy to have me keep him company. He can’t teach the skills very well though. It’s a different kind of skill to teach. Anyway.

I am not behaving how I think I should behave. I am a deeply social animal. Despite the fact that I loathe group work in a class room setting I really long to work with people. I just don’t suffer fools well and very few people want to work as hard as I work. That sounds pretentious. Other people work hard at things that are not the things I value and as a result they do not meet the speed I want them to meet on most tasks and that is frustrating.

I have a physical need to get things done and see visible progress in my life. I have to think, constantly, about the fact that I am a dynamic and changing individual. I can have some lasting effect on something. I can become strong enough to do all of the tasks that need to be done in my life. I can gain those skills. It is an education process. It is an education process I think my kids should have. I have so much stupid fear about doing things wrong. I believe in the back of my lizard brain that people who come to my house will think worse of me if I try to repair something in my house and it looks less than professional. I don’t really make straight lines very well. I make up for it by using the brightest fucking paint Home Depot sells. There is nothing neutral in my house.

I write sitting next to a palm tree book case that is strung with bumblebee and dragonfly lights. I’m annoyed by the splotch of green on the ceiling. My hand slipped when I was painting the bookcase. I should really get around to fixing that. How many years will I sit here and be annoyed by that mark? Hopefully less than a year. That would be great.

There is never an end to the things that must be done on a house if you want to maintain it in a state of good repair. This house hasn’t been maintained very well and it is more than fifty years old. It wasn’t made high quality when it was built. I guess I have my fixer-upper. And I have to do it all by myself. And we won’t have a lot of money. These projects are going to drag out. I have to figure out a triage list and do them as the money exists in the budget.

I have to be someone else now. I’m having trouble learning this job. I’m having a hard time envisioning what I will look like in ten years. I keep coming up on this problem I have over and over again in my life.

I learn by watching people. I learn by mimicking behavior. It’s a lot of how I pass the way I do. I pattern myself off of whoever I am talking to as much as possible for as long as possible. I had to learn to do that when I was young. I don’t feel like I have much of a me that I know how to be around people on a consistent basis.

I keep going through my mental roster of people I admire. I have no desire whatsoever to be like any of them. I’m not sure what I want to be like. No, that’s not true. I know what I want to be like with my kids. I’m getting closer.

I’m learning how to mother myself as I mother my children. I’m learning how to pay attention to subtle signals in how my body moves. I’m learning how to listen to what it says. It is hard to find compassion for my frailty. Often I don’t start tasks because I am afraid of the physical difficulty. I am not as strong as I might wish. I know that the answer is to become stronger. I’m trying. It is hard that the answer to most of my problems is simply become stronger. You have to become stronger in a way that balances the system as a whole or you risk injury.

I don’t really get runner’s high. Just like I rarely got endorphin rushes while being beaten. I don’t get it. When I do these activities I am miserable and I hate them. A good run is one where I am so lost in my thoughts I barely notice the time passing. I am slightly worried about being hit by a car so I try not to get too lost in trance. Most running days involve actual whining. I do this because I have an end goal in mind. I want to run in a marathon with my brother. This is for me. This will be the closest I have to doing something with my family. I don’t really care if other people understand. I fucking want it. I hope that will be enough closure for me. This is my last chance. I need to get buried in the minutiae of my life. I need to paint the damn ceiling.

I need to stop feeling bad that my life is this small. I have taken to projecting a lot of my guilt on my misperceptions of Noah. I feel manifestly unworthy of him. I worry that I try too hard sometimes because I am trying to impress him. I feel like he made a bad deal. I’m trying to do what I can to mitigate the damage. It’s really stupid. Even though I think that Noah deserves better than me I can’t even define what that means. Sluttier? More virginal? What? Why am I bad? Why don’t I feel like I am a good wife? Mostly because I need so much from him. I’ve been told over and over and over all my life that my needs are not very important. Mostly the problem is that I don’t meet my own needs consistently enough. I don’t know how. I don’t really even know what they are.

Luckily I live with two people who are loud and demanding about getting their needs met. They are showing me that it is ok to have the needs I have. And oh man they are teaching me who I want to be.