I often feel really guilty about the way my brain works. I feel very guilty for being so broken. I don’t even mean the flashes of anger and rage. I had a good day yesterday. I was scared of the reaction from the book club (outing yourself as a big freak is a big no-no in mommy-groups) but I sent out a tentative “Please confirm you don’t hate me” (worded differently…) and got positive feedback.

I don’t feel good about asking for it. I should just let other people have whatever feelings they have and not care. But I do care. I’m scared of not being liked. I’m scared of actually feeling safe because whenever I’m stupid enough to feel comfortable and I actually share my thoughts with people they don’t stick around too long. Goodbye Brittney, Anna, Sarah. 30 years, 11 years and 8 years of trust. I understand that it is my fault.

I’ve been reading a lot of survival skill books. Who are the survivors? Apparently people who accept responsibility are more likely to live. I didn’t know that. I have a (perhaps unhealthy) strong internal locus of control. I believe I am responsible for what happens to me. It happens because of my actions.

It goes back to when I was really small. I remember conversations about this with my mother’s second husband he was gone before I was six. If things don’t work out the way I want it is all my fault that I didn’t work hard enough to make it happen and I have no one to blame but myself. Ok, so he was blaming me for not getting done the things he wanted done but that’s not the point.

I was taught that things were my fault. In fucked up and inappropriate ways but it has served me so well.

I need to not take it so personally that I offend people. There will always be people who decide they don’t want to be my friend.

Why PTSD morning? Because when I wake up with a little bit of anxious like this it manifests as rapid heart rate, sweating, I see time after time of people rejecting me and telling me I am disgusting playing in my head like a news reel. I see the dangers and problems of being alone. I start to cry. I want to wake up and cancel every RSVP I have and not talk to anyone ever again. Even the ones who have never shown signs of being mad at me because it is inevitable that they will and I don’t want to experience it. I wake up wanting to hurt myself.

But I had a fucking good day yesterday. It isn’t fair to have this kind of bounce. I should not be down right now. No, I will never be prom queen or anything like that. I understand the shape and limits of my community. I’m not sure I will ever try for having a best friend again. I talk to K the most but I expect that to change as the years go by and I’m just grateful I have it right now.

I have to not expect that anyone will be in my life in twenty years. I can’t plan around anyone but me. Maybe Noah.

Someone on my PTSD forum said that he was jealous because when I told someone in person about my trauma I got to be comforted. I got to be held and I got to cry. I didn’t laugh in writing but I laughed as I read it. No, actually when I told Noah about my traumas I made him go to the mall and we walked. I didn’t want him to be looking at my face and for the love of all that is holy I did not want to see his face. I didn’t let him touch me. He didn’t see me cry for years of marriage. I’ve only let him hold me while I cry a few times recently. It’s very scary and overwhelming.

I feel guilty because I start out the day smoking pot. But my options are to skip smoking and continue to feel anxiety and like I should set fire to every relationship in my life just so that I don’t have to sit around waiting to be dumped… or I can smoke and have a nice day. Today is the day to clean the bathroom and the floors. And gardening. The kids and I will laugh and have fun. We will go snag the big huge crate I saw out running and the little girls will each get their own raised bed to do whatever they want with. I’m pretty excited.

It’s going to be a day full of only the things I want in my life. A local homeschooling buddy SMSed me last night to ask if they could come over and weed with me for an hour or so in the afternoon.

I’m obviously not a leper. I feel like a bragging piece of shit when I talk about my social life because I am extremely busy. Why do I feel so hated? That’s mental illness, folks. I catalog what I do and who I see to remind myself that it isn’t possible that I am as disgusting and bad as my family told me. If so I wouldn’t go to a fair in San Jose and see several people who squee and rush at me to hug me.

But then I think about the fact that I skip parties at friends’ houses sometimes because I can’t handle being in the room with their rapist friends. Maybe I am tolerated in the same kind of defective zone in society. I’m afraid that is true.

I yell at kids because I honestly believe it is good for them. Right now there is a whole wave of parenting that kind of thinks I am from the devil. I say, “Your kids have to go live in the world. How in the hell do you think they will handle people like me once they are grown?” I’m really not that extreme out in the big bad world. And after I yell I explain why and what needs to change in the future and I don’t carry a grudge and I generally hand out food right afterwards as a bonding thing.

No really, kids need to hit a brick wall. They need to be told that what they are doing isn’t acceptable. Then it needs to be made clear that you have a problem with their behavior, not their personhood and you believe in zillions of chances. Just don’t do that one again, m’kay?

I wish with all my heart that someone would have cared when I was a kid. I wish someone had told me that my misbehavior was very dangerous and they didn’t want me to be hurt. I was kind of told that half-heartedly by people who never followed up and with whom I had no bonding experiences.

I need to be told things I don’t like. I’m blessed with having people who look at me hard enough that I trust their feedback. That feels good.

No person, no personality, no path is completely set in stone until you are dead. People can change and change and change again up until that point. There aren’t really any rules.

Once upon a time our species had very little impetus to figure out how things like PTSD worked. People died in their 30’s or 40’s and it just wasn’t a big deal. You deal with it then you die. I’m going to live post-trauma with symptoms for decades and decades and decades. That’s pretty fucking daunting. That’s motivating. If I don’t think really hard about how to handle this then I might have a miserable life.

If I just drifted through accepting what happens to my body without question I would have an unpleasant life. If I want to change what is happening in my body I have to do it. No doctor and no pill can fix it for me. I have to map a path through doing this.

Neurobiology, brain imaging scans, and psychology are sort of trying to solve this for me only they really don’t understand what is happening to me and that makes them rather impotent.

I would give just about anything to be part of a study that does brain scans of me every five years as I try to change my PTSD symptoms. I want to know what is happening with the grey matter. I wonder if I can change the brain damage. I want to know where it is and the shape of it and the extent of it so I can put my energy specifically towards what I need. Right now I am throwing darts in the dark. I’m not even sure I am hitting the wall.

The thing that I am most convinced of as I grow up is that humans really do have the ability to do magical things–you just have to want something bad enough. “I’ll find a way or make a way.” People survive things that simply can’t be survived. People heal from incredible injuries and diseases–because they want to sooooo much.

The more I read about combat PTSD the more it scares me. The big difference between me and them is I was taught to be a prostitute. They were taught to kill people. I think that is a different scope of anger issues. I’m at risk of maybe giving someone a bruise if I really lost it and whacked. I don’t think that’s ok so I work on my anger issues.

I live in a culture that does not permit violence. Adapting to it is very complicated. I did not grow up in that kind of culture. I grew up in a culture that thrives on violence, encourages it, and consciously teaches it. After I kind of hinted to my big brother that I was having trouble with boys he taught me how to grab someones pinky and do serious damage to them and control their whole body. I have never done it in earnest because I am too afraid of it failing and what the consequences would be.

I think I partially got into the bdsm community because I was abused a lot as a child but I wasn’t hit very often. I was shamed continually because I wasn’t beaten enough. When I was four or five years old someone in my family (I don’t even remember who) snapped that they were going to beat me and I said, “If you do I will call 1-800-FOR-A-CHILD and report you for abuse.” I didn’t get hit. That wasn’t my mom. Like a cousin or Uncle Bob. A man in that house.

So I grew up and proved that I could be beaten. That I wasn’t weak. That I could take it–I just wasn’t going to fucking take it from them.

I tell Shanna that yes, she needs to be prepared to defend herself with violence if necessary but it should rarely be your first step. If you hit people as your first step you won’t have any friends because people will think (correctly) that you are an asshole. You use your words so that you can still have friends. If you want to be allowed to exist near people you have to be a certain level of civil. This extends to yelling in public places, etc.

My kid is going to get in trouble some day for correctly saying someone is an asshole. Ha. I’m trying to model that you don’t need to tell people your evaluations of them. I have a visceral problem with the word “bad”. I don’t want to tell my kids to not be “bad”. Many of those “bad” behaviors are things that could save their lives. I want them to understand that it isn’t about being good or bad it is about figuring out the correct behavior for the place you are in and following that.

I actually got into that with the book club yesterday too. Other folks are far on the other end of the spectrum wanting their kids to have uniform behavior. Not in this house.

I simply do not identify with the idea of one behavioral code. I behave differently in the park (where I run and climb trees and shout and keep cussing to a minimum and Do Not Get Into My Shit) compared to a bar hosting a munch. Mostly: less running.

I want my children to have a bone deep ability to sense when and how to change to deal with the people around them. That means exposing them to an extremely wide array of people and SUPERVISING the contact and helping them understand it later.

I don’t intervene. I don’t guide during most interactions other than small manners coaxing. I learned how to do all of that in sign language so that I could do so unobtrusively. They do need scaffolding still.

What I am doing is giving them what I needed. Which may not actually be what they need. As they get a bit older it will become more obvious if I am just a narcissist or if this is working for them. So far they seem to be doing well.

My goal in this parenting business is to prepare them for how to be an adult. “People who cannot care for themselves are always dependent and that is a shitty place to be in life. Get up and learn how to do this for yourself.” And they do. They want to model off of their mom because your mom is the best person in the world–right? I mean, dad’s cool too… I guess… but but… MOM. Geez.

I can’t really recall feeling that way about my mother. I wrote up budgets for her when I was seven. I didn’t want to be like her. Only I did. Only I didn’t. Only I did. Oh god.

I wanted to be her with upgrades. I kind of sort of am. I’m a housewife. But I’m not like her. I don’t have the same priorities. I’m not trying to impress anyone. Well that’s a big fat lie. I’m not trying to impress people by having fancier things than them. My mother was big on collecting crystal. She wanted to “look” rich. I want to be rich and I understand financial planning enough that combined with Noah’s salary making efforts–I will get there. I can work with the hand I was given and multiply it. I’m good like that. My mom… not so much.

My dad had to babysit her. He had to handle all of the finances or she would have fucked them over badly. When she was a little girl her mom took in a lot of foster children and neglected her. She was totally trying to make up for the lack of love in her life with things. I feel bad for her. I understand that she had a very hard life.

I can’t be selfish like she is. The funny thing is–in order to not be selfish like she is I have to be selfish in ways she is not. If my mom is flush she is quick to lend money to anyone and everyone. She doesn’t pay back the people she owes… but that’s just the deal, right? Money should always flow downwards in “earning potential” no matter how many times one is told one will be paid back.

If you could have stopped lying to me about that one we might have had a chance.

I live in a world where there are consequences to financial mistakes. I need to act like I’m working without a net. I don’t have a Bank of Mom & Dad. I have an extended clan of disabled (being lifelong drug addicts hasn’t helped–both legal and non-legal drugs) and dysfunctional people. They don’t know how to change themselves. They are producing more little legacy welfare babies.

That’s why I have been a registered Libertarian for over ten years. I grew up knowing that the welfare system was exploited by people like my family. I watched my sister commit outright fraud. It horrified me.

It took almost ten years for me to understand what a statistical anomaly my family is. I had to get to know a lot more people. MDC gave me that. I’m glad for the experience.

My heart rate is lower. I’m going to need to do a lot of stretching today. I had a wonderful massage on Saturday (thank you again, Tay) and the running and now typing = oh boy. But I feel less scared. I don’t feel as much like if I am stupid enough to look up I will see the sword of Damocles.

I smoke because I don’t want to yell at my children because I am terrified of phantoms in my head. I don’t want to be short-tempered because I am spending my spoons on not crying in front of everyone. I don’t want to be short-tempered because I am spending my spoons on trying to block out my perception of the evil reel going in my head. I don’t want to be mean.

So I won’t be. Thanks medical card.