Monthly Archives: August 2013

Walking on eggshells

I do a lot of defining myself in negatives. I don’t just mean that I am derogatory towards myself. I mean that I think of myself in terms of, “I am not like _____; I do not do _____” It is one way of making yourself different. Not a useful way. It means that you are constantly placing how other people are as primary. I’m not like you. People take it as a rejection or as a negative statement about them. Going out and creating an identity without negatives is much harder. It takes tremendously more emotional and psychological energy to go create something from scratch rather than just reject everything that walks by as being “not you”.

I was asked how the party went. Well. Where in my stress cycle should I answer that question from? I think that most people had fun. I absent mindedly made a minor social faux pas early on and never stopped hearing in my head how stupid, rude, domineering and offensive I am. When everyone finally left I cried for hours because I felt so guilty for offending someone.

If you are going to move through life being an asshole but you cry every time someone lets you know that you are crossing their boundaries… you aren’t giving people a way to have a relationship with you that is not basically subservient. If I don’t want subservient relationships (I don’t) then I can’t keep doing this bullshit. It’s not ok to cause other people to feel guilty for having boundaries. They need to have them. I need to take my wrist slap and move on. That is the adult way to handle such things. That is how you have relationships.

This is why my therapist wants me to stop socializing for a while. I spend a lot of time examining all of my interactions with people and looking for reasons that person is very likely to walk away from knowing me any minute for a long list of good causes. I know that I push my luck every day and in every way. When will people be sick of my shit? I get that a lot. My paranoia is not baseless. Is it paranoia to watch for tornados in tornado country?

But the paranoia drives people away as surely and as quickly as if I was chasing them away with a fire hose.

On my last day of teaching English at the Hindu temple one of the kids brought up suicide. A kid from their school jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge last year. They are all still thinking about it. I talked to them about how hard it is to get help when you are mentally ill. It wears people out. They want you to hurry up and get better already so that you don’t inconvenience them. What do you do if you can’t just snap out of it and behave the way other people want? Either you can put up with being punished for being how you are or you do what you can do to get away from the pain. Sometimes that is suicide. Not that I know exactly why that girl jumped. There are as many reasons to do it as there are people who do it.

Walking on eggshells means trying to place someone else as the primary character in the story and not being sure what your lines are. “What do I say so that this delicate and sensitive individual is not upset?” Can’t be done. As soon as you are reacting from that place you have already assumed that offense is likely and just assuming that means that the offense is already communicated. Game over. You lose.

Sometimes people snap at my social faux pas because they are not feeling patient today but they feel patient on other days. I am probably similarly obnoxious on both days but the difference is not about me. If people try to pick their behavior towards me based on my mood they will mostly pick wrong. It drives me batshit. You can only act how you feel like acting. Faking it will make neither of us happy. And acting like you have already been kicked makes people want to kick you. Really hard.

Some days I am going to wander off and cry if someone blinks too hard in my direction. It isn’t about someone letting me know that I crossed a boundary. When I have been crying two, three, four hours a day for over a week… my emotional reaction is not about you and I’m sorry that I’m standing near you when it starts such that you will feel responsible. You aren’t. My feelings come from inside me. The kind of shame I feel isn’t something that people I know now put on me. It is about old tapes.

I don’t keep people in an ongoing way if they seriously shame me. I don’t fucking think so–I don’t need that crap.

I think very hard about every person who is in my life. If I invite you to my house (even if you think you are one of the casual people) I have spent many hours thinking about you. I have mulled over every piece of data I have ever acquired and I have carefully weighed it. I know you because I want to know you. I don’t have accidental friends any more. I have people in my life because I choose them out of a long list of ever rotating acquaintances.

I am mercenary. I do not see any benefit to being less than frank about this. I don’t pick my friends based on them being able to wait on me or do work for me or babysit or give me social status. I pick my friends based on them having character traits I desperately admire and want to be able to watch develop more closely. I don’t understand. I want to. Please let me stare at you until I understand.

I don’t think that most people in my life understand this. I want you near me because I want to figure out how and why you do _________. This is something I want to understand in this lifetime and I don’t know another way of accessing this information. I want to know why you want to do the things you want to do. I want access to your motivations. I’m trying to hack my own motivation system. What makes you do the things you do? It isn’t that I will use your motivation to do exactly the same thing as you, but clearly you have learned some neat tricks I don’t know.

I never really understand what I have to offer though. That end of the deal keeps me up at night. I see what I get out of knowing people. I see clear value. I don’t understand what I have to offer. I don’t understand why anyone bothers to know me. I don’t see how the unpleasantness of my company could possibly be balanced by anything I know or do.

I can understand that Shanna and Calli are tied to me. Children need their moms. I get that. I can certainly understand how Noah finds enough value in the trade. Past that… I don’t really get it. I think that is part of the reason I read as mean. I am sad and bitter that I have nothing that is worthy of trade for a relationship. I feel broken and angry about it. I don’t know how to build people up and make them feel happy about being themselves while standing next to me. I know how to make people feel angry and irritated and like they don’t want to stand next to me any more. It is a self-fulfilling prophesy. I do this a lot.

I can’t be perfect in order to not annoy people. I can only be. I have to accept the rebuffs when someone lets me know I am crossing a boundary without turning that into a federal case or people won’t feel comfortable communicating boundary incursions and they will just stop talking to me. No one likes drama. No one wants to feel guilty for having boundaries.

Not everything is about me, yo.

I woke up early because I have to get my crying over early before a busy day. Not many left before I hit “vacation” for a couple of weeks. I’m looking forward to this. I need to get my stress levels down to the point where I am not crying for multiple hours a day as a way of avoiding beating the shit out of people.

I cry partially from frustration. I don’t know how to let the intensity of my emotions defuse without doing something. I used to cut. I like being beaten. I have punched holes in a lot more walls than I should admit. These days I feel like I live in a glass cage. If I hit anything it will break and I will be in a shower of shards. So I cry. And cry. And cry. I don’t know if it is healthier or not but it is certainly less violent. Progress?

See, this kind of thing is actually huge progress. I don’t know that I would give myself much credit for it without writing. I have progressed past hitting other people constantly to deal with my frustration through punching walls to crying. I have progressed past cutting myself into letting other people hit me in consensual and pre-agreed ways into crying. Progress, not perfection? I am moving in a less self-hating direction.

Now I cry over someone pointing out that I said something four times. (Which is annoying. I know.) You know… at least it is much better than my previous coping methods of hitting her or cutting myself would have been much more inappropriate. Both are ways that I would have dealt with that interaction in the past.

Most of my friends have social anxiety to some degree or another, I think this commonality increases their patience for me. But it means that some days my anxiety runs into their anxiety and then things just get worse. Neither can break the cycle. Awkward.

In my life the only thing I have found that really and truly breaks the stale mates and allows relationships to continue is time. If you both continue to spend time together despite acknowledging sometimes feeling awkward… you continue to have a relationship. Not every relationship is comfortable every moment. If you choose to have the relationship then you look for ways to spend time together even if it is kind of weird. Even if you do have some defensive conversations.

I need to get my stress levels down. It is a physical limitations thing. I can only monitor my social behavior so closely if I am doing a lot of major physical work. I have been using my body unusually hard for the past few weeks. The mural and the backyard work have both used a lot of muscles I’m not used to moving. They have both taken a lot of patience I didn’t actually have going spare.

I need to figure out what it means to do projects as a parent. I’m still not handling the energy allotment thing very well.

I feel scared a lot of the time because I can’t control what other people do and I am worried about driving people away from relationships with my children. I do not want to isolate them. But it seems pretty awful for me to expect people to put up with me being an asshole just so they can help take care of my kids when no one but me and Noah owes my kids anything.

My kids are neat. They will be more neat if they know people like you. You are neat. This is all stuff that floats around in my head making me vulnerable and scared all the time. I feel my children deserve relationships that I do not have or know how to create.

I don’t think my kids want to see their grandparents because they want to hurt me. I think that one or both of them will decline to go when they finally understand that I’m not going. I will do my best to not share how I feel about the trip. What they need to know is that they have grandparents who love them and a mom who loves them and their mom is very happy to help them pack and I will kiss them goodbye and tell them to have fun. That is more or less the end of the story in our house.

But I am still going to cry when they are gone. I am still going to be very sad that it has worked out that I just don’t get extended family this lifetime. I’m grateful that I managed to get a nuclear family thing. I get to be sad about this. I get to grieve about that. It doesn’t hurt my kids if I spend my alone time crying.

If I describe visiting their grandparents… I don’t have to sell it or try to make it sound fun in a fake way. When they go see their grandparents they need to remember a bathing suit because they have an indoor pool. They need to remember clothes appropriate for riding a horse because they have horses. Not to mention cows and I don’t know what other animals. There is a whole floor of a house that is just toys. You and your dad and your sister will stay on an apartment by yourselves and you will be able to go play with the toys probably anytime you want while you are visiting.

I mean, shit dude. I don’t talk about the people much or try to predict how the relationships will be. I don’t know these people. I say that her aunts and uncles all play music–maybe she should bring her uke so they can teach her cords.

I think my daughters are very lucky to have connection to a lot of rich, talented people. She should take advantage of the fact that she was born into that family. She should go meet the old Great Aunt who has traveled all over the world doing whatever the fuck she wanted for most of her life. She’s a neat lady. Maybe if she met Shanna and Calli she would be more enthusiastic about coming to California for visits. So far she is kind of lazy. I’ve asked.

My children will not have my story. My children will not grow up without a family. They have connections. My children have people in the world tracking them and caring. I am not going to do anything to make that network smaller than I have to. I cut my family off because I don’t think my family is going to stop passing on the incest without some kind of intervention I don’t know how to do. So I’m keeping my kids the fuck away from them. I feel very sad that this is required but it is. It just fucking is.

Whenever someone tells me that I should forgive my mother because she won’t live forever I see my adult nephew breaking down as he told me about his rape experiences. No. No. No. No. My children will be kept away from them. All of them. I don’t think it is their fault that it happened to them but we haven’t had someone avoid incest in a few generations. I’m keeping my kids away from all of them.

When people tell me to just “get over it” and “stop thinking about it” I think “That shit is why it keeps happening generation after generation.”

I think about my mom a lot. I miss her. It doesn’t help that my Leather Mom is going through a lot of strife and I’m not helping very much (partially because of my limitations partially because she is telling me no). My Leather Mom and my birth mother share a birthday. I find that thinking about one or the other of them brings up a lot of really strong feelings.

Why do I think about my mom so much? Because everyone else gets to talk to me about their moms all the time. It’s just normal conversation. So I think about my mom and try to stay silent. I feel bad. I feel like a dirty terrible person.

One of the last things my mother said to me was that she would kill herself if I took my kids away from her. I keep checking on the internet and she isn’t dead. I guess that is just one more broken promise.

Broken promises are a big thing right now. What does it mean to say, “I will do _____.”

Relationships are about choices. Sometimes they are uncomfortable. Often that discomfort comes from inside me and is about the fact that I am thinking three hundred painful things all while I’m trying to have a relationship. When I can get those three hundred thoughts under control and actually focus on the person in the room I am grateful to have that relationship. I am glad it is still there. But it feels like I’ve been phoning it in from somewhere else for a while. I never understand what benefit there is to other people in putting up with me.

I am scheduled to be at Dad’s for Thanksgiving. How long is this going to continue? I have had him in my life more or less for going on fourteen years. We have a fairly distant relationship but honestly I do better with those. I have a hard time with being good-enough when people are around more often. I am able to behave perfectly appropriately for my target audience when I only see people once or twice a year. I feel ashamed that I can’t keep up the game with people I see more.

It makes me wonder if I have my anxiety as under control as I think with my kids. Some of my recent frustrations have made me realize that I need to start writing names on the white board in our room. I don’t want to discuss my relationship fluctuations in front of the kids any more. Shanna is starting to sorta follow and have her emotions influenced. I’m having to do a lot of backpedaling and defending of people with her and that’s… awkward.

I don’t want my kids to share my emotional experiences of people. My children are having different experiences. My experiences are my problem. My experiences are distinctly shaped by having an anxiety disorder. I do not want my kids learning my emotional dysregulation. If they develop their own later I don’t want it to be clearly my fault.

This is part of what I like about Unschooling. I have to pay attention to what I am doing, all DBT like. I have a bad habit of loving and hating people. My kids don’t need to hear about it. I don’t need to teach them to obsessively over analyze every conversation before and after it happens. So far they seem pretty good at talking to people.

I went to a book club meeting yesterday. I need to update my reading list, I’ve added three or four. Book club always turns into a small scale therapy/support group. I find it interesting how the folks who are consistent are unschoolers who come from abusive backgrounds. Other folks come and go. Not that I’m consistent enough to actually say that. Maybe my few attendance points are flukes. I should probably keep that up. My therapist wants me going out and doing stuff without my family. Book club is not terribly threatening. Most of the places I would choose to go involve fending off sexual advances and I’m not in the mood.

What the hell else do people do?

stupid. stupid. stupid.

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I wish that my successes outweighed my failures in my mind. They don’t. If I say something stupid early in the day I don’t ever stop thinking about how stupid I am. I shouldn’t have done that. I didn’t really mean that how it came out. I was distracted and not really concentrating on the conversation so I did it wrong.

Then I spend the rest of the day wishing I could be in my room crying. When everyone leaves I go ahead and do that for hours.

I don’t think that other people make their choices because they are trying to hurt me. I think they are making their choices based on what is best for them. I have a hard time not paying attention to the fact that what is best for them hurts me. I write about it. I try not to talk about it. I know it is my problem and not anyone else’s.

Maybe I am not good enough at this relationship thing to keep trying. I’m not sure what right behavior even would be. Whatever it is I’m apparently not doing it.

I haven’t been able to turn my anxiety down in a while. The higher my ambient anxiety is the less I am able to actually be reacting to what is happening to me today. I am not really part of “today”. I’m just part of the ongoing story of what a stupid piece of shit Krissy is. It’s a long story. It goes on and on. I don’t know how to get out of it. I don’t know how to stop doing everything wrong.

I’m not doing “everything” wrong. But it feels like I do more wrong than right.

That gratitude stuff.

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Today I feel lucky to have so many people who love me even though I am so broken and so difficult. High Maintenance they call it.

My husband is going way above and beyond the call of duty lately. He has broken concrete, made breakfast every day, made dinner most days, swept and mopped the house, and moved over 500 lbs of sand so I didn’t have to. These are all things he doesn’t especially like or want to do. But he is helping me. And he did all that outside of his work hours, where he earns enough money to support me in a lifestyle I never previously imagined. (Jenny said she would show she loved me by paying someone to do this labor rather than doing it. It’s a love language thing. I can’t pay someone to do work how I want it done–this is something I learn over and over again. Having Noah just help me do it is really a big thing for me.)

I do not feel like I deserve this. I’m grateful anyway.

Many of my friends are finding ways to hang out and talk to me or be supportive. I am grateful that people stare at me hard enough to say, “You are clearly in a depressive state. I can tell based on ____ and _____ and ____.”

Holy shit. You care. That’s… that’s… whoa. Ok.

It is hard to believe that I am a piece of shit and have people treat me this way. It feels wrong. It feels like I should hurry up and do something awful so they recognize that helping me is the wrong decision. I am not worthy. Self-sabotage is kind of my MO.

That’s part of why my therapist wants me to stop socializing for a bit. When I bounce between lots of people I feel like I am supposed to be trying to figure out how to please all of these people and that takes a lot of thinking and emotional energy. When I am consumed by feelings of worthlessness it is much harder to figure out what is “appropriate” behavior.

Yes. I have to work on my behavior all of the time. You have no idea how much profanity and nastiness lives in my head. I consciously choose what I say or I say things that are really mean and critical. Even if I like something very much I can always tell you 4,920 things that are wrong with it. Whether that is a person, a place, or a thing. Or an idea. Just to cover all the nouns. It doesn’t matter how strongly positive my feelings are there are still more negative things I could say. I have to consciously choose to not be like that. It’s hard.

Right now my friend is reading to my kids. I’m going to have a hard time when she leaves California again. I know she loves me no matter where she is but having her nearby feels like such a blessing. I don’t have to try to please her. I can sit still in a chair and she pays attention to my kids and loves on them and I don’t have to worry about my behavior.

I feel grateful for friends who put up with how loud we are. I know that the volume in our house is very challenging for a few of my friends. (Oh.Forking.Man. The last place we went for a playdate [K-babysitting is different] had hardwood or tile floors throughout with very high ceilings. I no longer think my house is loud. My house is awesomely sound dampening. YAY MY HOUSE. I no longer want hardwood floors or high ceilings. I would lose my fucking mind. I like my house more with every year. <3

I need to go out back and tack down the landscaping fabric. Then I will fill the sandbox. Then I will take a shower and get ready for teaching. After teaching I need to come home and start preparing food for the party tomorrow. Oh man.

I feel very lucky to have the people I have in my life now. I know that I am crazy and all, but not everyone has as many people who love them fiercely as I do. Even if I don’t feel loved I know that I am. I see the actions of the people who show up in my house.

I’m trying to see you for who and what you are instead of the projections from my broken brain. I’m trying. I’m trying.

Tomorrow will be a kick-awesome party. Just sayin’. Not many kids coming, this is the “grown ups who show up to see the kids all the time” party really. Calli listed the people she wanted to invite. Only one person who visits regularly isn’t coming and that is because he doesn’t like the noise much. He and his wife were invited but not pressured to come. They don’t like crowds.

It is really neat finding out who Calli feels attached to. She has a varied and dear family whether I understand it or not. I’m really glad that my daughters feel so loved in this world. I’m doing something right.

This is why I have a therapist.

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My therapist told me to cancel everything I can cancel in the next two weeks. I won’t be able to get the crying under control any other way. That’s probably true. I like to keep my crying at under an hour a day. When it creeps up over three hours a day it really cuts into my ability to work.

Atypical depression is normal for PTSD. It doesn’t manifest in the “normal” ways and it can’t be cured by the “normal” drugs. Isn’t that all very helpful to know. If I am depressed, what should that mean in terms of my behavior? How come I can go move over 8,000 pounds of concrete but I’m “depressed”. Psh. I’m not depressed. I don’t get depressed. I just cry and cry and cry while I work. Oh. That’s not normal?

Well I move the concrete but I sometimes go and collapse on the couch and am unable to move for an hour. I’m not exactly asleep–I think I can hear the kids the whole time. I’m just not able to move. That doesn’t usually last more than about 90 minutes. I mean… I can move. When someone shows up and knocks on the door I can stagger to the door.

Really it doesn’t matter how shitty I feel. That’s irrelevant. There is work to be done.

My therapist thinks this might be an unhealthy thought process and one I should work on. She thinks that when I’m spending many hours a day sobbing I should probably change something.

It isn’t that moving the concrete is the problem. Moving concrete doesn’t make me feel depressed. Heavy physical exercise is generally something that is one of my most intense mood elevators. It isn’t that doing the work is a problem. It is that I don’t rest. I don’t drink enough water. I don’t eat enough. My calorie needs are probably much higher than usual right now–I’ve been doing a lot of fairly heavy work for a couple of weeks. But I’m barely eating.

Noah, I leave the breakfast dishes on the table so long because I usually barely finish eating breakfast by lunch. I eat a few bites at a time as I can. My stomach hurts too much to eat faster or larger quantities.

A lot of the day I feel dizzy and nauseated. My neck and hurt have hurt continuously for a few weeks. I’m sure my continual dehydration since I stopped drinking carbonated water isn’t helping. (pause to drink water.)

I’m thinking about my mom wicked hard. I’m trying to figure out how I am patterning off of her right now because I think that I am doing that and it isn’t serving me and I don’t know what I should be doing. I’m having a horrible time figuring out what I should be doing at any given moment.

I stop, literally dozens of times a day for the past few days, and have intense overwhelming panic attacks because I am absolutely sure I am working on the wrong thing and I should be working on something else (I don’t really know what) and I am not doing the right thing and that means I am bad bad bad and I should be punished.

This is really exhausting. I’m also not sleeping well. I wake up and then can’t get back to sleep because I cycle through various memories of times in which I was clearly bad and how it is a good thing that those people have shunned me so that I can never hurt them again and I should just stop fucking hurting everyone all the time already. Will I ever stop being such a fucking cunt?

So… yeah. My therapist told me to figure out a way of having one hour every week of having someone outside my family do something for me. Like, actually do what they say kind of do something for me. She told me to cancel all of my social stuff that I can in the next two weeks and not make more plans for a week or more after that.

I have so far maintained control in all of my social setting obligations. That is not something that I can bank on forever. My stress levels are just too high. If I want to avoid screaming at people for some stupid trivial reason, if I want to avoid having a panic attack in public and having to deal with all the horrible after effects… I need a break.

I can’t be what other people need from me right now. I just don’t have it to give. I’m sorry. I know that this is an inadequacy in me. I am sorry that I am so pathetic. But I am. If I want to still have friends in years to come I need to not blow up at people. They don’t want to hang around and let me abuse them. I agree with that basic premise. No one should hang around and let me abuse them.

I wish I was different. I wish that I wasn’t so god damned mean. But then again I’m pretty glad that I’m alive at this point. I like what I get to do during the day. I like the people in my life.

The kids started in on me this morning. They wanted to go to Fairyland after therapy. I collapsed to the floor crying. I told them that I’m sorry I can’t go do all the fun things they want to do. I’m sorry I’m so tired. I’m sorry I haven’t finished all the work yet. I’m sorry I am not able to be the mommy you want to have. I’m sorry I’m not the fun mommy.

I feel guilty that this resulted in my kids comforting me and telling me that it’s ok–I do lots of fun stuff with them. It’s ok that we can’t do it today. I *am* a fun mommy.

We were later than I intended to be because I sat there and couldn’t stop crying for about ten minutes. After a few minutes Shanna asked me why I was still crying. I told her that I was thinking about the fact that I will never be able to meet all of her needs and I feel very sad about that. I told her we were going to come up against this over and over in her life and I may cry about it a lot. But it’s just true. I can’t.

She hugged me and told me that I do my best and that’s good enough.

My therapist says that my children are “parentalized” but given that I do not allow them to do actual care taking of me and I *am* responsible for getting my shit done this is probably not a problem. I feel conflicted about this. I tell my children all the time that they are not responsible for me. I don’t know if I am in denial about my behavior though.

Every parent has behavioral expectations of some kind. I don’t try to make my kids act in a certain way to control my moods or emotions. If I’m having an off day I tell them that if I am snappish it isn’t personal and I apologize for my tone of voice if I am too harsh.

I feel very guilty for the fact that Shanna is becoming my inside voice. This is happening because I instruct her in whatever it is I’m talking about and she repeats things back to me at moments when I am err in need of similar direction. Like managing feelings. I talk to her about how to manage her feelings and she uses the same words back at me when I am having feelings. I generally thank her for her input and then I step off to go manage my feelings because she is not a grown up. I don’t talk to her about what is in my head. It is just hard to hide all the crying.

So yeah, I worry. I worry if what I am doing is ok all the time. I don’t sleep much at night for worrying if existing in a space with me will create irrevocably fucked up adults and I should not have created these poor innocent children for me to abuse.

I don’t think I abuse them. I don’t think I neglect them. But my starting standards are so fucking low that I never feel like it is possible that I am doing enough. I feel that it isn’t possible for me to do something that is good enough. I am tainted. Both of my daughters have gone without sexual contact longer than I went. Have I already won the parenting contest?

Having absolutely no standard to judge against is freeing and terrifying. I talked to a guy recently who told me that he hopes that American society will not be judged by history based on our popular culture. I said, “Uhm, what else do you think they will have to judge on? Give me a break.”

I can read books and watch movies about so-called “happy families” but the truth is I have never been in the vicinity of a happy family for more than a few hours. Near as I can tell every family becomes less happy the longer I am standing near them so even families who are supposedly just fine the whole god damn rest of the time will manage to have a huge blow up when I’m there.

I’m just that unpleasant.

I know these things aren’t actually “my fault”. It’s all just a bunch of coincidences. But I was talking to an autistic guy about shunning recently.

It doesn’t matter if it is my fault or not. The end result is that I make people uncomfortable so it is better for everyone else if I am not there. That doesn’t feel good. That doesn’t give me a lot of reason to think I should keep breathing. If just existing makes things worse for other people… that’s not good.

I am so afraid of still being alive in fifteen years. I kind of hope that my kids won’t read my book until then–the first one anyway. At some point I do actually specifically want my kids to read it. Even though it will be upsetting. Even though it will be terrible. Even if it is “traumatizing” and that makes me a selfish piece of shit.

Just once. I want you to understand your blood and why I am the way I am. You don’t need to change anything about how you treat me. But please. I hope that being nice to you and taking care of you and teaching you that your body and opinion and voice matters entitles me to you reading that one book. I doubt I will force you to read any other book in your life. Please. I need to have someone who is related to me read this book and believe me and take my side. Please. Even if you go on to have a relationship with my mother and my sister and your cousins and whoever else is still alive… please be on my side. Please tell my family that even though you love them it was right to not meet them until adulthood.

Please. I hope I am making the right choice. I don’t have any way of knowing for sure and I am so scared of doing this wrong. I am so scared. I am so fucking scared that I feel like I am going to be beaten because I was bad. Divorcing my family is such a disgusting, terrible, selfish piece of shit thing to do. But it isn’t. It is the only way I know to keep my children safe. Maybe someone else would be able to find a different way but I am limited by my abilities.

I don’t actually think I will force my children to read it. I don’t think I would ever do that to anyone. But I hope. I hope without telling them about that hope.

I don’t tell them what I’m thinking about. I don’t expect them to comfort me. I don’t require them to walk on eggshells in order to not set me off.

I think I am doing all that I can do. I feel so terrible that I cannot do more. But I’m at my limits. I either respect that or I fuck up in a way that will haunt me for years. Ok. Go to ground.

Waves of grief.

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My nephew turned 24 two days ago. I’ve been thinking about him since. I wonder how he is doing.

I feel intense sorrow that I am not doing more to support my friend who just lost her life partner. She hasn’t asked for more, but I think I should be there and I’m not. I feel very ashamed of myself.

I feel like a petty, pathetic, moron for caring so much about how clean my house is before a party. But I’m still forcing everyone in my family to clean.

I’ve had sex twice this month and I don’t know that we will be doing that again. I don’t really feel good about sex right now. Being touched makes me freak out. This is a huge slump and I feel really bad about it.

People are being very nice and soliciting spending time with us. I feel like a piece of shit because I am staying home and working on cleaning up my yard. I feel vapid, narcissistic, and stupid. But I don’t want anyone to get hurt and there has been a lot of debris. I wish I didn’t feel so bad about doing this work.

Construction is always stressful. I don’t know anyone who has construction on their property without stress. It is almost over though and all of the work is beautiful. I am going to be very happy with my yard for the rest of my life. That is nice anticipation.

I feel like I am failing on homeschooling lately. I have too many hours of the week booked. I’m just requiring my kids to entertain themselves while I work. That said, they are incredibly helpful. And because I have not been reading to them much Shanna has been “reading” to Calli a lot and that is really cool on its own.

I continue to feel waves of shame over yelling at my neighbors for being racist. I feel like there should have been some constructive way to deal with it only I am a nasty harpy bitch. And yet… I’d much rather be a nasty harpy bitch than keep my mouth shut when someone says things I believe are wrong. I feel very guilty about choosing to be this person. I’m not nice.

The goody bags are packed for the birthday parties. Not that all of the kids have RSVPed. I should probably email those two moms and find out if the kids are coming.

Cakes are ordered. We will be delightfully cake-ified.

Today we have a playdate with some folks who invited us over to their house before I started canceling everything this week. I don’t feel that guilty about canceling group participation but when someone invites me over to their house I try like hell not to cancel. If I invite myself over I’m ok with rescheduling when something comes up… but not if I’m invited. I know how hard it is for people to invite. I don’t want to fuck that up.

I miss the Leather community. Noah doesn’t understand why. The flaming perverts don’t hold within them the potential to make my life very hard for the next few decades. I’m painfully aware that I can’t fuck things up with people who are involved with my kids. The Leather community is not about my children. If I fuck up there it is something where only I have to pay the penalty. That sounds so freeing right now. I miss having only me pay for being me.

I’m so grateful that my children wake up every day ready to jump into my arms and exclaim that the missed me last night! They are ready for some snuggling!

This is the best period of my entire life. I am so grateful I get to be here. I’m learning that “being wanted” isn’t something that you necessarily feel. Because I am wanted. My children and my husband want me fiercely. And I still don’t feel it. That’s not their fault. I’m trying.

I shouldn’t be typing. But I feel so lonely and sad. I’ve been crying on and off for days. I miss my mom so much. I wish I could stop missing her. I’d give almost anything to not miss her anymore.

hiding commences

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I don’t have it in me to pretend I have social skills. I’m bad. I’m stupid. Everything is all my fault. I will just stay home.

feelings exploding.

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I’m having a lot of intense feelings. Oh well.

Today I will go order cakes. (Multiple birthday girls = multiple cakes. I think people who ask kids to “share a birthday party” and who then make them share a cake aren’t very nice. I mean, I get it from a financial point of view… but I have birthday issues.)

I feel intense anxiety about letting Calli pick the guest lists. She kept stuff very small. She doesn’t like lots of people around. When I asked her do you want to invite ____ she said, “But we have too many people! We can’t play when there are too many people!” Standing her next to my oldest child it is hard to understand that they have the same DNA. Calli likes to interact with about five people at a time and she defends that boundary with very sharp sticks. Shanna wants to invite half the western hemisphere over to hang out.

Part of adapting to them is letting Shanna have big parties and then I have to get over my guilt at not inviting everyone we know to Calli’s parties. She started listing kids to invite on her finger and when I asked about additional grown up names she said no. I have to not feel like I am slighting people. It’s hard.

We will also pick up more lumber. Looks like the playhouse will have all but the final shade covering and paint by the end of today. That is thoroughly exciting. 🙂

Today wonderful people are coming to my house to make the big pile of concrete and debris go away! My yard will be dramatically less dangerous in only 24 hours! YAY! I worry a lot about inviting children to construction zones. My kids get hurt a lot. We’ve had many bloody feet from stepping on screws and nails. Luckily this experience has taught them that when mom says, “This is an important place to wear shoes” they have stopped arguing. The cuts were worth it. Ha. (I am normally very tolerant of being barefoot. I only break out shoes for a reason.) But I don’t need all of our friends-who-are-children going through the same right of passage at my house. 🙂

I wanted to go visit my friend’s baby today. Instead I will fill buckets with tiny little chunks of concrete and carry them from the back yard to the front yard to the big pile. The more I get out of here today the less I have to deal with later.

Today I will hang up the swings for the kids in the back yard. I am unlikely to hang the adult swing today. I am told it involves blocking the original structure and whereas I’m not an idiot and I could cut wood and do the blocking I have only hand saws so I kind of wait for the dude with the power saw to cut all the wood. Lazy woman.

Every year or two I decide to do home improvement projects. I basically always have a party scheduled as a deadline or I just..never…quite… finish… It is effective but stressful. In the future I need to remember that I should be the only one racing a time clock. No one else wants that stress.

I have September and October on the board. Neither are all that scheduled. I think I am going to deliberately not schedule more. I need to regroup. I need to think hard about who is likely to still be in my life in twenty years. Who should I be handing my energy resources to? Where will it have long-term pay off? It is mercenary, selfish, and the only way I will make it to the end of my life without hating everyone in the whole world.

For most of my life I have indiscriminately helped anyone who needed help. If someone I barely knew needed help moving I was there. Things like that. I’m not saying I have a lot of help to offer. I’m saying I have specific resources. When I hand them to people I will not have an ongoing relationship with I get a little boost but mostly a big drain of energy.

Mostly I like doing a lot of anonymous paying-forward of good things. I think that is what makes the world go round.

I’ll get back to it. It is important to me to help people I don’t know. It is a spiritual thing. But I have limited ability to just do that. Right now what I am trying to do is build community. Most people join a mostly-existent community and then try to fit in. I can’t. I am wholesale constructing my own. It is slightly different. It is a more conscious thing. It’s more work.

Taylor asked why I don’t write about him more. Because he is so deeply entrenched in my life at this point that if I accidentally hurt him by processing something in front of him then the repercussions are bigger than I can handle. I have had evolving opinions of his wife. (Never bad–I have certainly not thought DTMFA or anything.) I recognized her as disabled years before he was willing to say so out loud. That means I need to keep my fucking mouth shut because it isn’t my body or my life being impacted. My view of her is irrelevant and may make her or her husband angry.

The lines around who I can talk about and when and why shift dramatically. Mostly I find out the boundaries by no longer having friends. I get fired a lot. I’m used to it. Other people tell me that I should stop writing then if I am so rude and offensive and I want to have friends.

When I stop writing I substitute cutting and other forms of self-mutilation. I write because this is the closest I can come to convincing myself that I am important enough to not be in pain. I can see patterns and understand things when I write. I can also drive off all the people who don’t actually like me any way. It’s a double win?

I am not smart enough, clever enough, fast enough, whatever enough to deal with my emotions without writing. Well… I can. I can force myself to be silent. I can not, however, at this point, actually keep all of my pain to myself. Maybe that makes me whiny, self-absorbed, and stupid. I have to live with that. I have to live with the fact that the only people whose opinion I give a shit about would rather be offended by my writing than count my scars. They don’t need to see the growing evidence of my stoicism.

If I could cope in a different way I would try that. I have tried lots of things over the decades. Cutting and writing are the last bad coping methods still standing. I try to tell myself that my writing isn’t that bad. I worry about the future. I worry about getting to a place where I know that my writing just upsets everyone and it is all my fault for being such a bad stupid bitch. I will stop writing then. At that point I don’t think anyone will ever be allowed to see me naked again. I want to move on from cutting my thighs so much. That was how I hid it as a teenager. Now when I am upset and I think about cutting I flirt with hurting my breasts and my belly over my ribs and my calves and… I’m pretty sure that if I go down that path there is only one way for it to end.

What would it take for me to stop believing that I should die in order to make everyone else’s life better? I don’t know. But I’m not there yet.

(Still not typing… just a PSA)

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My phone is on the fritz. SMS rarely goes through but sometimes does. I no longer get alerts from email or IM. I have restarted it and such but it has been dropped a lot. A really lot. And at this point the factory-standard cover is broken in many places so I’m not shocked or anything.

If I ignore you it isn’t personal.

PS- I already replaced the arm braces. Ahhhh. That feels better.

arms hurt

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I should take a break from typing. I’ve been doing a lot of work over the past few days that is wearing my arms out. I’ll be back. Don’t know when. It should be more than a few days. I need to get new braces. I lost one at Disneyland. In May. I haven’t replaced it yet. I’m awesome.

It was bound to happen.

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I told Shanna that we are going to Portland for Thanksgiving to stay with my Dad. (An adopted parent–not the man who raped me.) Her response was, “But I want to go see my Grandmother.” Meaning Noah’s mom.

So now it seems that Noah and the girls are probably going to go to Texas for a weekend in December.

I can’t stop crying. I will probably now spend the day trying to hide because I don’t want to be asked why I am crying.

Because I hate that I am not part of your family. I’m not. I never will be. They don’t want me. I have no family. And near as I can tell the only person I have to blame is myself.

I am part of a family inside this house. Outside of this house I am nothing.

I don’t want to be asked why I am crying because I don’t want to lie and I don’t want to make my kids feel like me. I want my kids to want to know their grandparents. I want my kids to believe they have family.

I can’t fuck that up.

From Twitter

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“You are the average of the five people you spend the most time with.” – Jim Rohn”

Noah, Shanna, Calli, Kira, Taylor. I must be made entirely of awesome. And why aren’t I better at giving massage? It does explain why I am much better at cooking than I used to be.

do what you can do

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Looks like I won’t be putting together sex ed. *phew* When people ask me to do things I have a hard time saying no. Much like some other people I know. Do I want to be on the hook for teaching other peoples kids sex ed? Maybe? Not sure. I’m glad I don’t need to think about it any year soon. I’m glad I have less work to do.

I’m still coughing but the fever is over. Progress.

Today will be gardening and cleaning. I’m actually really looking forward to it. I get to talk to the kids a lot on this kind of day. I have been flat shocked by how much Shanna has developed the ability to be actual help recently. I know some people start chores at three or four, I didn’t. I started at five. So she’s catching up on progress that could have been made more slowly, I suppose? I just know that I didn’t think she would actually clean up her toys yesterday (she had like six different sets all dumped on the floor at once) and it took her half an hour.

I feel scared a lot of the time that I am doing everything wrong. I am going to ruin their entire lives. I am going to make it so they can’t have normal lives. It will be all my fault.

But I enjoy them so much. I enjoy spending time with them. I want to hang out with them all day talking about why different plants do different things. Huh, what is similar about these kinds of flowers? What is different? Why do you think they are different like that?

I have never had a time in my life where I haven’t been afraid and completely sure that I am bad and wrong. I have learned to kind of ignore that feeling. But sometimes I am bad and wrong. It is hard to figure out where the difference. How can I tell when I am legitimately doing something wrong and when I just feel self-hating? I don’t know very well.

My kids seem happy and like they are making progress. I’m pretty sure if I was doing it “all wrong” that they wouldn’t be blooming quite so well. Which isn’t to say that anyone else’s way is wrong. But if my kids are happy and growing and learning maybe I don’t need to feel like a steaming pile of shit.

No one is perfect. There is no platonic ideal. Not everyone would like my kids as much as I do. I have a number of friends who would probably feel like my children were a curse instead of a blessing because those folks are sensitive to noise and my kids bring as much volume impact as a ten piece brass band.

The volume bugs me and yet I want little girls who think the world needs their voice. The social consideration is an older persons game. I want them to just feel in their bones that they have a right to take up space and make noise with it. I know that isn’t a trait universally preferred among parents. That’s ok with me.

In many ways I let my children cross a lot of “rudeness” boundaries because I have never understood them. I have never agreed with them. So I don’t enforce them.

Pam told me that I was a weird mix of permissive and authoritarian. Yup. I set the boundaries. Within the boundaries I stay out of most things. They have to make mistakes. They have to do things that annoy me. For the love of Crisco I am not trying to raise little people who will “not annoy me”. Ha. If you don’t annoy me you aren’t being enough of a kid. Keep trying.

But they are going to hit the wall of other people. I can’t soften it and I can’t make it easier. The world is what it is. I can prepare them and then I have to just let them bear their own consequences. Other people have different opinions and if you want to deal with other people you have to deal with their opinions.

I don’t want to teach my kids to put people in boxes the way I do. I went to a funeral this weekend. He was a remarkable man. Partially remarkable for the sheer variety of different skill-sets he mastered in different communities. And he compartmentalized everything and very few people knew almost anything about his extensive connections. Everyone there was surprised by how he touched so many other communities. He seemed busy enough in the community I knew him in!

I have levels of trust and like and tolerance. They are all different. I wish that I trusted men more, but I don’t. I trust some men in particular ways. Even a large number of men who totally believe they have already “jumped through hoops” to prove they are safe are people I won’t be in a room alone with.

I don’t care if it hurts your feelings. I can’t. I have my own feelings to worry about. Find someone else to validate you. Someone with a lower rape count.

Women aren’t easier. Women want to nurture. So they bury their own feelings until they can’t any more. Women look trustworthy until they really really really aren’t. Whereas men tend to start out looking untrustworthy and slowly work their way up.

But my past experiences with specific people should not be a good enough reason to damn the other people I meet. Only that is how I ended up having so many problems. I kept trying to trust.

I believe I would be able to trust people more if I weren’t someone who bothered people so much. I believe that a big part of the reason people break trust with me is because I make people feel so wildly uncomfortable.

People won’t remember what you said or what you did. People remember how you made them feel. (Isn’t that Fitzgerald?) If I make people feel uncomfortable every where I go… that is what there is to remember. I am uncomfortable to be near.

Noah doesn’t feel uncomfortable. Shanna doesn’t feel uncomfortable. Calli doesn’t feel uncomfortable. They like me. They have to be enough.

I mean, what am I complaining about anyway? Everyone makes me feel massively uncomfortable. Such is life.

There is a part of me that would like to hide away from all people, basically forever. There is a part of me that wants to start opening my house once a week. But I don’t think people would come. I live in an inconvenient place. It really isn’t worth the effort.

I don’t know how to build community. I am not able to maintain the effort of showing up at a hobby to produce community. I just don’t have it. I feel pathetic, but there it is. I’m not going to get my community through any of the fair(e)s. I am not going to get my community through something I show up at once a week and pay my entrance fee.

I don’t think I am psychologically capable at this point. I get to the door, look around, note that no one here needs me and I turn around and go home.

I’m not a joiner. If I’m going to sit by myself watching other people have fun I can do that in my front yard for free without having to go any where. My neighbors are outside a lot. I don’t need to pay for dance events so that I can go cry in the bathroom.

And yet it isn’t anyone else’s responsibility to show me a good time. It is my responsibility to have a good time or not. So I don’t go. I’m not very good at “having fun”.

So I make progress on my house. It doesn’t effect anyone but me. No one else cares. But I do. I may not feel like I have community, I have friends, but it seems different. I don’t know.

I have at least two people I can call in an emergency. Depending on the emergency I could potentially go down a list of other people who could help. The last time I asked anyone but K for help it didn’t go well.

I worry about asking anyone for help too often. K saves my ass a lot. She has been the reason I can see a therapist, or do other major health stuff if I can’t work around Noah’s schedule. The kids still visit their Godmamas once a month. I hire people to do some work sometimes.

But the last time I called someone who told me “Call if you need anything” I was told no. I won’t call again.

If you can’t handle hearing the answer “no” then you shouldn’t ask. Most of the time I can’t handle being told no. So I don’t ask people for things. Hell, I’m starting to feel like I shouldn’t be inviting people over so much.

I’m afraid of letting my kids get used to having friends in their lives when I know that no one stays in my life very long. I’m afraid that if I invite families over for my kids to get to know that my kids are just going to have to get used to the disappointment that the moms are going to decide they don’t like me after a while and there go their friends.

It is hard believing that if there is a social problem it is probably all my fault. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it maybe isn’t all my fault but man isn’t that the most convenient scapegoat. I’m a great scapegoat. Everything is my fault. If I weren’t such a fucking asshole I wouldn’t have so many problems.

That thought is one that makes me want to swim out into the ocean as far as I can go.

If I weren’t so fucking bad I wouldn’t have all these problems. But it is too late to change that now. So now what?

More gardening. More cleaning. I’m pretty sure I know how to do those bits without fucking up my whole life. No promises on any other topic.

stuff and stuff

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What is community any way? Are they the people you see when you randomly show up somewhere? Do they spend time with you? How much time is needed before you qualify as “community”? I’m not sure.

I think there are allowed to be weird solitary people who are not the linchpin but they still matter.

Look on the bright side. Even if I don’t feel loved it is not anyone’s fault (I’m certainly not saying that I’m not loved–just that I don’t feel it). It is a broken switch. I know that people act in ways that demonstrate affection. I try to ignore the switch.

I think that part of the reason that my writing has been hostile lately is I feel scared all the time. I am about to get in trouble. I am trying to defend myself. But no one is attacking me.

I am sick, so we didn’t go hang out with the home schoolers today. My fever broke around dinner time so I’m not going to the park tomorrow. You should be clear for 24 hours before you go in public. (It is polite!)

Instead I did house work and yard work. I tried to not work too hard or too fast. But I transplanted the pumpkins, (maybe they will forking grow now) and added lettuce and flower seeds. I took out all the dead corn stalks. I weeded. I folded laundry (three loads!). I cleaned the kitchen and destroyed it again. I finished sorting through my neighbors hand-me-downs and got them put away.

I chose having two parties for Calli because she said she couldn’t handle having very many kids over at once and I figure divide up the people who will only go on the weekends with the people who will only go during the week. That way the crowd never gets too loud. She’s sensitive.

I’m feeling stupid for it. I picked the weekend before her birthday because I didn’t want Labor Day weekend (this will be a thing forever) but that means… oh man. Just stuff. I kind of wish I had bumped it back. Oh well. 🙂 It will all work out. Somehow. Like magic. Noah will be outside working this weekend even though that is Not His Thing.

The blackberry bramble is dealt with. Tomorrow I will deal with transplanting the broccoli and watermelon. I need to clear out the 4 o’clocks. I need to go pick up those damn stumps from my neighbor’s yard. I don’t even know where I should put them yet. Decisions, decisions, decisions. Probably back yard. I shouldn’t tempt all the random neighbor kids to crack their skulls. You should have to know us before you get that invitation. I also mailed the invitations for the second birthday party.

Finish party planning. What to eat or drink. Make scavenger’s/treasure hunt. I won’t be able to do that till I get the yard more settled because I will have to figure out where to put the clues and such.

I have only three more weeks of English teaching. Only two more weeks of swimming. 47 days till a time traveling camping wedding. 53 days till the home school camping trip. If I don’t get sick again.

I’m trying to make my schedule look less crowded. I’m tired. I need a slower pace. I need to not feel bad about that. I’ll be nicer.

random tmi

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I am pleased to report that the evil gunk I am coughing up from my lungs is a nice pale green with no black at all. The more I read about chronic bronchitis the more I think I am just screwed. My mom was a really heavy smoker. I have had coughing problems all winter from the first sign of cold for as long as I can remember and I didn’t smoke pot for that long. (roughly four years of consistent smoking in my late twenties into thirties) I’ve been off smoking for a while and the black stuff in my lungs has cleared out. But I am probably never going to stop coughing all winter.

Did you know that chronic bronchitis can kill you? I am curious what I will die of some day. Suicide has its down sides, but it also assigns a certain dignity compared to dying because my airways just close. Enh. We’ll see.

I’ve been thinking a lot about suicidal ideation as a concept as opposed to having suicidal ideation. What function does that hold for me? Is it relief? Is it company? Is it safety?

If I believe that at the end of the day *I* get to decide if I have to face tomorrow… that’s some power. It is most of the power I have ever felt a had.

At this point, whereas it is hard to control, I can manage to switch some of the tracks of my brain to other things so I can still “function” even while the imagery is happening. Earlier in my life that wasn’t true. On days when the multi-plex went live I just had to hide in a closet to avoid getting in trouble because I would inevitably get in a lot of trouble those days. I don’t value myself or my body so I pick fights. I’m just looking for the next person who will hurt me. I assume that is the only reason I am here anyway. Someone has to be at the bottom of the shit hill.

A friend asked me how I was doing yesterday. Other than hacking up a lung I don’t have a lot of room for complaint. I mean, could I talk about things that are bothering me? Sure. Could I list all my stress and anxiety? Sure.

I am exactly where I want to be doing exactly what I want to do. I have so much privilege it blows my fucking mind. I get to be independent and secure because I have a provider. It’s… kind of weird.

Most people developed their early sense of security from their parents. Mine couldn’t take care of me. Not in any way. My mom sent me off to live with other people who could take care of me and my father said that providing support for me wasn’t a worthy enough thing to do–he needed trade in the form of sex with my mother or I didn’t deserve support. Even after the divorce.

I haven’t had sex with Noah in a while. I’m not sure what all is going on. July we went slightly over quota. But for the last week I have felt numb. I just can’t have sex right now. I can’t open my legs and provide the trade that keeps a roof over my head. I can’t. I can’t believe that is the only reason I am allowed to stay.

Noah didn’t really know what he was getting into. To be fair, neither did I.

I don’t know how to tell Part 2. I don’t want it to be a continuation of the first book, exactly. I’m doing plot outlining and thinking about the evolution of my relationship with my Owner. Am I telling a story about being trained as a slave? About becoming an adult? About the bdsm community? About the psychopathology of sadists? I’m not really sure. Figuring that out will determine a lot about the book. And how graphic should it be? It’s not like I actually had all that much sex with my Owner. He wasn’t interested. I will need to describe the bdsm and that is graphic enough. “Then he placed the noose around my neck. He said, ‘Well I hope you don’t die’ then he walked over to the pulley system and tugged on the rope that lifted me off my feet while I tried to relax and go limp so it would hurt less. Then I waited to find out if he would kill me or not.”

I mean, is that x rated? It is uhm… festive? I don’t know.

The suicide book also wants more work. Sigh.

I spent an hour and a half working on curriculum for sex ed for home schoolers. Yes yes, I’m “unschooling” my kids and all. Sorta? Maybe? Am I even physically capable of thinking about things as an unschooler? So what I’m doing is putting together what I think they should know and why. Then I’m trying to figure out how to present the information.

I won’t provide them with a one-size-fits-all curriculum. I know all the kids I have been approached about teaching. (Moms have asked at the park. Ok, some moms have also explicitly said “You won’t be teaching MY kids.” Ok, not a problem. It isn’t as if I am so desperate for things to do that I need to chase down other peoples kids for more work.)

I feel weird about putting this together. I was asked to. By multiple people. Other people emphatically don’t want me near their kids. Uhm, ok? That’s fine?

I hear Davy Crockett. Be sure you are right and go ahead. I believe that sex education is important. I believe that all human beings should have access to sex education. I also believe that parents have the right to set culture for their own children. That means that “sex education” will be done in a variety of ways by a variety of people. For example, I will not a teach a sex ed that says, “Boys have a penis and girls have a vagina.” I will say, “People are usually born with genitals. Most of the time people grow up believing that they have the right set of genitals for them and they are happy with who they are. Sometimes people feel like they do not feel comfortable with what they were born with in some way. Some people grow up and reject being called a man or a woman and choose no gender. All while having a penis or a vagina. So it isn’t as simple as it might appear.”

It is ok with me that some people do not want their children hearing this message. I believe that parents have a right to shelter their children. I just do. I believe that whether or not a parent wants to shelter his/her child is ok in as far as that parent does not try to pretend that the outside world and the different opinions in it are ALL BAD. I like “They are fine like that, we just aren’t like that.”

-It will probably take me a week or two to put together the sex ed curriculum with materials. (Estimate 15-30 hours [I’m not shitting you. Being a teacher is work.]) Not sure I will get to this before the birthday parties.

-Must grade and set syllabus for remaining English classes at Hindi temple. (Estimate three hours of work)

-Must clean house and yards for upcoming birthday parties. (Estimated 40 hours. Let’s be real here. It may go up from there. I will cap it at 50 hours because then I will just be crying.)

-Decorate for parties (including figuring out treasure hunt. I was told there MUST be a treasure hunt. Sigh.) I should AT LEAST put the invitations in the mail tomorrow. (Estimated 15 hours)

-Must get over being sick, thus should consciously choose reduced work load. Shit. Really should limit body to six hours of WORK per day. (No pretending that “writing isn’t work” or “taking care of kids isn’t work”.)

-There are more Home Depot trips in my future. Sand. Glorious sand. (2 hours at least.)

-Not to mention reading to the kids, taking them to the water park, taking them to home school outings, not to mention swim classes, and not to mention cooking. Because I can’t wrap my head around the timing of all of this.

For the record, I do not judge when other parents have messy homes because keeping my home clean is a full time job and I don’t expect people with other full time jobs to be able to also do the same full time job I do. And acting like it should be easy for someone to do what I do in addition to a job is highly insulting to me. I work my fucking ass off and my house is nothing resembling spotless. Cleaning is work.

I think I spend too much of my life preparing for parties. They occupy a huge space in my brain. They are my way of trying to build community. They are pretty much the only way I get into a group of people without being convinced that more than half the people would merely step over my corpse if I dropped dead. So I like hosting. When I host I know the people are there because they like ME ME ME. It’s a good thing.

I wrote this yesterday and didn’t finish. I can’t reread it with helpful folk around. The end.

more thinking. less err, tmi

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I’ve been sitting here listening to The Coup more. It is nice that youtube has these automatic playlists so you can listen to a whole album. And have a screen open next to it with the lyrics at the same time. A lot easier to understand. Ok, Violet isn’t actually one of the best ones. But it made me think about relationship stuff.

(I’m trying to not think about my bits. Bear with me.)

Well, more accurately it made me think of when and how I have done drugs. I usually have done so because I saw no other way of making that person like me. I want people to like me. Not many people like me. When people talk very nastily about young kids who use drugs… I think education is the path. Not hostility.

I have tried a pretty fair variety of drugs. A lot of them I tried because I was in a situation where I was dependent on a man (I thought) and he said, “Here. Do this.” I’ve only gone after a few drugs for my own reasons.

I was thinking about that because I tried a different intake of medication today and apparently the cheeba chews do a lot more to deal with the stomach pain than smoking, vaporizing, or pills. I’ve tried all in the last two or three days. I tried a different kind this morning and I’m probably down from a 6 or so to maybe 3. But I also wrote at the same time and writing often relaxes me. Column A and Column B?

Anyway. I have been horribly uncomfortable in social situations my entire life. I am very aware that I am bad and that sooner or later people will figure it out and I will be punished/reprimanded. This is just how I go through life. Usually I slink away like a pathetic puppy never to be seen from again. It’s my cycle. I own that.

Is this actually me letting people have boundaries though? When someone puts up boundaries I take that as a sign to just leave. Obviously I am not wanted here.

Well, I don’t know that I always manage to avoid people forever. I don’t. I travel through a variety of communities. I have land-mine people in all of them. So this is about me and my issues.

Only if I try to go through all of the situations in my head… no. It isn’t always my fault. But I am often someone who triggers people to have strong feelings. They will then tell me those feelings are all my fault. They want to alleviate it. So I am told things like I must dedicate my life to a 12 step program (it is permissible for me to pick my own of course–obviously I have a wide variety of different options I could be eligible for–I am pretty crazy and all) or I am bad.

I don’t think that is about me. That is about someone else deciding “A Good (Mother/Person/I don’t fucking know) acts like _____________.” I never signed on for that role. I like to negotiate my own roles. I like to be able to say, “Am I allowed to ask for this, this, and this–it is ok to say no.” I don’t ask unless I am ok with no.

I am not trying to make other peoples lives harder. I do not write about my anxiety in order to create anxiety in other people. I write so that when I am done writing I can have a 2-6 sentence pitch that is calculated to make it sound appealing to my specific audience that I am talking to in person.

Have you ever noticed that I don’t talk nearly as much as I write? I am rehearsing. I am refining. If that process bothers you, well, don’t watch. I need to do this. And I have learned through long experience that I won’t write just for me. I stop. I get depressed. And then I spend a lot of time cutting. I don’t want to cut any more. I really can’t take the risk of not blogging at this stage of my life. This is rather important to my mental health.

I have to be selfish about this. I have to be selfish about my right to process my feelings in a public way. Blah blah me talking about my trauma will traumatize other people blah blah blah. Have you ever learned the variety of tricks for closing a computer screen? Bam. Problem solved.

Don’t silence me to make you feel better.

Yes, I’m making different choices than you. I go through a different thought process than you.

That doesn’t mean yours is bad. It just means that it belongs to you.

Recently someone told me I was weirdly permissive and authoritarian at the same time with my kids. I explained the permissive part by saying, “I am saving up my “no’s” for when they have boyfriends. If I can say yes I do.” But I am very authoritarian too. Mostly I effect this through modeling.

We spend a ridiculous amount of time practicing our “manners” and “nice talk”. “How do you introduce yourself?”

“How do you look for clues about a person that are a good introduction to conversation? What things must you not mention or people feel sensitive?” We look for examples in books and movies and games and take them apart. “How does this make you feel?”

Even when I am depressed and pathetic and lying on the couch my children get a lot of attention. They bring me books and we read endlessly. Well, or until my throat goes out. Then Shanna starts explaining/reading the books to me. Then Calli takes a turn. We talk about all of them.

Because I know that it doesn’t matter what is going on in my mind or my body I need to keep working on educating them. That is my job. That is what I am here to do. I am responsible. There is no one to whom I can pass the buck.

It keeps me honest.

I grew up in a house of people who rarely got up and did anything. They were all massively depressed. I didn’t learn how to do things until I was an adult. I know this is common in my generation. Latch key kids with a microwave don’t know how to actually survive.

My body actively rebels at eating “normal” food. I should not have any vegetables or fresh fruit while I am otherwise dealing with a terrible multi-day diarrhea outbreak but that’s all I have in the fucking house. (Well, I do have rice. But I think we are almost out of white rice. We do have a 50 lb bag of brown rice! Uhm.)

I don’t know what the happy medium will be for “healthy” in my body. I know that following the advice of “eat lots of vegetables and fruit!” is not actually going well for me. This hurts. This hurts. This hurts. It is distracting all the time.

I kind of wonder if ecstasy stopped working for me because I took too much of it (I didn’t have that much I know people who have had twenty or fifty times as much as I had in my whole life.) or because the trips became about pleasing other people. I was supposed to be entertaining. I wasn’t there because I wanted to be having an experience alone in my body. I was there to please someone else. It stopped having the ability to raise my serotonin. I just felt anxious and sad and like I knew I was going to be disappointing no matter what I did.

My birthday party was described by many people as “The weirdeest e trip ever.” Well, I knew going in to it that I was evil and bad for doing it. I had been told so quite explicitly by someone I loved.

I don’t know many people who can take a hit of ecstasy and still feel suicidal. But I’m special. At this point in my life there aren’t really drugs powerful enough to over ride my basic belief that people do not like me and I am bad.

Pot lets me not care. I feel more relaxed about it. It doesn’t take it away. I still know that I am bad. I still know that I am someone who does not deserve to be alive. But I’m apathetic and kind of tired and happy that I get to play with the two kindest and most wonderful people in the whole fucking world all day. Pot lets me stop and appreciate what I am doing this moment.

Even if no one else in the world values me, these two people do. I religiously keep my promises. I am fierce about my boundaries. I am loving and kind and gentle the vast majority of the time and I apologize when I am too rough. My kids are allowed to say, “Don’t glare at me. It makes me feel sad.”

I don’t like how tired edible pot makes me. It is much more extreme than smoking. I feel weak sometimes. I feel like I am swimming instead of walking. I am tense and fluid at the same time. I don’t like that I often don’t feel anything from a pill for over three hours. That means I have to wake up in the middle of the night and take a pill if I want my stomach to not hurt by breakfast time so that I can eat.

An old man in our neighborhood recently commented, “You’ve lived an awful lot of lives for someone so young.” I laughed.

I feel tired sometimes. I feel like I am not worthy. I feel like there is too much here.

I was talking to a mom at the park. She has many more kids than me. I asked if it was rude to ask her questions about how she manages. She laughed and told me it was ok. I asked a few generic ones. Then I said, “Based on what I’ve read it seems that a lot of what it is that you have to just do your best and trust to the grace of God to make up for the rest.” She laughed. Yeah. That. “This is my problem though–as an atheist I’m pretty much screwed.” She laughed at me some more. Yup. That must suck.

I don’t think there is a chance in this lifetime that i could forgive a so called “benevolent” god for what I have experienced.

It is kind of funny. I understand age of consent laws so much more now than I did when I was a child. I used to sit on men’s laps and say, “I know that you really aren’t supposed to fuck someone my age. But I promise I will never tell. No one cares what I do. My mother won’t even know.”

I did it a lot. To their credit most of them told me no. They understood that it was a crime for them to commit. I was lectured quite a bit sometimes. But then the ones who lectured me or yelled at me proceeded to ensure that there was a larger scale public shaming. Everyone should know that I am contemptible.

I can’t say I enjoyed most of the sex I had as a child. It hurt. But I knew I was “supposed” to do it. I thought it was supposed to hurt like that. I didn’t think sex could be comfortable or fun or nice. Well, maybe for someone else. Girls like me don’t work that way. I grew up just a little more and moved into a sub culture that taught me that “vanilla” girls enjoy being touched gently. Girls like me were masochists and that was way cooler anyway and the goal was always supposed to be to learn how to take more and more and more pain. More degradation. Give up more control of yourself. Become less of a self. Be just a servant. Be no more important than a piece of furniture, hell, sometimes you are the furniture.

I can’t isolate to deal with my social anxiety any more. Instead I have to pretend that I know how to be normal and have friends. I don’t know how I will deal with the fact that my life is a rotating cast of characters. People come and go and the only people you can depend on seeing are me and your dad and each other. The Godmamas have been very consistent for years. That is your next best shot. K has been in our lives for three years. Of course this means I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. Same with Tay.

Pam comes and goes. I think that is good. I think she would find that she disagreed with more and more if she spent more time with me. I think she likes me more from far away.

I don’t have enough that is predictable for the kids. We do go to home school stuff. They will know those kids. But I will never be one of the people at every event. I can’t handle the driving. I feel bad about it, but it is what it is. Well, and I’m less willing to pay for things than some people. That’s ok too.

There is a rock climbing place walking distance from our house. I honestly think my kids are too young. But in a few years I bet we will start hanging out there a lot. If you have a kids membership you get a free adult in (one per kid) and I bet we will spend some time there. That would be fun.

I can’t predict the future. I doubt most of the people I know now will be in my life in twenty years. If I look at twenty years ago, when I was eleven, I think the last person standing is K from Lakeside. She occasionally reads my blog and we chat on IM sometimes. She is very busy. That is the only person left. I would not have predicted that she would be the one, let me tell you.

I don’t trust that people will want to know me that long.

Shanna talks about how we will need to add an upstairs apartment some day because she will need the down stairs for her family. I tell her, “We’ll see.” It is funny that when I first thought of having children I knew I would be the kind to boot them out the door at eighteen.

Now Shanna talks about wanting to be a firefighter two days a week and a doctor two days a week and I will be here to home school her kids. She will stay home two days a week because of course her kids need their mom too.

A permanent fucking dependent.

Once upon a time that was not a disgraceful thing. That was not a sign of being worthless. That was life for some people. Why are only some kinds of lives “worthy”?

I am not someone who could survive Wall Street. I couldn’t work there. I would scream and hysterically cry and have a panic attack when someone snapped at me because it would be just one god damn thing too many and it would be bad.

I am not saying that everyone there is bad or that having that kind of life is bad. I am saying I am not suited for it.

I’m also unlikely to ever really understand what it means to be Chinese. Or black. Or a man. I have to imagine. If I am imagining instead of experiencing I don’t get to treat them like they are equivalent experiences. My imagination is just a comfy place inside my mind. I access it in my garage. I’m safe.

I will never understand the feeling of walking down the street and having white women cower and clutch their purses. That would piss me right the fuck off. That would make me want to start a fight. I’m an angry person with a long list of done-me-wrongs.

I always only need one more thing.

This isn’t about anyone else. People cannot walk on egg shells. They have to hold their boundaries. They can step back. They can say, “In this piece of language _______ it sounds like you are kind of attacking. Can I ask for clarification on that?” I will of course say, “Ah. Poor choice of words. Let me attempt to reword. Is this better?”

Ok, maybe not of course. But I’ll try.

I like questions. I like people wanting to understand. I am not dealing well with people saying that I make them feel bad. I’m not trying to. Is there something very specific that you can ask about? No? Yes?

I am not ranting because I am mad at you. I’m ranting because very soon I have to put the mask on and act very polite and very normal and very controlled. For the love of all that is holy I have to stop crying. I need to clean up the four napkins full of snot and go get started on the day.

It doesn’t really matter how I feel. Shit will get done. That is how life works. I do not want to miss life. So I show up for the work.

high anxiety

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It is interesting to try and track the progress of anxiety. It starts out as irritation, just knowing that something is making me feel nervous. I don’t have to know what. It doesn’t have to be major. At that point I have butterflies in my stomach all of the time and my throat is tight and I have a mild headache.

If things get more intense–if I feel I have New and Exciting reasons to feel anxious the first thing that happens is I feel like someone shot me in the stomach with a water cannon. My stomach acid production goes into over drive. My entire torso feels like it is on flames. And I know that this moment, awful as it is, isn’t going to last so I try to hold on to it and pretend that nothing else is going to happen.

But inevitably, sure as rain, after the water cannon to the stomach the diarrhea starts. I have made jokes for many years that constipation would be a nice change. Ok, they aren’t actually jokes. I think constipation would be really novel. I’m really tired of the diarrhea. It burns. It burns so much that sometimes I sit in the bathroom and cry for upwards of an hour because it just keeps coming and it hurts so much and there is nothing I can do to stop it. The poison has to leave my body some how.

After a couple of days of that then I usually progress into some kind of other illness. Right now I am coughing (very productively. Very very very productively–ew.) and my eyes hurt and my head hurts. My neck muscles are on fire and feel locked down so tight I do not quite have 180 degrees of motion.

My legs hurt. My legs hurt like I have been practicing sprinting up a hill. It’s a combination of throbbing and burning.

Luckily the water cannon to the stomach phase does end. Eventually I do poop out all the extra stomach acid. (OMFG it hurts)

Then I am left feeling numb and shaky. I feel stupid and thick and slow. I feel like I am unable to think clearly. I feel unable to be productive. I feel empty. I feel worthless. I feel like I wouldn’t have so many problems if I could keep my stupid, piece of shit mouth shut. My problems are all my fault for being such a complete bitch. If only I could SHUT UP maybe people wouldn’t be so mad at me all of the time.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to hurt people. I’m not trying to. I swear to a god I don’t believe in. I talk because otherwise I cut. I have to let it out somehow. I am so sorry I offend you. I’m sorry.

I don’t want to be bad. I just don’t think it is possible to stop being bad once you are as bad as I am. There is no longer any redemption for someone like me. It is too late.

People really should get away from me as fast as they can. I am not in control. I am not a nice person. You should protect yourself. Goodness knows I can’t do it.

Then I want to die so much. I don’t know why I was born bad. People have been reacting to me in the same way for my whole life. “Everything is fine. Everything is fine. I’m not mad. I just never want to see you again.”

I get that a lot. If you have the same problem over and over with lots of people… it probably isn’t about them. It’s me. I am bad and people need to stay away from me to protect themselves. It is perfectly logical.

I’m still freaking out about Iain dying. He was good. He was worthy. He was beloved by many hundreds, probably thousands of people. Why did he die and a worthless piece of shit like me lives on? There is truly no justice in the universe.

I’ve been thinking about my mom like crazy. Calli looks more and more like her as she ages. Sometimes when I catch her giving me an expression of my mother’s I have to leave the room and cry. I miss my mommy. It is all my fault I can’t have a relationship with my mother. I’m a stupid pathetic whiny bitch. I made my own bed. No cause to blame anyone else for the results.

On the days when the pain in my body hits over 7 I start thinking about why am I doing this? Why do I continue to inhabit this body, this loathed object. Because I don’t have a choice. Because there is no other option if I want to remain conscious.

Pam asked me why I believe the bad things about myself so much more than the good things when she tells me good things all the time. Honey, my reading has shown me that you need ~10 positive or neutral statements about yourself to balance out one negative statement. That is more or less how it works in creation of self.

I was told I was a worthless, stupid, annoying whore for almost twenty years. In the almost fourteen years since I got out I have had some positive messages mixed in with a lot of people yelling at me and dumping me as a friend and sending me nasty letters through the mail explaining everything I am doing wrong.

I don’t have enough reason to believe positive things about myself. I would have to significantly fly in the face of public opinion in order to believe I have much worth at all. I’m not really confident enough for that.

The best I can do is hide in my house so I don’t bother people. I’m sad that looking out my back window will remind me for the rest of my life that I can fuck absolutely anything up. It is all my fault. I should have shut my stupid, piece of shit mouth.

I am so sorry.

Today is a Godmama weekend. That is probably for the best. I anticipate a lot of hiding and crying. I will make sure no one else has to see it. It is no ones problem but mine. I am not guilting anyone. This is not “because of you”. This is because of me. This is just my life. This is just what it has always been. I have never known different. Not for longer than two-three months at a time.

It is hard being this bad. I don’t really know how it happened to start wtih. But once it is there you can’t lose it.

Coughing up big wads of nasty while you are crying and dealing with a nose running down the back of your throat is truly disgusting. This kind of idiocy usually leads to vomiting. The chunks coming up and the slime mix right at the back of my throat and good grief my gag reflex is sensitive.

I don’t blame other people for my problems. I know that if I were not such a problem I would not have so many problems. If I knew what part of me to cut off: my tongue? My fingers? Maybe I could figure out a way to not make people mad all the time. Maybe I could find a way to not alienate people.

As is, I don’t have a lot of hope.

I feel bad for Noah. I’m sorry he has to live with someone like me. It isn’t his fault I am like this. I am so sorry.

When I talk about being too pathetic to hold down a job this is what I mean. I lose days when my body completely shuts down from stress. I don’t get up much. I just sit and cry because everything hurts so much.

just trying to figure out why I should get out of bed today

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I am not good. I am not kind. I am selfish. I am mean. I am sometimes cruel. I am self-centered and self-absorbed.

Becoming these things has been a process. It has become a process because without these traits my life was extremely problematic. When I spend more time worrying about other peoples needs instead of my own then I tend to develop health problems. My psychological issues get worse. I become far less functional.

Animals require care. Dogs, cats, rabbits, birds, fish… whatever kind of animal you want to have around requires care. You have to feed it, keep it clean, give it water, love it, sometimes clip nails, sometimes clean out the cage… etc.

I require a lot of care in order to not be a screaming harpy. I am very sorry for this. In no way shape or form do I think this care should come from outside myself. I do not write because I want people to jump up and care for me. I would react with extreme hostility if you tried. You are not my keeper. You won’t be here tomorrow. I don’t want your half-assed-sorta-guilty help. I just don’t. It won’t actually make my life better.

If you have starving cats wandering around your neighborhood feeding them one time is not going to improve their life. It will make you have warm fuzzy feelings of being a good person for an act that is mostly meaningless in the lives of the affected target. That is how I feel about people helping me.

If I come to you and say, “Can you help with _____” that is absolutely all I am asking for help with. If you start trying to manage my anxiety while helping with _______ I am going to freak out at you. That’s not your job. My anxiety is not your problem. You can’t fix it. It is a very old problem. When you act like your bubble gum as bonding agent solution should be good enough for me you are being incredibly fucking rude. And you don’t even know it. And you really don’t give a shit. You have your warm fuzzies. If I don’t react appropriately obviously I am just an ungrateful bitch.

I have learned how to live with being an ungrateful bitch. Other peoples scraps of attention are how I piece together a life. I don’t have a big piece of anyone. I get small pieces. I get what they have to spare.

I don’t ask for more. I don’t want more. I am not trying to become a big part of your life. I don’t think I am capable of having that with anyone but the three people I live with. I don’t have enough to give.

I don’t have the ability to form really bonded relationships at this point. I am broken. I do not trust people. I assume that if I am stupid enough to continue to exist that every few weeks or months someone is going to scream at me for being so mean. Yup, I’m mean. I have learned to live with it.

I can’t avoid people getting upset with me and still exist in public. The only way I can see to avoid having people be upset with me is for me to entirely fade out of any sort of publicly accessible space. Otherwise I *will* offend people. Period.

I have to act like I am entitled to exist even though I offend you. Even though you think my behavior sucks. Even though you think I am not a nice person. Even though you think you can’t manage my anxiety. I didn’t bloody ask you to. My anxiety is mine. Stop acting like my problems are your problems. There is this great concept called “Boundaries”.

If I do not come to you with particular requests for behavior modification assume that I have no interest in you modifying your behavior on my behalf. I think that people act how they act because of a long history that I am pretty much not ever going to know about. I don’t think they need to change because of me.

Let’s be clear that I assume that most people I see in real life are going to fade out of my life after one-to-five years. I am not invested. I am sorry for that. I’m sure it makes people feel bad. I’m sure it makes people feel like I don’t care about them.

Well, I care about me more. I want to be alive when I am no longer a temporarily amusing person for you to talk to. I have to not care very much about your priorities. You won’t be in my life long enough for me to care what you think.

I don’t feel like a very good person for this. But it is realistic.

I am having a very hard time with the fact that I don’t constantly move any more. All of my behavior patterns are slash and burn. I find friends quickly and easily and I lose them even more easily.

Yeah, I know it is my fault. Blah blah blah. All my fault. Yup, I know. I realize that people don’t stay in my life because I am so unpleasant. Yup, I know. Thing is, it doesn’t matter how pleasant I try to make myself appear… if you stand near me for a few more minutes you will notice it is an act. Then you won’t like me any more. Then you will leave.

Forgive me for not crying over all of you. I would never stop crying.

I am not important to people. Well, they will give me the hand wavey “Oh I care about you!” but I’m not in peoples lives in a consistent way. I am someone they like to see when they can. I am not an essential part of life for more than three people.

I can’t build my self worth around people who only pay attention to me when they have nothing better to do. I have to be self-absorbed. I have to think my story is interesting. I have to think it is worth telling. I have to think it is ok to make the choices I make. The alternative is to kill myself.

I can’t please everyone. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. I have tried and I have busted my head against that wall so often that there is a permanent dent in the wall and my head. I am not something that is pleasing to people. I can’t change that any more than I can change what race I was born.

My isolation is my fault. I’m not blaming anyone else. I’m not saying that those people are bad for not wanting to put up with me. I think they need to have boundaries. Good for them.

I need to have boundaries too. Boundaries like, “I am not like you. If me being different makes you feel attacked then STAY THE FUCK AWAY FROM ME BECAUSE IT ISN’T MY PROBLEM THAT YOU HAVE FEELINGS.”

In no way shape or form do I want to say that I “understand the black experience” because I don’t but when I hear black men talk about what it is like to have white women fear them as they walk down the street I see a glimmer. I can understand a slice of that.

For the record, black men do not intimidate me. My problems are with white men.

I remember a conversation amongst a bunch of perverts years ago. (I use “perverts” with great affection.) Man A was talking about how easy/hard it is to find the scene. He said something to the effect of, “I tried finding the bdsm community when I was 19. When I came to a party and saw people beating the shit out of people it scared me and I left. I didn’t come back until I was 35. It wasn’t up to the people in that room to make me comfortable. I had to just be comfortable or I had to leave.”

He said that in response to like four other people saying that heavy or edge play was not appropriate in a public play space because it might scare newbies.

I’m an edge player. Ok, I haven’t done much bdsm in years and things are going to be interesting to figure out with Noah once I actually get up the nerve to go there again. I am an extreme player. If you ask a random group of perverts about their preferences mine are often some of the most intense.

I am not mild and unoffensive. I will never be. That is not a goal.

If I bother you, that’s totally ok. I do that. I bother people. I am an irritant. I am annoying and difficult and offensive.

But if you pay attention you will notice that I rein in like 95% of this when you are talking to me in public. My self absorption is not something I shove in peoples’ faces all day. I go out and I ask questions about other peoples lives. I listen to their stories. I want to hear about what other people think and feel and do. I just don’t want to emulate any of it.

I understand that people don’t want to hear about people like me. You know that difficulty in putting up with me? That’s the “extreme mental illness” that has been diagnosed over and over since I was a small child. No, I don’t think I am fucking normal.

But is it ok for me to exist? I am not anything near the most self absorbed person in the world even though I am extremely self absorbed. I am no where near the meanest person in the world even though I am mean. I am not ever going to be the most violent person even though I have tendencies.

I’m not the most extreme everything. I am just annoying. I’m not dangerous just irritating. Is it ok for me to exist?

I have had a friend volunteer a friend to finish the projects in my yard. Things will work out.

I’m ok with people needing to put up boundaries to keep me out of their life. I would think there was something wrong with the world if people didn’t put up big boundaries keeping me out of their life. That is just the natural order of things.

I had children so that I would have little people who understood my culture. I don’t know if they will share it when they are done growing up–I doubt they will be as crazy as I am. But someone will have a chance of predicting my behavior accurately.

I can’t invest in anyone else. I have two children into whom I must pour everything I have to give.

That’s a big fat lie. I pour pieces of myself into other things all the time. I have friends. I have a friend sleeping in the garage right now who has loved me since I was 17. (Technically we met when I was 15. The boy I wanted liked her more than me. That’s typically the story of my life. Except for Noah.)

I can’t be upset or take it personally when people walk away. Not everyone does. I have to take what people can hand off comfortably and not feel entitled to any more. I can be self absorbed and selfish but I may not be entitled. I’m not entitled to any-fucking-thing. Especially not relationships. Holy shit am I not entitled to relationships.

I try to be nice to people. I try to be considerate. I try to be a good and supportive friend. I give what I have to give. If the fact that I also write about a lot of anxiety is a problem, well… then I can’t do anything more than what I am doing. I have to believe that I have shot my wad and that’s what I have to give.

Then keep walking. Or die. I choose to keep walking. I choose to not attach. I love people but I am always prepared to let them go. “If you love them set them free” and all that shit.

I am shocked that I still know K. I didn’t think that any of my mommy-friends would last for more than a year or two. I was at her sons first birthday and next month I will be at his fourth birthday party. Three years is pretty long for me in a close friendship. Seven years is really the kicker though. We’ll see.

Pam, I do expect you to get sick of me one of these days. I know you say you won’t. But I’ve heard that a lot. I have been told by hundreds of people that they love me and will never leave me. I don’t bother to listen to the end of that sentence any more. It is such a fucking lie.

I’m self absorbed because I’m the only one who has to do the work to keep me alive. It is a lot of work. If I don’t take it seriously I will not continue to be functional or alive.

Sometimes when I am told that I think I love my kids more than other people do (well my first thought is “Really? I think that? When did I think that, precisely?”) I think that it isn’t that I love my kids more. It is that I have no one else in the world to safely pour my love into. So it seems more obvious and noticeable by contrast. I’m not all that nice to random people so it seems all the more startling that I am so gentle and affectionate and loving with my kids.

Based on my writing I don’t seem like the sit and cuddle gently sort.

My kids are the only people in the whole fucking world who get to touch my body for many hours a day. My husband isn’t allowed to touch me like my kids are. My kids act like we have one body and they occasionally orbit off but then they are coming back to reattach.

We went to a birthday party recently and Calli fell down. A bunch of mothers leaped up to help her. They got there before me. I kind of hung back. I don’t push to the front. I don’t assume I am the important one. But Calli pushed them away from her and said, “I want my mommy.”

That is why I had kids. That moment of affirmation. Someone thinks I am the best. Even if it is only two people and even if it is only for a few years before they grow up and hate my guts like everyone else.

For now, I am the best. And they love me so much. And I love them. This is all I have.

Piercing the veil.

13 Replies

I do not write as a passive aggressive way of controlling the people around me. I write because otherwise I have trouble noticing patterns of behavior in myself. If what I write makes you think hard about your life and consider some issue, great.

If you ever feel that I am saying too much about you or your family or your pet you are free to ask me to stop.

Otherwise I’m getting kind of tired of the fact that I’ve spent the last fucking month bouncing between people who are upset with me for things I write. They feel attacked.

Uhm, no one is forcing you to read. If you feel upset by what I am writing feel free to take a break. I am not feeling ok with the pressure to stop writing. I am feeling more angry by the day about how many people have gotten really angry with me in the last month as I try to deal with my anxiety.

My anxiety is not your problem. No matter who you are. I am not writing this post to one person. I have had intense exchanges of one sort or another with at least seven people in the last month.

I have to stop being responsible for other people having feelings. If my writing triggers big feelings in you that bother you and make you unhappy, stop reading it. This is an opt-in space. I do not think it is appropriate that I should have to stop and feel anxious every fucking day about the fact that me processing my shit is going to make someone else feel attacked.

I’m not attacking you. I’m sitting in my fucking garage trying to figure out how to not blow up when I am with people in person. I do this because I know in my gut that no one deserves me blowing up. I do it for environmental reasons–not usually for actual provocation. If you don’t like knowing how I go through that process, opt-out. We can have a cordial in person relationship where I can tailor what I say to your personal preferences. I can not fucking handle the stress of trying to please everyone when I write.

I am not responsible for your feelings. No matter who you are.

I have to say this.

Oh no.

2 Replies

If you are familiar with EduKink then you should know that Iain, one half of that team, passed away yesterday.

Today will be a day for tears. He was kind, giving, and loving. He provided education, mentorship, and wisdom to hundreds of people embarking on their path through life. I feel like a big piece of the puzzle of life just fell out. There is a big hole. Oh no.

My leather mom is now bereft of her partner. I am so sorry.

Everything will be fine.

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Make careful choices in life. Only take on what you can bear. Assume that you will not have help.

Don’t think. For the love of fucking Christ on a pogo stick do not process. That shit will ruin your life.

Go back to working. Shut your mouth.

You just keep going

Do the best you can

Monthly Archives: August 2013

Walking on eggshells

stupid. stupid. stupid.

That gratitude stuff.

This is why I have a therapist.

Waves of grief.

hiding commences

feelings exploding.

(Still not typing… just a PSA)

arms hurt

It was bound to happen.

From Twitter

do what you can do

stuff and stuff

random tmi

more thinking. less err, tmi

high anxiety

just trying to figure out why I should get out of bed today

Piercing the veil.

Oh no.

Everything will be fine.