I have now spoken with three acupuncturists after the less than impressive acupuncture trip. All three have told me that I should write a registered letter of complaint asking for a refund and I should CC the licensing board. They are all very unhappy that their branch of medicine is being represented that way.

My shrink wants me to see an ob/gyn to talk about hormone balance. If my period cycles are 35 days long and I only bleed for three days and at the end of bleeding I am so full of rage that I can barely function for a few days… that may be something that can be fixed.

Like I want to see a fucking doctor.

But I do have a more appropriate ergonomic setup. Baby steps.

I’m even wearing the braces.

I’m still doing that existential exhaustion thing. I wonder how much of it is related to the pills instead of smoking. The pills make me feel far more tired than smoking does.

I feel like I the last few days I have been bouncing between rage (which I don’t act out very much or verbalize to a great degree)  and shame that I am such a bad person that I am capable of feeling such rage and mania where I try to prove that I’m not bad I’m not bad. I’m not bad. I’m not bad.

All of the childrens clothing in my friends house is now organized very nicely except for the stuff I pulled for donation. That’s just a big pile. But if she would permit me I would throw it in a bag and make it disappear like magic. But she has friends she wants to share the clothes with. I can delay my own gratification that much.

Because it’s all about me.

I make myself feel better about existing by being the person who comes over to your house and takes the garbage out without being asked. Clearly it is full and needs to be taken out. Sure I’ll do that. Oh I see dishes. How about if I wash them. Can I take your compost and recycling out while I’m at it? Do you have any laundry I can fold?

Just please don’t make me read to your kids. I’m sick of that shit.

I want to be good. I don’t know what “being good” means. So I try to do the only good I know how to do.

Domestic work is not valued or appreciated but it does genuinely impact peoples lives. I have the physical ability to make someone else’s life better by doing this work so I want to do it.

I still kind of hate myself for the lack of patience I had with my brother Tommy. I couldn’t handle helping him. I wasn’t nice. I wasn’t giving. I wasn’t generous. I was selfish and self absorbed. Sure, if I tried to help him he would hit me, call me names, and sexually assault me but surely that isn’t a good enough excuse for me to be so lazy about helping my disabled brother. What is wrong with me?

Yesterday I cleaned my pantry area. I found a bunch of stuff I’m ready to pass on. I reorganized a whole bunch of stuff. I found out that my former housemate left more than 100 movies in our cd binders. Whoops. I need to get those back to her. I need to send her an email. I wish I could do it right this minute without crying but I can’t. I will be able to do so by morning. That’s my deadline for myself. I can’t just put it off and off. I have to do it.

Even if I feel guilty. Even if I feel ashamed of myself for hurting her. I still have to contact her and say, “Whoops. I found some of your stuff.”

Life is awkward.

Have patience. Life does not have to be fully lived today. Yeah, this mood might be hard. It’s just a mood. It will pass.

I don’t have to already have done everything I imagine doing or I am a fraud. I don’t ever have to do all that I imagine doing. It’s just not required. No one is standing near me with a checklist declaring that my competency rate is only about 40% of what it could be if only I worked harder….

Breathe. Enjoy having the night off. I should probably do some editing. It is April now. I only have two more months. I could pull out the definitions. That would be an easy sub-job.

It is hard to feel the weight of the accomplishments behind me. It is hard to feel accomplished or competent. When I was young I thought that someday I would feel ok. I imagined that when I was a grown up I would feel confident that I knew the right thing to do and I’m doing it gosh darn it.

I don’t feel that way. I feel scared. I feel lost. I feel ashamed of myself in ways big and small.

I have been swearing a lot lately. It really is a fascinating barometer of my stress. I had it pretty well under control for a while. Not so much lately.

Six things I’m proud of:

1. I’ve traveled a lot. By extension I have met a lot of really interesting people.
2. I’m really proud of my yard. This piece of dirt is the result of my blood, sweat and tears. It looked like shit when I got here. Now people drive by and stop and ask to buy my house because of the yard. That feels miraculous.
3. I’m proud of the degrees I earned (BA, teaching credential) and the degree I didn’t get. I didn’t walk away with an MA because I couldn’t handwrite fast enough. Because when I was a child in school learning handwriting I had the misfortune to be in a place where people were beaten for their handwriting. Mine will probably never improve because I have such tremendous issues around the whole subject. But those elitist cock suckers can’t take my education away from me.
4. I am proud of myself for prosecuting my father. Even though it caused so much pain and trouble. It was the right decision. I was worth defending.
5. I’m really proud of the running. I have almost certainly run more than a thousand miles so far. I’m going to run a lot farther and faster before I am done.
6. I’m proud of myself for never feeling like I had to stay in a relationship just for the sake of having a partner. I left people who treated me in ways I didn’t want to be treated. I’m proud of that.

Even if I feel worthless, I don’t think that is a logical conclusion. I know I feel inadequate all the time and I know I feel terrible and bad and like people would hate me if they just knew. And the reality is that some would hate me. Some wouldn’t. Most really don’t give a shit one way or another.

I don’t need to be afraid of what people think of me. That is the freedom and luxury I have now. It is weird.

So the social gaffe I did on Friday? That I felt bad about? Talked to said person again. There seem to be no lingering of discord on her end. She’s anxious to forgive me and move on.

But but… it’s not ok for me to treat people that way. If I don’t think people will hold boundaries with me when I’m a cunt then I overstep. This is why I have so many friends who carry around 2x4s in the form of personalities. I feel safe.

I feel scared about my own impulses toward bullying. I hurt Anna very badly not that many years ago. I hurt Sarah. I could keep going on but my whining gets old.

I’m not a very nice person. I was talking to a friend about that. She said it is an American thing. In Russia they understand that sometimes people are assholes.

I think that basically everyone can be an asshole. Including my wonderful children. They are not monsters. They are not demons. They are not terrible. They are not bad. They are not horrible.

But sometimes… they are assholes.

It happens to the best of us.

I feel like living with them and learning to manage our asshole-self-interest conflicts is my death march toward functionality. And that ties back into my belief that I “owe” people the appearance of happiness.

I’m really kind of an asshole. Ok, no I’m a big asshole. A lot. A terrible one. But I don’t like the social and social-political backlash of being widely seen as an asshole. There are consequences. I don’t like them. So I try, very actively, to be perceived as not-an-asshole.

But then I come along aside a puppy. I see kicked puppies and I’m just like everyone else. I first want to help them. Then I notice that the help I am giving isn’t actually the help that they want or need and they want more than I can give and I feel a rush of shame and… I want to kick them.

I do this with friends. I’ve done this over and over and it is a pattern I need to not continue. Just because I see patterns in peoples lives and behavior that gives me no right to pronounce what I see. I’m not a god damn seer.

Where are the boundaries on fixing things for people? Well my kid just told me at dinner that I was rude for going through our friends dresser and rearranging the clothes. Err… she gave me permission! She wanted me to do it! I was nice! I wasn’t being rude! Oh. Oh…… But if you tried to do the same thing you would get in trouble. Got it.

Yeah, this is a special case. I knew her for a long time and I asked and she gave specific permission and that’s different.

Consent, baby. It’s important.

My pantry really kind of is a thing of beauty these days. I like what I’ve done with it. Ok, I’m proud of that too.

A long time ago, when I spent waaaaaaaay too much time on Mothering.com (before the bad site redesign) and there was a woman I made friends with. Once I asked her what she was proud of doing in her life. She said she didn’t take pride in anything.

I found that inexplicably sad. I could name many things. She had many children. She had left an abusive spouse and remarried someone who has been a fabulous partner. She thinks that because she is poor she has nothing whatsoever to be proud of. I couldn’t talk her out of that view.

Is my worth based on Noah’s paycheque? That’s a sobering thought. When I list off the things I’m proud of… Noah’s job doesn’t hit the list. I have nothing to do with that. I do feel proud of how I have managed the money put in my care. But I don’t feel proud of having the money. I don’t feel like having it says anything good or bad about my character or self-worth.

It just means I’m a lot less likely to ever be homeless again. That’s cool. But I … don’t feel “proud” of it.

I don’t exactly feel shame about having been homeless in the past. It is simply one more adjective that I’ve worn temporarily and then taken off. Kinda like “kid”. I was once.

Why isn’t “bad” like that? Why isn’t “monster” like that? Why isn’t daughter like that?

I don’t know. Maybe when you learn something strong and hard enough when you are young you can’t unlearn it.

So every day my children wake up to me smiling and saying, “Good morning! I am so glad to see you again!” No matter how I feel. Even if I’m crying. They don’t know what I am feeling or thinking they only know that I am mostly very gentle with them and when I am clumsy and I hurt them I apologize immediately.

Am I a monster?

Can a thing done ever be undone?

I don’t know.

This entry might be a little extra disjointed from usual. I’ve come in for three separate sittings and it is hard to keep flow going at that rate. I also go through periods of HAVING to tag and periods where I feel like rereading the entry to know how to tag it is too much work. Hilariously lazy.

Wake up. It’s another day. Today is Wednesday. Today we have swim class and Pam. Pam is still inviting herself over after knowing me for almost 18 years. She can stay as long as she wants.

Pam asked me about crowded cultures versus this American luxury of space. How do people who grew up in a country where boundaries are laughable luxuries not available at any price learn to understand the physical affront it feels like to crowd people who are used to more space? Is either side doing something “wrong”? How do we learn to get along?

I am looking forward to visiting Asia and India in particular so I can feel in my body what people who live there are used to. Hopefully I will be less presumptuous in my discussions. Or maybe I will be worse.

Asia in general (I would like to go to Thailand and Taiwan and a few other Asian countries) has more crowding but my understanding is that their cities will feel like such a different scale of human interaction that I will barely be able to absorb it. India I want because so much of my life involves Indians.

Cultural appropriation is a funny thing. There is some amount of it that is BAD and the internet tells me so. I can’t tell when or if any parts of it are allowed to be done without insult.

There is a store at our local mall that sells the pretty caftans and leggings the Indian ladies wear. I would love to shop there. Is that cultural appropriation? If someone who is Indian wears blue jeans and an American Eagle t-shirt–that’s not cultural appropriation. Is it cultural appropriation if I start wearing traditional Russian peasant clothing? It’s harder to buy in my local area.

Why don’t I just wear the traditional garb of my ancestors? Well… which ones? Mostly because my ancestors weren’t smart enough to wear comfy leggings and a nice A-line caftan that ends mid-calf. They wore much longer dresses and that gets to be a pain the neck.

What are people allowed to do and be without causing pain to the people around them? Must we all stay in our own little same-colored pods doing the same things so we don’t offend anyone? That doesn’t seem better. Cross-cultural contact involves people getting offended. Sometimes because of conscious actions on someones part and sometimes because someone doesn’t observe a taboo you think they should. Sometimes they are just passively not doing something you think they must.

I am going to offend people. I have to be ok with that. I’m an asshole. Most of the people I respect the most can be assholes. By asshole I particularly mean: someone who has very clearly defined boundaries and they are willing to proactively insist on their needs being met.

I know a lot of assholes. Go them.

A spider has the audacity to be slowly lowering itself about six inches in front of my face. Oh thanks a lot.

I am very sad it was raining on April Fools Day. I couldn’t do my painting-the-fence-thing. I also haven’t seen that neighbor outside in weeks. I’m pretty bummed.

But there are no cats in America and the streets are paved with cheese. I live in the time and the place where I can have unlimited dreams. They may not come true. They may be a figment of my imagination but that’s how the American Dream works.

I used to imagine that some day I would have a home and a family and that people would love me. I used to imagine that some day people wouldn’t hit me any more. I used to imagine that some day I wouldn’t be a piece of shit.

There are no cats in America and the streets are paved with cheese. Well, at least some dreams come true.