Holy Irritation, Batman! Irritated. Like, crawl the walls and stab people irritated. My kids are jumping up and down on every hot button I have.

I went away. Kids need to be irritating to people who leave because they want to see if the person who left did it because the kids aren’t loved. I get it. It’s normal and developmental and all that. OH MY GOD.

Last night Calli got to have her FIRST EVER experience of going out with allowance money to buy things she wanted to buy. My baby is growing up. She picked out a Rainbow Dash wallet (got to have somewhere to keep your money) and a present for her friend. I’m not saying what the present is because the mom reads here. Suffice to say: it is very kid appropriate. Calli will probably come visit and want to borrow it. Oy.

I’m having very mixed feelings about a way that I’m disciplining Shanna. I have rules about taking food out of the refrigerator without asking. If you ask 9/10 times the answer is yes. Sometimes I’m saving something for a particular meal and I really don’t want you to take it. But, ASK. Shanna… Shanna really thinks it is ridiculous that she isn’t allowed to do anything she wants at any moment. So when she got into the fridge yesterday I said, “Ok you just gave up dessert for the weekend.” I’m having second thoughts. I *really* am not sure it is right to punish with food at all. Plus, we are going to a birthday party. I feel like a giant asshole.

But holy hell the girl doesn’t take me seriously. Maybe I am being inappropriately controlling. I am open to that argument. Maybe I should just relax about the food stuff…. but then they would never eat real food and I would never be able to complete a meal because pieces would be gone. Never the raw meat or veggies. I would live on meat and veggies and they would eat all the cheese and yogurt when I wasn’t available. Then they would never ever sit down to a meal with me.

I kinda tried seeing if it would work better for a few days once. My kids are too little. Self control they do not have. And when they aren’t hungry they just can’t sit down to have the pretense of a meal.

So I feel like a giant asshole. I told Shanna that if she is respectful about turning down the dessert at the birthday party today I would probably relent for Sunday. I told her, “If you cry and make the mom feel bad for you… forget Sunday. No way. You earned this. I’ve talked to you about the fridge 47,839 times. If you are polite, I will not be a jerk about the whole weekend. I know it is hard to remember things.” I’m pretty sure this is the first time I’ve punished infractions with regards to the fridge. Well, I’ve yelled before. They’ve probably had time out. But I don’t think I have withdrawn privileges before. That feels more like a punishment.

And I never ever feel good about taking dessert away. I believe that we live in a culture that is super saturated with sugar. I try to limit how much my family gets because it isn’t good for us, but we have a fairly high sugar diet. My limits are higher than some people allow in the first place by a huge margin. Sometimes I will say, “Because we went to ___ and there was a river of sugar we are skipping after dinner dessert tomorrow” but that is as far as I try to go with withholding dessert. It’s a trade more than a withholding.

I feel really uncomfortable with power struggles over sugar. And yet I believe it is a highly addictive substance that my species has proven issues with and these are my kids and it is my job to take care of them. Complicated feelings.

At some point in your life you need to deal with the fact that there are arbitrary rules sometimes. My refrigerator rules are close to arbitrary. I could afford to replace food at whatever rate they consumed it. But man, when do I get to say, “You have to respect what I say at least a little.”

If I punish them for not respecting me I’m not exactly earning respect, now am I? Only I kind of am. If I say something a few thousand times and never back it up I’m teaching them that I don’t really mean it. If I back it up then they do believe me when I say things. Shanna does express appreciation for the fact that she knows I really mean what I say. I don’t bluff. I don’t try to stretch my reach slightly beyond where I can actually reach. I have my boundaries and they are god damn brick walls with sentries on top.

I won’t know if I’m doing the right thing until it is far too late to course correct. I have horrifying anxiety and guilt around punishing my kids. It seems like such a bad idea. This is why I don’t hit. I’m never sure I’m in the right. You shouldn’t hit people unless you are 150% sure it is necessary. With my kids I never have more than a 10% sure impulse because I KNOW hitting isn’t the answer.

But taking dessert away… that is a lot more muddy. I’m not *hurting* her. I’m not saying she can never have it again. I’m saying, “you took a sugary thing out of the fridge without permission, fine. You traded that for your next dessert. Sucks for you that it was going to be at a birthday party.”

I worry about my need for control. Worry. Worry. Worry. But I worry a lot more about parents who abdicate control over their children. My kids need me. They are not yet able to care for themselves or make decisions about their best interests. They just don’t have the full scope of information yet. I don’t control everything. I fear I try to control too much. Which is hilarious considering that I control a very small fraction of how much most parents control.

My kids have an amount of freedom nearly unheard of in their generation. And I feel guilty for trying to control them too much. Irony.

We are still going to the birthday party. We still went to the mall and had fun shopping. We will still have a wonderful time at a birthday party. And Shanna will have the opportunity to practice her self control. It is a very hard skill. I get it. I have to practice too. It is really hard. I told her, “Next time you are tempted you will be more likely to think about the potential consequences. Is it really so hard to come and say, ‘Mom, can I get ___ out of the fridge?'”

I say yes 9/10 times. I try so hard to say yes. It is a serious, conscious priority in our relationship. But when there is a boundary and you ignore it… watch out.

It probably doesn’t help that there has been an argument raging on my PTSD support site since before I left for my birthday. One dude asked those of us who were habitually abused as children if any of us feel we have gone on to be more successful than our abusers. Of course this means lots of people who don’t feel successful have been yelling at us for days that we are mean and saying bad things about them for not doing… something. This morning I snapped and said it isn’t much of a support site if I am never allowed to talk about the things I’m proud of and I can only talk about what a worthless whore I feel like.

I’m sorry you feel so broken you can’t do exactly the same things I can do. If I try I can hold the bar of “success” such that I never ever ever appear to hit it. I totally can do that. I feel like life has actually landed me in a slightly more successful than average position (college degrees aren’t held by more than 50% of the population, I’m not struggling financially in a time when most of my generation can’t get a toe hold) but I still have a lot of issues.

I still spend a lot of my life crying in the garage because I feel like a pathetic, worthless whore who should die. How do you define “success”?

I feel like if I can’t talk about the things that I feel proud of doing then I don’t really have a lot of reason to hope. I could look at people who have done more than me and decide that I should give up because I haven’t done what they have done. I could. I really could.

I understand that it isn’t fair that I have a partner who can support me financially and many people with similar mental health issues do not have such a luxury. I get it that the roll of the dice is terribly unfair. For the record, I sign every petition to congress about a mandatory minimum income I find. I think everyone needs more support than they have.

If you hate me because I managed to find someone to support me, ok. That’s fine. You can hate me for that. I don’t “deserve” to be in the position I am in. I’m not a successful person because Noah wants to fuck me. I think that my success is mostly orthogonal to the fact that Noah helped me.

I graduated from college before I met Noah. I entered into the teaching program without him. The strides I have made in emotional control have been more possible because of him, but I did the work on my own.

Am I not allowed to feel pride about any of that? Really? I should decide that because I have PTSD I should give up trying and hide at home forever because people like me can’t be successful.

Fuck that noise.

I’ve studied a lot of history. I like history. History fascinates me. History is the story of the people who would not fucking give up. Human beings have incredible powers to adapt and change and be different than they are originally.

I can tell you a story that makes me sound pathetic, hopeless, and entirely unsuccessful. I can tell you a story that makes me sound nearly heroic, inspiring, and really successful.

Point of view matters. I don’t want to be told I should be trying to sound pathetic. I’m pretty angry about the number of people attacking this thread because “All of you successful people just want us to feel bad.”

No. I don’t want you to feel bad. If you feel bad, that probably happened before you read my posts. If you feel bad that is probably related to your life circumstances and not mine. Don’t fucking act like if I ever have a positive thought I’m shitting on you.

I hate forums.

But I really struggle with feeling alone. And forums are there 24/7. I love forums.

I’m a serious pain in the ass.

I’m god damn allowed to feel proud of myself for graduating from college (first of my direct line that I know about–I have three aunts/uncles who went to college and that’s it in the entire extended family to the best of my knowledge). I don’t need to feel kind of embarrassed because someone else didn’t manage. I don’t need to feel guilty that I am leaving behind my compatriots.

That is the kind of shit that keeps communities down. Why in the hell are we so angry, as a species, at people who do well?

The fact that you feel suicidal doesn’t invalidate all of the things you do with your time while you are feeling suicidal. The fact that I feel worthless doesn’t mean I am. I don’t need to define myself as unsuccessful to earn party loyalty points. I just don’t.

I fucking hate party loyalty.

The West Wing is my best friend. So the series was kind of ridiculous in having Bartlett replace three Supreme Court Justices. But in the process the president interviews different candidates. A rejected one said that some people are moderates because sometimes they go the left and sometimes to the right. A true centrist doesn’t position him/herself on issues.

I think that one of the things that makes me hardest for people to deal with is that I am very difficult to predict on how I will land on issues. And I tend to land really strongly with whatever position I take.

I have positions that are all over the political map. And I’ll get into screaming matches defending all of them. I dislike leftists and right-wing people equally.

Shanna just woke up. She is now telling me that she is going to learn how to write and teach me how to write in a way that doesn’t hurt my hands so I no longer need to keep an online journal.

“Talking with my parents is more fun than anything else. More fun than playing with friends or having tea parties or watching Minecraft tutorials. I love my parents.”

Kid, you make my heart explode with joy. I am so grateful that you are in the world. Now I will pay attention to you instead of the screen.