The girls now have their own rooms. I have divided up their stuff. There are still a few layers of sorting… but basically we are done. No more shared giggles to sleep.
It seems way too soon.
But goodness it will be useful to have separate rooms for them to go to. Sometimes we need cool off space.
I pushed too hard. My body hurts.
This week I’ve been thinking about how people have very different things to offer and very different things they want. That’s for the best. The world would be boring if everyone was the same.
If you can take people for where they are and accept the best they have to offer, you can call that friendship. Even if what they have to offer isn’t very much. I have folks in my neighborhood I would call friends. We don’t have that much to offer one another most of the time, but we enjoy the conversations we have. We enjoy the interactions we have.
What are acquaintances then? I don’t know. They just don’t exist these days.
There are a lot of sombodies that I used to know. I wouldn’t say I know them any more. I would say I’ve met them.
One of my friends uses the word “pals” to indicate the people you spend time with but with whom you don’t necessarily feel safe.
Maybe I should adopt it.
I want community. I want to watch kids grow up. I want to support people and be supported. I have spent a lot of my life looking for my circle of friends a la The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. Where are the women who will take my children aside and tell them everything about me so that they can repair the damage I will inevitably do?
It has never appeared. The window is past. It will never happen. No one has ever been able to see enough of my life. I don’t stand still long enough. People only know hearsay.
Which means I just can’t fuck up very much. Because there is no one who will fix it for me. Not with my kids. With everyone else in the whole world… if I fuck it up… I will move on. They will move on.
I can’t hurt my kids.
Noah has wisely suggested that I take a few days off between now and the road trip. I don’t have a lot to give right now. My attempt to put spoons in my drawer has manifestly failed so far. I only have 38 days to go. I need to change how I’m behaving fast. This is my absolute last chance to stock up.
I’m different than I was. What does that mean? Part of what it means is I don’t want to exist for someone else’s gratification. I want to get pleasure out of my own existence. For years now sex hasn’t been that great for me. It is hard for me to get off. I can masturbate, but that makes sex seem… kind of irrelevant. If I’m getting me off and you aren’t, what good are you?
But I haven’t had the time nor the energy to put into the kind of sex that does get me off. Which… sucks for Noah. Because I’m heading in the lesbian bed death direction.
I mean shit, I’m slacking off to 5-6 times a month really consistently. I’m getting bitter as fuck about the quota. We talked last night about how we should probably kind of back off on that for a bit. This isn’t working for me.
What does work for me? It’s complicated.
I am looking forward to a break. So I can stop worrying about his needs for a while and I can think about what I like and want.
It isn’t really that I want to stop having sex. I want to stop having sex that is taking one for the team. I’ve been doing that for six years, almost seven years and I’m done done done. I need my sex life to be about my pleasure.
And, mixing in with internal physical confusion I have so many external triggers going on. Shanna and I will be going through Texas when she is the same age I was when I was raped in Texas. I’m having feelings. Calli has been… uhm…. rebellious and difficult for a while. I am rereading the 4 year old book. I’m so fucking grateful for these books. The intransigence out of nowhere is common and normal. Respond with humor and not like the kid is misbehaving. Fuck. I’m really not naturally a “respond with humor” kind of person. That takes enormous physical and mental strain for me. I’m tired.
But, I can find a way. Because I want a relationship with this kid in the long-term. I have to get us through rocky stages with grace or I won’t get it. Because I won’t deserve it.
I feel really guilty sometimes because Shanna feels like my idealized self–if things had been perfect I would have been like that. Calli is… more like my real self. She reacts the way I do. Even though I’m very certain she hasn’t been traumatized. She’s been watched too carefully. But she is so sensitive.
Shanna can let things roll off her back. She doesn’t take everything personally. If someone is in a bad mood it is their problem. If I am in a bad mood Calli is in a bad mood. She’s like a weather vane. That’s hard for me.
I have to actually process my emotions in order to not feel them around Calli. I can’t act like I’m not feeling them and call it good. Shanna will tolerate me having feelings and she can still have a good day. Calli can’t. That’s really hard. It feels not fair. I’ve been having a lot of bad days. This means Calli is havig a lot of bad days and… I can see her modeling off of me. And I feel so ashamed. I don’t want to teach her broken ways of being.
Which means I need to work on many of my behaviors again. Frustrating.
Luckily the book says that I need to work on deep breathing and being funny to distract. I wonder if it will help me with my emotions or if I will just have to find a different way of burying them.
And Shanna needs more reminders. Because she is not looking outward the way she did. So, more patience. That’s what I need. More patience.
*beat head on wall*
I’m running dry. I need something. I don’t know what.
When the things you want and need change, it hurts. It hurts because people still want to give you the things they previously gave you. There is an established pattern to the behavior already. Asking for a change is… complicated.
Mostly it doesn’t work. Relationships mostly don’t evolve very well.
Last weekend Noah did something that he has done many times before. It was ok before. It isn’t ok any more. That’s complicated.
We’ve been talking about it a lot. Like we do. Something needs to change.
Really, a lot of things need to change. I just don’t understand every step of how or to what yet. It hurts. It means Noah hurts me without meaning to do so. It means I need to step back from my feeling of hurt and look at intent and forgive. Even though that sticks in my craw.
I don’t want to be one more white bitch defending not-ok-behavior from a white guy.
Life is very complicated.