Since so many of you went back to an entry where I talk about pot and hiding my crazy in front of people I’ll expand on that issue.

See, I don’t rewrite entries. I just… keep going.

One of the things I dislike about my writing is how much hyperbole I engage in. When I discuss things it is often hard for me to narrow down that I’ve been having a particular symptom for x weeks.

Everything (ha ha) feels like it has been happening for always. Or it has never happened, what are you talking about?

I mean that I get stuck in the extremes when it comes to talking about what is going on. Very few PTSD symptoms genuinely occur for me weekly for years and years on end. That’s just not literally true. You can more or less track the spikes in symptomatic behavior based on my journal entries. Yes, in those entries I make it sound like what is happening today has happened every day of my life. But on other entries I make it clear I’m having a different kind of day.

I dislike that aspect of my personality/writing but extreme emotional switches are one of the hallmarks of PTSD so I’m literally just behaving as if I have the diagnosis I have. But… that’s a weird shameful thing.

I’m always supposed to be pretending to be “normal”. I’m just… not. Only I am! It’s kind of weird. I don’t get it. I’m not “normal” only my experiences are like experiences other people have had so we validate one another.

My pot usage continues to go up and down and the amount of control I have does change with my dosage. If I could stop feeling ashamed I could probably get to the point of consistently dosing and just plain have more self control.

I’ve been doing more reading about the brain injury aspect of PTSD. That part is weird for me to think about because my brother Tommy had a severe traumatic brain injury after his head went through a windshield. I know some things about brain injury and managing that. Managing my own is more complicated.

Especially because I didn’t go through a windshield and abuse is one of those weird things. On one hand we know it causes permanent brain damage. On the other hand… we seldom believe people who self report these experiences so we minimize the effects of abuse and call people crazy when they accurately report what has happened to them.

I’m not as frantic as I was when I wrote the entry that so many people have come back and read in the last day. I haven’t been for a while. My anxiety was peaking for a variety of reasons.

There is a fascinating way to balance extreme exhaustion and pot and PTSD to make sure I’m really just not as punchy any more. At this moment in time if someone wanted to start a fist fight I would probably start giggling and slump to the floor already half asleep.

I wouldn’t go out into the world and do complex social managing like this. It would be incredibly dangerous for me.

But I’ll be honest and say that the extreme upside of this kind of bone numb exhaustion is my anxiety is hella less painful than normal. Thank you, body. I appreciate that.

I have a lot of other kinds of pain but I appreciate any break. Thanks, body.

Y’all trolls should find a better hobby. Garden. Decorate cakes. Let crazy bitches be crazy bitches without having to judge, ok?

Do you know what I think is funny? When people say, “I don’t care if it is illegal–it is abuse.”

You know what? Words have meanings for reasons. Well, actually it does matter if it is illegal. That is the line at which behavior requires outside intervention according to the specifically negotiated customs/expectations of a given area.

In Texas (to the best of my understanding) it is still considered jim-dandy-fine to beat children in school. It’s legal. Is it abuse? Doesn’t matter. You can’t stop a legal action.

It’s kind of like whether or not slavery was “wrong” or not. It was legal for a whole forking long time and there wasn’t much that could be done about it while it was legal.

Is how I’m treating my children abuse? Fuck if I can judge that. It’s really god damn hard for me to see. I literally can’t tell.

I know that compared to the people I know who say they were abused my kids are having a walk in the park.

Is that enough? Who the fuck gets to judge?

Well, actually a judge gets to decide. That’s the basis of having a legal system. Which means that in the end… what matters is what is currently legal whether that is right or wrong in the scope of history.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuck.

Are y’all rereading that entry because I go into the historical punishments I would have received? I’ve taken a lot of history classes. I’m very interested in how women have been controlled.

I notice that the Western world really has no stones to throw when it comes to the quality of interactions women have. Doesn’t stop the assholes from acting like they are superior. We ain’t.

When I was a child if I sassed I would have to stand there and let someone slap me until they felt they had changed my attitude sufficiently.

Are my children being abused?

Jesus-H-Roosevelt-Christ.

My daughter gets tapped on the face for the first time in her life and she bursts into tears and says, “That’s not ok. You can’t do that to me.”

Now that I’ve felt what that felt like… I don’t think I’ll ever do it again. It isn’t tempting in the same way. I really don’t like how it felt.

I didn’t feel like I was any more worthy of respect.

What is the point of addressing disrespect if you are worthy of far far less respect when you are done?

Well. I learned something from it. I learned a lot about how that doesn’t give me the boost I wanted to get from it. I didn’t “get mine back” in terms of feeling like I was still in control or the boss.

I felt like an asshole bully.

Cause, you know, I was.

I don’t really like that feeling any more. It’s not that I feel bad about having done it in the past. It is that my child is different.

Something that was interesting on the trip. We got to bounce in and out of other peoples lives and see how much time they spend at home or not. People vary so much. There is no normal.

Some people spend a lot of time and and around their house. Some people barely ever see their home while still awake. It’s all part of the variation of normal.

I’m more of a homebody with bursts of genuine wanderlust.

In the bay area it is very common for people to spend 1-3 hours/day driving. I just… don’t want it any more. So the shape of my life will be smaller. I have mixed feelings about that. It feels bad or wrong in some way.

I need interactions with other people the way I need to breathe. But at the same time… I have to stop bouncing between other peoples opinions. I need to care about the people who actually impact my life and not about the people who are outside my locus of influence.

Yes, my writing is overwhelming and intense. Given how many hundreds of hits my splash page is getting every day lately, I’m pretty sure you can tell why. Lots of people have been looking at the website but not buying the book. (If you are a cheap piece of shit you can download it for free at this point. Just look around the web.) You want the Cliff’s Notes version on why I’m so god damn weird?

There isn’t a Cliff’s Notes. You have to wade through the morass for a long time in order to understand. Those who have low reading comprehension will probably never be able to make sense of it.

And they will blame me for that fact and talk about how awful it makes me that my writing isn’t specifically designed for their consumption. Ho hum. I’m bored with that.

This ain’t a news blog. This ain’t some place looking for hits. I’m just documenting my life because that is my compulsion in this lifetime.

I let you read it because long trial and error shows me I just don’t write without an audience. I am an exhibitionist, I guess. I want to be seen in the world as a person who exists because for so many years I was invisible.

I’m not going to keep my dirty laundry in the closet ever again.

Yeah, that means I’m real upfront about the ways I’m a fuck up. If you are in denial about it while cataloging it in this way… you look kinda bad. So I have to accept responsibility.

That is actually one of my favorite things about myself. I acknowledge what I’ve done. I describe it honestly. I take responsibility. I sure like that.

 

Real life calls.