I’m sick. I feel awful. Like normal when I’m sick I’m beating myself up emotionally. I woke up this morning missing my biological family something fierce. It hit me like a freight train.

I miss them but I can’t be part of the family. I won’t keep secrets. I won’t act like everything is fine.

The generation after mine got raped too. I can’t pretend everything is fine.

But they can. So they get to have a family and I don’t. Because that’s how the cookie crumbles.

How ungrateful. I have a family. I have Noah. I have my kids. I had sure better not fuck it up. This is all I have.

I feel completely and totally certain that if Noah and the kids all died I would not live 24 hours.

I feel like this is the most sad I have been in a while. This feels brutal. I hurt so much. Part of it is weird bitterness over adopted family stuff too.

I walk away from people so they can’t walk away from me. Which makes it my fault relationships don’t last. Which is easier to bear than the fact that people just don’t like me very much.

I’m in a god damn mood. Pity party, table of one.

I feel sad, keening grief. I feel like I want to cut and beat my head on the floor and…

It’s just there this morning. Just because.

Sometimes I think I beat my head on the floor because I’m hoping I will damage my brain enough that I will stop thinking because what I think hurts me so much.

I am really grateful that today is a slow pace. We’ll have some nature time. It’s the first day of my officially reduced schedule. I’m on the day planner. It’s here. I mean, I haven’t done that much for weeks, but it was an unstructured kind of not doing that much. And not doing that much means I did a fair bit. Cause I’m like that.

But I have big blocks of the day marked as rest. In between other “healthful” activities and shit that I’m supposed to build into my life because supposedly I might hate myself less some year if I keep this bullshit up.

With every passing year I feel more and more ashamed of myself for not talking to my mother. I understand her neglect so much more. She was doing her best.

Her best wasn’t good enough. Is that really her fault?

I don’t know. But I can’t have her in my life and I feel like that makes me a piece of shit. It is hard to not feel like that fact is reason enough to deserve death on its own. I hurt my mama. I am bad.

If I wanted to I could crawl in bed with any of three people and they would hug me and love me and I wouldn’t have to be alone right now. The trouble is, I want my mother. I have wanted my mother my whole life.

It never goes away. Sometimes I don’t think about it. But then a quiet moment comes along and I check in with my body and there it is. This ache that never goes away.

Mama.

There was a woman, for a few years, who told me she wanted to be my adopted mom. I haven’t heard from her in a long time. She has a life of her own. She’s busy. She doesn’t actually have room for me in her life. I’m not really worth the effort.

My adopted mom and my biological mom share a birthday. So every year I keen for the two women I don’t deserve to have love me. I could reach out to them. But I’m kind of done chasing love that isn’t really meant for me.

I was never really wanted. Not really.

But Noah wants me. However I got here. And my kids are stuck with me till they aren’t. We’ll see what happens.

I think a lot about what my mother’s life would have been like if she had aborted me like she should have. It would have been better. Maybe she could have saved Tommy and he wouldn’t be dead. Maybe she could have kept the other kids together after the divorce instead of just getting the “girls”.

If I hadn’t been there so many things would have been different. Easier. I have not been worth the trouble to take care of, ever.

I want to cut really badly. I haven’t wanted to like this in a while. It’s been such a nice Christmas.

Mama mama mama mama.

It always comes back to you. I love you. I love you with all of my black soul.

But you don’t get to hurt my babies. My babies live in a state of perfect trust where the unreliable people are outside the family. Inside their family they are safe and they believe that people tell them the truth. If you were considered inside their family bubble that would be shattered.

You can’t tell the truth to save your life. Because lying was necessary to save your life and you don’t seem to be able to stop now.

Now. What do I know. I haven’t talked to you in five years. But you couldn’t tell the truth then. Given your age I doubt it has changed. It’s not like you are ready to go through puberty now and see the error of your ways.

You had to lie all the god damn time and I get that and I can forgive you for the past. I can’t let you lie to my children like that going forward and you are literally not capable of telling the truth. I think it is because you are incapable of perceiving the truth. If you did you wouldn’t be able to get out of bed in the morning.

Can I really judge that?

Yes and no.

I have to do what I have to do to get out of bed in the morning, so yeah I judge. I judge that your way of being is not for me and I have to find something different and do it with a vengeance.

That intensity I have that bothers people so much? A lot of that exists because overcoming inertia is hard. It is a basic physics problem. I don’t like me very much. In order to talk to people I have to first pretend I like myself (because if you don’t formulate your interactions based on the premise of liking yourself you will get abused again) then decide what treatment would be right for me if I liked myself then figure out how to manipulate people around me into behaving in a way that will be comfortable for me. That takes a fuck ton of energy, thought, and consideration.

Yes I think about how to manipulate you. I think about how to cause you to have the set of emotions I want you to have so that you will continue to enjoy my company. I’m going to cause you some set of emotions. Indifference. Irritation. Joy. Love. Contempt. Anxiety. Something. Yes, I think consciously about what I would like to be causing and I work towards it. If I don’t do that… I bother people so much.

I have to think about this if I still want to have friends in the future. Even if manipulate is a dirty word. What-fucking-ever.

I think about which people need me to physically move slowly and which people like that I’m generally a quick darting person.

I think about which people can handle which portions of my range of emotions. Some people can only handle the joy. Some people can only handle my anger.

I think about which people will feel tolerant of which parts of my past experiences and I try to cull my stories carefully these days. I have improved these filters tremendously since having children. I used to uhhhh have fewer appropriate stories for all topics. I’m branching out.

I have noticed lately that I have two distinctly different somatic experiences of my approaches to people. Sometimes I don’t feel safe …. engaging. So I don’t say much. I look at the floor and I don’t make eye contact with people. I have a permanent fucking crick in my neck.

Then there are times when I’m ok pretending I’m a main character and I look everyone in the eye and I insert myself into peoples way and I seem to be more charming than not.

I don’t know how to get that pretense of comfort sometimes. Like today I couldn’t do it. Today if I had to be in a group of people I would be monosyllabic. I’d probably cross my arms and rock in the corner. Like I do when I’m uhhhh feeling mature.

Today I feel like I’m stuck in an elevator. Wait, let me back up. Know how I talk about feeling present with many selves/ages all at once? Right now I feel like I’m stuck on elevator between selves. If all the various permutations of me are floors on a building, I’m stuck between Neurotically In Control Adult and Weak And Defenseless Child. Neither is true. Both are true. Fuck everything.

I’m sad. My arms hurt like a mother fucker but I couldn’t sit on this today. I have to let it pass through me and move on. Writing it down helps so much.

I try hard not to make it obvious in my day to day life that my literal survival depends on the survival of the people in this house. That’s creepy. You have to go about your life as if that were incidental to your own survival. But I know it.

I have some incredibly dramatic ideas about how I could ensure that I would absolutely not risk being rescued in time this time. It’s not a call for fucking help. I don’t want help any more.

I want my family and that’s it. If I can’t have them then that’s it.

So yeah. I’m not writing this down because I’m very certain that I would follow through and if you forewarn people they feel duty bound to stop you and fuck that.

But, my family is alive and it doesn’t matter. Hopefully they won’t all die and it will absolutely never be necessary. I want to be with them.

I feel incredibly angry with people who call suicide selfish. Fuck you with a pogo stick. People who commit suicide are people who are in pain they cannot bear. Fuck you for being so selfish that you think they should continue to suffer in order to spare you even the slightest discomfort.

I don’t owe you that.

I owe you neither continued suffering nor silence. I owe you nothing. I do not owe you my life. There are things I’d like to do. I’m going to keep busy as long as I’m alive. Not because I owe people. Because I’m having fun. Because I’m finding out what it feels like to be loved. Actually loved. Shows up every day loved.

Yes Noah, I would throw myself against any rock for that. It is true. Yes I would damage myself over and over and over for that. I did so in the search for it. I didn’t think it would come true. I expected to off myself in desolation and despair before now because no one would ever actually love me.

Lots of people like to fuck me. Some people like to talk to me. It’s different to really love and take care of someone.

Sometimes I stop and realize… my body count is bigger than some peoples whole Monkey Sphere. No wonder I’m capable of seeing more people as real people.

I searched high and low for someone who could love me. Then when he started creeping on me I dated him for a bit and dumped him.

The other day in the car Eldest Child wistfully said, “I hope I grow up and meet someone as perfectly suited to me as you two found.” We both kinda went, “Bwuahahaha. No. We were not suited when we met.” She was shocked.

We changed. We became something different for one another. We became our better selves because that is what we agreed to do for one another. Having someone make that promise and then deliver and deliver and deliver and deliver for a decade now…

This is what trust feels like.

It’s so new.

Sometimes I ask my kids if they can trust me. They tell me that they know I’m telling the truth unless I’m using a silly voice then they know I’m lying. I said, “Actually sometimes when I use a silly voice I’m still telling the truth. Just to mess with you.” They glared a little. But I feel ok with this arrangement. Treat pronouncements in silly voices with great caution. Important life lesson.

I tell my kids that we won’t do everything I plan but we will do everything I promise. There’s an important difference there. I always over plan. I’m an ambitious motherfucker. No matter what you are referencing I over plan. It’s a lifestyle. It’s part of how I save money hand over fist. I plan for 60%-80% of our income. Then whatever comes in over that is extra and I invest it. And I have plans and plans and plans for investing stuff.

You don’t do the things I’ve done if you are a meek or under planning sort of person. That intensity that bothers people? It’s a mixed bag. It drove me around the country despite overwhelming pain. It causes me to get up and try again on being nice every single day with my kids. Because I’ve decided I’m all in for this thing.

There are times when I fail. I’m very careful what I promise. An awful lot of what I promise is that I will always try. I will always apologize when I fuck up. I will not promise perfection. That is folly.

I won’t promise and promise and promise for years that I will take you to do X thing and never do it. Even when the money is there because Other People Come First.

I won’t be my mother. It’s not just about the sex abuse. I know that casual readers often think that preventing sexual abuse is kinda my hobby horse to ride with my kids.

I mean, it’s important. Don’t get me wrong. But it’s really just the tip of the ice burg.

Eldest Child just ran in and jumped on my lap. I may be out of steam for the morning. Hard to hold the laptop on my lap while she wiggles. She is staring intently at the screen and trying to read what I’m writing. She’s getting a few words. Ahhhhh. Time to close this window. My time of hiding in plain sight with my feelings is just about over.

I love you kid.