Most of the way through The Body Keeps Score I started thinking that maybe I had never finished the book before because it is upsetting. But I remember the last chapter so I think that I have finished it before. But there are sections that I almost completely forgot because they hurt so much.

The most interesting therapy for people like me is neurofeedback and I have no idea how to get access to it.

One section of the book talked about Internal Family System (IFS) therapy. In very rough terms I’ll describe it as recognizing people as being like a fully integrated multiple personality system. You know, how shrinks have described me in the past. The goal of this type of therapy is to encourage people to see themselves as a grouping of “parts”. Good parts and bad parts. There are Manager parts that keep you as functional as you are going to be. There are the Exiled parts that you squash and don’t manage in healthy ways. The parts of you that were traumatized and you don’t want to feel weak ever again so you deny that you were that part, ever. Then there are the Firefighters. The Firefighter parts show up when your Manager parts can’t handle situation and you need to Deal With A Problem. Think of a firefighter completely destroying a house in order to put out a fire.

Think about how I like to blow up the boat I’m standing on when I don’t know how to handle a problem.

Like that.

I feel like a lot of the purpose of my marriage is for Noah and I to figure out how to be healthy people while standing next to each other. How do I deal with problems without needing to blow up the boat? How does he manage to have emotions within the marriage? These are things we are working on.

Yoga, meditation, art, and gardening continue to be the activities that are recommended for helping me deal with my shit.

Not socializing.

Bouncing off of other people is complicated.

Everything is complicated.

But being with my children continues to be, in my opinion, the single best thing I do for myself. My children ground me. My children attach me to the present. My children make me want to grow and change in healthy ways.

I’m really grateful for my children.

I just finished reading White Trash by Nancy Isenberg. I feel like this woman gave me my whole life. It is very challenging to track down an email address for the author so I don’t know that I’ll be sending her fan mail. There is a phone number for a representative for media requests. I doubt I’ll trouble them.

This book is wonderful and talks about so much that people deny. We are waste people. Large swaths of society wishes the poor white trash would just… disappear.

And oh god. So much truth was dropped. Poor whites will empty their own pockets to fill the pockets of a charlatan who tells them they are better than someone else. SO. FUCKING. TRUE.

Enlightened self interest is… complicated.

I’m going to stop and say that I am so excited that I finally signed up for 23 & me. I don’t know who the fuck I am or where the fuck I came from. I have stories I was told that I can’t verify. Did one branch of my family come over on the god damn Mayflower? How the fuck do I know? (Yeah, I could dig around on ancestry.com…) What happened to the women who were supposedly in California for so many generations? Who did they have kids with? Where were they from to start with? I don’t know.

Are the Mennonites as German as they claim or is there a bunch of Russian mixed in as I’ve always wondered?

Who are you. Who am I?

What will these results teach me? Will they give me permission to be something other than what I have perceived myself to be? Rootless.

What does it mean to be authentic? What does it mean to exist? How many “Italian Americans” are actually staying true to the roots of Italian heritage? How many people who are proud of being… whatever they are… really know what they are?

There are so many lies we tell. So many convenient half truths.

I see the hostility thrown at American Blacks for mixing African cultures. That shit’s complicated and not my battle. But I see that authenticity is a fight that many people have to engage in. I’ve heard Asian Americans complain about dilution and mixing of cultures. It’s not just a white thing.

When Mexicans are *shocked* to find out that big chunks of their genetics come from Africa and Europe. Yup.

What is “realness”?

I read about First Nations people. Some groups are very worried about blood purity. Most of what I see is worry about cultural purity rather than blood purity. Who cares if white men polluted the blood line with their rape. Did you grow up like us? Are you like us? Ok. You count. But it varies so much and I don’t understand a lot of the nuance.

What will I do if my grandfather was right and there is a distinct African strain? Will I claim being biracial? Probably not. I completely lack the authenticity even if I have the blood line. What will I do if I find a streak of Indigenous blood? I will read more. Maybe I will ask permission to learn more from real people if I can do so in a way that isn’t exploitive.

But I won’t start decorating my house as if it is my culture. It may or may not be my blood line. My culture is white trash.

Smokey and the Bandit was serious fucking shit in my family. That stupidity is where I come from.

Waste people. Rednecks. My grandfather died with a red neck from working outside. He had a heart attack walking back to work from lunch. Like you do.

Breeding. My father told me that the only problem with incest is you shouldn’t make babies with family members because it enhances negative genetic traits.

That’s.The.Drawback.

What is authenticity? What does it mean to be real? What does it mean to have an identity?

Fuck if I know.

My kids are now old enough for us to have family meetings about important topics. This sorta blows my mind. I never participated in this kind of thing as a kid. I was told what was happening to me, not asked what I wanted. Or I would be given a shitty non-choice. “Do you want to go to abusive home A or probably abusive home B with folks you’ve never met before?”

My kids are pretty sure we should move. We really want a bigger house. Not a fantastically huge house, but bigger. The kids want to have rooms they can leave messy without it being common space. I don’t blame them.

We are looking at house porn around the country. I’d like to spend less than $300,000. That means… not one of the biggest places.

Southern Oregon, Louisville Kentucky, Cincinnati Ohio (Have you seen the houses there?!?!?!?!), Knoxville Tennessee, and maybe Boulder Colorado. Depends on how much I don’t like other places. I’m not sure which other cities we’ll try.

We still want to spend a season in Washington DC going to museums and the transition year out of CA and into where ever we land is a great time to do that.

Overseas is interesting but… pot is illegal most of the places we would be interested in moving. Including some of the states we are looking at. That’s not a great thing.

Pot is legal (at least medically) in Ohio, Oregon, and Colorado. Oregon is allowing third gender IDs. That’s a big draw. But Oregon is so white. Like, did you know that between 2010 and 2016 Oregon went from being 83% white to being 87% white? That’s… yeah.

Oh fuck. Kentucky is 88% white. California is 72% white. Whoa. That’s… interesting. Hm. White/non-Hispanic is only 37%. For Kentucky the white/non-Hispanic is… 85%.

For Tennessee the numbers are 78%/74%. (white/white+ non-Hispanic). Ohio: 82%/79%.

Hm. So these are all fucktastically white places. I’m kidding myself. Hm. California has a lot of white Hispanics and that’s a huge chunk of the white population.

White. What does being white mean? I live in a country that is mostly white. For the whole country the numbers are 76%/61% for white or white/non-Hispanic.

That makes it sound like leaving California means leaving for Whitelandia.

Florida is 77%/54%. But I can’t handle the weather. Full stop.

Arizona is 83%/55%.

I am noticing some weather patterns here.

Ok. So unless I want to start baking my sorry ass I need to accept that I’m moving to a massively white place. Portland isn’t more so. 76%/72% for the city of Portland. You know what? I need to stop being an asshole. Portland is doing better than many of the places we are considering. I apologize to my Portlandians for the slander I have ignorantly displayed.

BUT THEY WERE FOUNDED AS A FUCKING WHITE SUPREMACIST UTOPIA.

It’s changing though. I need to stop being a dick.

I DON’T KNOW WHERE TO GO.

I don’t want to move to Portland in large part because I deeply value the relationships I have there and I’m completely convinced that if I leaned on any of them more heavily they would evaporate. My strong impression is that a visit a year is about the max load I can put on those people. And skipping some years makes the next visit go better.

I don’t want to fuck up the welcome I have. I love these people so much.

OH MY GOD THIS HOUSE HAS AN INDOOR POOL WITH A FUCKING DISCO BALL. It’s $250,000. Clearly Oregon has something to recommend it.

But yeah. This will be huge.

I scared.

I’ve been in the bay solidly for 20 years. Intermittently for 30 years. That’s a long time.

I find it funny how when I am pregnant I am aware of cognitive load in a way I’m not really at other times. It’s similar to how marathon training taught me what hungry felt like. Before that I didn’t have much connection with the signals in my body. I eat because it is time to eat or because I’m being a vicious nasty person.

In general I don’t think about how much interacting with people is a cognitive load to carry. I think about math being a cognitive load. I think about art as being cognitive load. Reading varies depending on material but it can be draining to the point of doom. I read intense, complicated subjects. My brain has to dance backwards wearing ballet boots to keep up with that shit.

But I don’t think about conversations as being cognitive load most of the time. Mostly conversations are the wind beneath my skipping feet. They give me lift and energy and movement. I love conversations.

Fuck. Right now thinking is sooooooooooooo haaaaaaaaaard. I feel like I’m being even more gauche than usual. I’m definitely not listening as well as usual. My brain gets over loaded and I can feel a flinch reflex and then I start blurting out something that is easier for my brain to process so I don’t have to hear more. I know it is an asshole move. I’m trying to keep it under control. I’m only sorta succeeding.

I am feeling incredibly blessed by all the conversations I’m having lately. But I feel like I have a permanent hangover. Thinking is harder by the day.

We have two days with nothing scheduled during the next 22 days. I’m a little nervous. Mostly that’s medical appointments and exercise classes. But shit, dude.

Moving to the woods where this shit isn’t possible sounds sooo awesome.

But I’ll Skype like a mofo. Just you watch me.

Skype is making talking to the people I like so much better. I’m typing less to IM. I get to have the joy of seeing facial expressions. Video chat is magic.

I talk a lot of shit about technology. I talk a lot of shit about expensive toys. I understand that we have the good, positive, life changing things we have because of the bullshit. But I still want to bitch about bullshit.

I’m an asshole like that.

Noah pointed something out, about how I’m an asshole. It’s an important thing for me to think about more than once and the public humiliation of writing it here will help sear it on my brain so I don’t slide on this issue again.

Noah points out that I’ve spent a lot of our marriage talking harshly about how I really don’t care about the emotions of white men. So if I feel like I don’t know how he has felt for the last few years… how much of that was him protecting himself from my nastiness?

I am such a fucking bitch.

(He didn’t say the bitch part. He doesn’t talk to me like that. Ever. Even when I was a cheating fucking hag.)

I need to work on giving Noah space for his feelings in our relationship. I have made an unsafe container for him and that’s not ok. I didn’t do it on purpose, but I did it. Maybe part of the reason he feels so boring to me is because I have made it unsafe for him to share the parts of himself that I find most interesting. What a way to set us up to fail.

Yeah. I did that. And I need to fix it.

I have done that bullshit thing in myself where “I’m not as bad as ______ so I’m fine.”

No. It’s not fine to make it unsafe for my husband to express feelings. That’s not fine.

I don’t ever get to decide in my head that I’m not a bully or I’m a good person. I will keep uncovering these fuck ups until I die.

I pray that my children will be better people than me.

I cannot make it unsafe for my son to have feelings.

I don’t know that Lightening is a boy. I was just given a bunch of cute femme baby clothes to go with the cute femme toddler clothes I still have. So whatever genitalia this kid comes out with… they may end up in a lot of dresses because that’s how the cookie crumbles.

But I’m kinda poisonous in how I talk about white men. I’ve got some big nasty feelings. And my kids haven’t done anything to me. They don’t deserve that. The vast majority of white men haven’t done anything to me. But you mighta done something to someone else and I don’t fucking trust you.

That’s complicated.

Noah has done something to someone else. I know because she told me and he corroborated. They have different points of view, of course. But yeah. That happened.

Noah picked some horribly bad timing for a scene I stupidly agreed to have no safeword and to allow it to be sprung on me at any time. Yeah. That was…. a big deal.

And I think I hold a grudge. I think I use these things in my head as reason to be on my guard and kinda mean and to make sure I don’t look like a good victim ever again.

I plan to live with this man until he or I die. I begin to understand my aunt and uncle’s marriage. Things got bad. For better or worse. Who says you get better, bitch.

But Noah…

Noah has earned forgiveness. He has earned the right for a genuine fresh try. Knowing that he will hurt me again some day in some way.

Noah has memorized me like I am his favorite poem. He has twisted himself around the gnarls of the tree that is my soul. And he has done some damage as he spread and as he learned… but he has healed me in so many ways. I was ready to fall down in the wind. And he gave me something to lean on and keep growing.

We will both fuck up again. We are monsters. Monsters do that. They hurt people. They don’t have to mean it.

Sometimes.

Things.

Just.

Happen.

Cognitive load. Who is most important to me. How do I allot the time and energy my brain has to give? I’m tired.

There are a whole lot of people where I pray they will be willing to forgive me for the months and years I drop away. The remodel ate my brain. I didn’t contact many people. Now my brain is being sucked into a biological process. Hi. I may love you, but time I barely have. Brain power is in shorter supply. God I can’t drive to social more than I do. I hate doctors. I have hope for my current doctors. I have a whole bunch. I see soooo many doctors. uuuuuuuuuggggggghhhhhh

Don’t traumatize your fucking kids, yo. This shit is expensive.

It is fun talking to other parents about where they set their lines and why. We are all so different and all the reasons are valid in context.

I don’t think I would be physically capable of getting over my hatred of white men if I had to do so as a childless woman working in an office. I hear enough about office politics that I’d be a political lesbian under those circumstances because men just…. no thanks.

But that isn’t the life I chose. For reasons. There’s shit I need to learn. There’s shit I need to be physically able to care about and the only way I know to learn how is to develop those relationships within a family.

I don’t have another way to get a family that will actually stick around. Ok adoption. But then I won’t work through the things that are connected to me and my issues and my stuff that I specifically need to reparent.

I’ll work through their issues instead. And I will have to be put to the side.

But I really need more family feeling. I can’t call my brothers and learn to get over them torturing me when I was a child. I can’t call my sister and try to forgive her for refusing to keep me out of dangerous situations when I begged her to take me home. I can’t call my mom and forgive her for telling me that I made my bed and I needed to go sleep in it when my father was raping me.

I have children to protect.

We go on the best date nights with our kids. Our kids associate dates with intense one on one conversations where you educate one another about all sorts of topics.

Before I was five years old I knew that a date was supposed to end with a dick in my mouth.

It’s intense for me to talk to people who have long term poly relationships with no sex. I treat a lot of my female friends like they are long term romantic partners. Without sex. I have a few male friends who are kind of like that but everyone got more distant after last year and the rubble. Makes sense. They are trying to be my friends and respect my marriage.

It’s kind of intense having honorable, decent people in my life with boundaries. I didn’t grow up with folks like this. Boundaries are expressed so you know where to step first.

What is this life thing going to turn into. I don’t fucking know.

I never really aspired to being a monster, you know.

But when I was Eldest Child’s age committing breaking and entering. Because it was better to hang out in empty houses than stand around on the street alone.

My kids will never have my burglary skills. I’m not sure if this is good or bad.

It’s… different… hanging out with kids who are so safe.

I start to understand interactions from my childhood in a whole new light. And my kids are coached on consent forking daily. Most kids aren’t. Most kids have squidgy boundaries. My kids say NO. No squidge.

It is safe for them to do that and for them to have feelings.

This needs to be true for Noah too.

I have not been fair.

This needs to change.

I keep having these fragments of interesting posts wander through my brain. I don’t write them down. I forget. That’s kinda my brain right now.

Things of note for tracking reasons: everyone in the house is noticing a big change in Future Middle Child’s behavior. Things kinda hit a fever pitch of rough there and then things changed. They aren’t hitting so much. They are doing a much better job of verbally advocating for themself. They are sleeping better. They are globally acting like, “I know who I want to be and how I want to act” and they are following through. It’s wonderful to see.

Eldest Child is reaching out for friendships in a way that feels striking and new. She’s changing.

Eldest Child is starting to advocate strongly for moving. Her words: “I feel like by the time I’m 11 or 12 it won’t be ok that my only private space is my bed.” That’s completely legit. There are not enough rooms in this house for everyone to have a room of their own and still have common space. Noah and I talked about shooting for when Next Kid is about 18 months old. That’s pretty fucking terrifying.

Aptos/Salinas is currently the only place in California we’d really consider. And those are… not honestly strong contenders because we want to go somewhere cheaper. That means away from cities.

We are looking all over the country. Portland is not a consideration. Eugene is a maaaaaaaybe. But Oregon doesn’t want more Californians. We won’t move to the East Coast. We won’t move to Texas or the deep south. I’m terrified of serious snow.

I don’t know what that means. Colorado is interesting but I don’t know any close friends there. (I know a handful of friends of friends, but I don’t know them and they are from communities where I’m pretty closed mouthed about myself.) Nevada, Utah, Arizona, and New Mexico are all so hot I’d melt.

Wyoming was so unfriendly I couldn’t fucking bear it. I would not be able to handle living in a place where folks are that monosyllabic.

I don’t think Nebraska or Kansas would be… as bad as other places but I’m not sure I’d be popular in either state.

Ohio? Indiana? Pennsylvania? Tennessee? Kentucky?

No to Missouri. Can’t.

Oklahoma seems…. too close to Noah’s family.

Over seas sounds great. But complicated. I don’t know. I am fairly certain that Noah would be able to get a job over seas. He’s well regarded in the international community in his field. He could go to most countries. But where?

I’m terrified of leaving for a million reasons. But my daughter is right when she says this house is not going to work forever. We don’t want to spend the $300,000+ to add a second story. That puts Noah in debt bondage for a lot of extra years. Even though he makes obscene money.

Noah is 41. In my personal opinion it would be lovely if he didn’t have to have a full time job by 50. He says that what he would like is if he could do seasonal contract work remotely for a few months a year for vacations and extra shit but otherwise we’d like to be living off investments.

We are at $750,000 (approximately, obv) in investments. At 2 million (if I do this right) it’s possible to take about 3% out in dividends and get $60,000. That’s a huge salary for most of the country or the world. In 10 years of marriage I have tripled our assets. If I’m as good as I hope I am, having a 9 year runway to get to 2 million isn’t impossible. If we sold this house we could be well over a million invested after we pay off debts. We might even get as high as 1.2 or 1.3 million.

That makes retiring look… way more attainable. We will probably buy another house somewhere, but I’d love to move somewhere that we are looking at under $300,000.

The goal is retiring so we can teach people stuff without needing a job. Because we are wacky like that.

I don’t know what we are going to do. I don’t know where we are going to go. But I’m sure glad I will get to figure this out with my family.

We keep talking about spending a year or two nomadic so that we can try out different areas for a while before committing. We’ll see.

AND AFTER I PUT IN THAT GOD DAMN BATHROOM.

But if someone else loves this bathroom as much as me… maybe I will effectively be paid for my labor. Maybe. There’s a lot I need to do to the house and yard to make it someplace that someone else will want to buy. There’s a lot to fix and change and stuff. I hate caring about other peoples opinions.

My belly hurts. I’m hungry and eating hurts. This is not fair.

I haven’t been writing much about the evolution of Noah and I talking about sex and dating. That’s for a whole lot of reasons. I don’t want to pressure the situation. I don’t want to make promises I can’t keep. I handled last year tremendously badly on a variety of levels and I can’t absorb another fuck up that big. I’m not saying that I tried and failed so I’ve settled into permanent monogamy and that’s the end of the story. This has not been a good time to push.

Last year blew up for a variety of reasons. I didn’t negotiate for what I needed I reacted terribly to a situation I didn’t otherwise know how to change. I’m not proud and I’m not saying I deserve sympathy. Stuff was happening that I couldn’t cope with and I blew up the boat.

Noah has bigger emotions than he lets on most of the time. I think there was a slow decline in me noticing Noah’s emotions over years. Last year I genuinely didn’t think my actions would hurt him as badly as they did. That was hubris and ignorance and being a selfish asshole.

What does that mean for our future? Well, I can’t have a boy/girl friend.

I don’t think we will be completely monogamous. I think we will go years in between times and people who are ok to sleep with because both of us feel safe.

I think there will permanently be a belief that I have locked down Noah while being overly free myself and… I can’t say that’s completely wrong but it isn’t completely right either. It’s more complicated than that.

When Noah needs a break from being a husband and a father he wants to be alone. When I’m in need of a break I want to go be in relationship to other people so I feel like I have a different role.

That’s part of why I misunderstood pieces of what happened last year. I thought Noah wouldn’t really mind me being gone in the evenings when the kids were going to bed because he wants more alone time than he gets anyway. Only me being on a date is deeply triggering to him. He will sacrifice necessary alone time to go date if I’m paying too much attention to a particular other person.

Which kind of means that I need to sit in my house and Skype with people Noah doesn’t find threatening so Noah can have the alone time he needs without feeling threatened by my behavior. That’s complicated for me.

I want to do kinds of bdsm play Noah doesn’t want to do. That’s going to be rough forever. I want to figure out how to negotiate respectfully with everyone involved to find a way to get some of those needs met without hurting Noah. But if I’m out of his sight I’m hurting him.

I haven’t negotiated with anyone in the last year. I haven’t even hinted at possibilities because I feel so ashamed of leading people on with promises I can’t keep. I don’t know what I’ll be permitted to do in the future. Right this minute very little is possible. I don’t know what will be true in the future.

But Noah has earned the right to have me be considerate of his feelings.

I’m really tired of being in bed for 10 hours and sleeping 3.5 hours. This shit sucks.

Tomorrow I hit 9 weeks. I’m down almost 8 lbs. Of course. I swear to cheese I’m eating everything I can hold down. I feel so sick.

I went to the group “welcome to our maternity system” class yesterday for my medical provider. It was strangely like an episode of “Call the Midwife” without the great accents. It was fine, it was fun. I participated in appropriate, non-rude ways. The lady giving the presentation really wanted questions. No one was asking any. So I got things rolling. I brought up sleep. GUESS WHAT SHE TOLD ME TO DO?! Exercise more.

I did not lead from there into “But what if you have HPA axis dysfunction and exercising too much is probably part of the reason you can’t sleep to save your life?”

See, I was appropriate for the group. I wasn’t self involved. I didn’t lead it into a tangent that doesn’t apply to other people.

I can kinda conform for brief times if I work hard at it.

I wish I could throw up and feel better. But pregnancy doesn’t work that way.

I need to water the garden. I am going to be babysitting for 5ish hours today whether I feel good or not. I need to go to the grocery store again. (I was foolish and I didn’t plan for feeding the friends who are coming over tomorrow. Folks for lunch and folks for dinner and boy howdy do all of them eat differently than we do.)

I think I have scheduled too much again. I feel so dead.

But I hate cancelling with anyone. I waaaaaaaaaaaaaaant to see everyone. Whine.

On Wednesday the 19th I have to drive to Modesto and I’m all kinds of unhappy about it. It’s 86 mother fucking miles away. I’m going to feel so shitty. That’s for a fucking group class where they explain what is necessary for working with the charter school. All information that is on the website but they have to tell us in person. UGHEHGHWGHWGHEWHGRE

Luckily I’ll never have to go there again.

I’m tired of feeling like a slug. I want to feel like I want to get up off the floor. Right now… I’m literally lying on the floor.

Ok. I watered. Damnit. And I made lunch and I did scheduling with Noah and I did food preparation planning.

Productive. See.

Tiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiired.

K- I worry that Aptos isn’t going to stay smallish for long. I remember it quite fondly.

Ok. I need to get awaaaaaay from my keyboard.

Hey, I’ve been doing much better lately. No social media, no forums. I’m not even chatting that much. Yay Skype.

I’m so grateful y’all talk to me. You don’t even know. This pregnancy is easier. I feel so much less lonely for so many reasons. Thank you for spending all this time to get to know me. Thank you for thinking I’m fun to talk to and showing up for dates year after year.

I like talking to you so much.

Gosh I’m struggling with my feelings. I slept a lot last night (for me) and I feel like I overdid the amount of work I did yesterday cleaning. I haven’t been difficult with anyone else. I’m just quietly swimming through my feelings.

Somehow I feel like the dry heaving this morning was strangely spiritual. There’s stuff I need to get up.

I don’t know how some people can be aware of what they are feeling without writing it down. I genuinely don’t know what is going on with me until I read the words my fingers are typing without much conscious thought. Typing is the only way my feelings know how to coherently manifest in a way I know how to understand.

People periodically tell me that I have incredibly high self esteem. I always wonder what they mean when they say that because I spend so much time thinking about what a worthless, mean piece of shit I am. But I think that I’m starting to understand.

I do not react well to people treating me in a way I don’t like. I make my needs and preferences VIVIDLY CLEAR and I expect you to respect my limits or I’m going to walk away. I’m not loyal to people who treat me badly. I will never tolerate abuse again.

And the thing is, it isn’t even just abuse. I’ll never fucking tolerate people treating me in a way I just don’t like again. There are too many fish in the sea and I don’t need to be loyal to someone who isn’t going to respect me the way I want to be respected.

And you know what? My social calendar doesn’t let up. Because lots of people respect me the way I need to be respected. People who have known me for many years and who have concrete reasons they respect me.

I’m good. If you want to demonstrate that you don’t want to be part of my life I can accommodate that.

The door’s that’a’way.

Because as much as I love you and I think you are great… I don’t need you.

If I needed anyone too much I’d be in a lot of trouble. People let you down. They don’t mean to. They do it anyway.

Are there severances that I will mourn every day for the rest of my life? Yes. Absolutely. I think I really should build a grief altar. I think about a lot of stories that ended. Life is made up of stories that bend and grow together and apart. There is no telling who I will know in 20 years.

I hope I will know my Jenny.  I hope I will know my Sarah. I hope I will know my Pam. Those three women are a bedrock of my mental health and happiness in a way that… I would really struggle without them. They are my family, each in their own way.

I hope I will still know pretty much all the rest of you too. But y’all are comets. I love you for the brightness you add to the sky, but I cannot depend on you constantly. That’s not an insult. I treasure your presence in my life. I learn from you and I value you so much.

But I can’t need you.

I’d better fucking be married in 20 years because god damn if I haven’t poured everything I have into this relationship. Fuck.

I expect my kids will have some period in their early 20’s of not talking to me much. I hope that by 29 my daughter will be talking to me again and be thrilled to vacation with me every year. I don’t get to demand that. I hope I will earn it. My kid will be about 27. Hopefully they will want to come too. I would think that was really fun. Next kid… will be right in the middle of being done with me for a bit. That’ll be reasonable.

I wrote a letter to my niece. Now I need to get my sorry ass to the post office to buy stamps. Sigh. So many steps. I’m going to buy like 50 stamps to the UK this time. Last time I bought three. That was not smart of me.

If I have 50 stamps staring me in the face I’m waaaaaaay more likely to get better about sending letters frequently. Via Skype I’m seeing that my niece is in a great developmental window to be receptive to letters/stories. That way we can build a relationship despite the distance. I need to get my happy-butt in gear. That way next time we see her… we won’t scare the shit out of her and maybe we will even be so fun we earn hugs. Ahem. We are just so overwhelming compared to her household…

We are loud.

I’m having feelings about my marriage. I don’t want it to change. I want to learn to appreciate it more.

I really am doing what I want to do. I picked this. I asked for it. Noah has… delivered in ways I frankly wouldn’t have believed possible. He is the correct, perfect, exactly right husband for me. Other folks have different needs and that’s all cool.

Noah and I both have this vast chasm inside us where we neeeeeeeed to figure out how to have a happy family. Not to have pictures of a pretending family–fuck that shit. We need to figure out how to be happy, how to hold space for other people to be happy, and how to teach our children to search out their own joy.

We both have that as a fairly driving goal in our life. Our friends are wonderful and lovely and we love them and we want to hang out with them and do things and see them when it is convenient…

But we neeeeeeeeeeeed to find out what it is like to have people of our blood not treat us with contempt. We need to find out what it is like to just no longer deal with people who treat you disrespectfully.

I have a lot of urges to go do stupid/bad choices for all kinds of reasons. Just about every part of my body rejects the urge to settle down and be happy. That seems like a dangerous and toxic thing.

I think a lot of the reason I constantly search for new, new, new, new, new is to be constantly adding new threads to the story so that when basically every thread that is present now goes away I won’t be alone.

I don’t trust that any of you will be with me in 20 years. Not my Jenny nor my Sarah nor my Pam let alone anyone else. I think there is low probability that Noah will leave because he grew up watching a shitty bad marriage and would put his head down and take it if it happened to him.

I don’t want to be that monster, though. It’s an option, sure. Not one I would feel good about.

Future Middle Child and I keep talking about pausing before you speak. Think about what you are going to say. Are you going to be proud in the future that you said that? When you look back, are you going to think “Yes, I was acting the way I thought was right?”

No one else’s evaluation of your behavior matters. Because maybe they won’t be around in the future to care who you turn out to be. You will look at you every day in the mirror for your whole life. What are you going to do to make sure you like who you see?

Do I think I am better than other people? I have made monstrous decisions. I have hurt people. I’m not in a good position to judge. I think I can look at a specific decision sometimes and be kind of a pompous asshole thinking, “Well at least I wouldn’t do that.” Yeah. I’m that kind of fucker. But that doesn’t mean I’m smarter or better or… It means I have a different set of knowledge/experience/resources.

Mostly folks do the best they can with what they have.

But wisdom comes from making bad decisions. And I’ve made a fuck ton of bad decisions. So once in a while I get to feel like I have a little wisdom.

Is that the same thing as better?

It really isn’t.

Why am I so obsessed with this whole “I’m not better” thing. Well, it’s probably partially because my shrink gave me shit about being “obsessed with being unique” and that’s… true. But that doesn’t mean better. It just means I have a lot of unusual/odd reactions that don’t fit well with peoples expectations and I need to be able to dictate my variance really quickly to people or I have problems.

And being able to advocate for yourself like that makes people think you think you are better than them.

Sigh.

I’m not better. I’m just weird as fuck and I need what I need or I don’t do well.

I would really to do well. Hm. Maybe that is a piece. Other people want to do well too and most human beings, even if they advocated for themselves, would not get what they need by asking for it because they only have the same small pool of people to ask. I uhhh change pools of resources. My friends are disparate. I don’t wear out a social group. I don’t frustrate a circle of people. Hm.

I only do as well as I do at getting what I need because I’m willing to keep walking and ask just about a perfect stranger if everyone I know says no.

So I keep asking. Because it works. But it doesn’t work for other people because the circumstances are different… they don’t want to keep walking.

I think I’m understanding this?

I’m real good at telling my kids, “That is a topic you need to find a different person to support you in. I’m not the right person for this.” Asking and receiving a no is fine. You just need to go try and find other people to ask next.

But if you live in a small place and there aren’t very many options…

Yeah. I can’t even wrap my head around how to cope with that.

Hey K-I got your email. I’m thinking. I have feedback but I need to chew over it in my head first. Thanks for thinking of me. I definitely have opinions to share…

Before I go back to bed, I’ve gotta say that seriously tracking IPs is a wonderful thing. I get to look at the hits on my blog and see that folks I haven’t talked to in a while are checking up on me. It’s pretty easy to recognize the identifying features of many of my friends. I know exactly one person in X city in Y state.

It reminds me that I need to reach out. Because as much as y’all like hearing about me… I like hearing about you. And you aren’t as pushy about putting yourself out there in the universe so I need to come knock on your door and say, “Oh wonderful person, please tell me about yourself.”

Like, Beautiful came over yesterday to tell me stories about her family. Her family is seriously #goalz for me. She’s going on her mom’s 50th birthday trip because she wants to. Because hanging out with her mom is fun for her.

I want that so much. I want to have children who like being around me.

My friends inspire me so much.

I slept for seven hours. This should not feel like a Herculean task.

I’m having a run of good doctors. This is… emotionally fucking with me. I don’t trust doctors and they scare the shit out of me. They have too much power. I haven’t yet met the OB I’m going to be working with but I talked to the lady I already like in the department. She says I have to agree to only two things to deliver with them: IV placement (just in case) but I don’t have to have an active IV bag the whole time, just a line in my body in case of emergency. I won’t give a shit about that. I’m not that needle phobic. The other part I need to agree to is periodic monitoring–at least every two hours. Given that I spent my last labor upset that my midwife was pissy about me asking her to monitor me (she wanted to ignore me and focus on her kids and let nature take its course) that sounds great.

Everything else is negotiable. The nice lady recommended that I try out the dude in the practice. He is the most chill, mellow, experienced person available. I think I shocked the nice lady when I said, “Yeah so many dudes have been around my crotch I don’t care about the gender of a doctor. Whatever.”

I talked about my marijuana usage. She asked why I use it. I started listing diagnoses. She nodded and said, “That seems fine.”

I got to see the one, single kidney bean growing inside me. Turns out I labeled the calendar exactly correctly for my week progression. I counted from the correct sex act according to the date scan. *pat self on back*

So, do you think I should tell Eldest Child that we conceived on her birthday or should I keep that a secret? Ha.

Eldest Child was conceived on our first anniversary. Future Middle Child was conceived when I got back from a rough trip to Portland immediately following a miscarriage. I didn’t have an empty cycle. Lightning was conceived on Eldest Child’s 9th birthday. Easy to remember timing.

SEVEN HOURS OF SLEEP. You don’t know how happy I am. Today we have a whole bunch of kids coming over. That sleep is going to help my mood a lot. It is going to be fun to see the mixed age of kids trying to figure out an RPG. This is Noah’s show and I’m going to be entertained.

I’m really grateful for how involved and interested Noah is in his kids. We have a weird, insular life and if we didn’t pay attention to each other it could be incredibly isolating and problematic. Instead we are all really happy and we have a tremendous amount of fun together. I feel so lucky. I know that there are pieces of this picture that I hold together… but Noah does so much. He gives so much.

I love Noah for being a good father. For taking it seriously that this phase of his life is about helping other people be ok. There are many ways to do that, but I like the way Noah does it.

As much as I once in a while wish Noah would watch a movie or a show with me, I’m really glad that mostly he reads to us and we explore the world of books together with our kids. We are going through Madeleine L’Engle books right now and it’s so fun to share them with the kids.

I like that Noah and I don’t put up a lot of walls between ourselves and the kids. Not emotionally and not in terms of time. Noah has a job and we work to protect his mental space while he’s performing it. But Noah doesn’t have a lot of separate hobbies. He shares what he does freely with the kids. He includes them and invites them. He would do the same with me if I didn’t have such a negative attitude.

For some reason I woke up this morning to dry heaves. It had been over 12 hours since I ate my cucumber sandwich so there wasn’t anything to come up. That was a weird feeling.

If you are ashamed to admit you do something, maybe you should change what you are doing. I’m not ashamed to talk about what I do or with whom.

I’m… going back to bed.

It sure would be nice to get this sleep business under control. Pregnancy is kind of a nightmare. Pregnancy is such a nightmare that Noah keeps telling me that even if I happen to be pregnant with twins he is strongly of the opinion that I will want another pregnancy when this one is over. Because I’m that kind of masochist.

Oh sweet cheese.

What information do you need to have before you respond to people?

What information ought to be offered or it is a betrayal? What can you forgive not being told?

I think it is easier for me to deal with someone telling me something I don’t love hearing than to not be told something I really need to know. Really really really need to know.

On what do we base our trust?

I miss Puff. I keep wanting to wander around the house looking for her. I miss her every single one of the 9,321 times I go to the bathroom in a day. She has been sitting on my feet while I use the toilet for a long time. And now she is gone.

I’m really happy she is no longer crying from pain. That was unfair. But I miss her so much.

I’ve never had a cat who lived longer than three years before her. This feels like a huge chunk of my life is ending.

In 8 hours I have my first groino appointment of this pregnancy. I won’t be meeting the person who will deliver me. I will be meeting with someone who can help me figure out who I can stand to work with. I’m looking forward to it. I am absolutely terrified of disclosing my marijuana usage but the pain doctor said I have to. He’s afraid if I don’t and they randomly screen me I’ll get in trouble. The hospital I plan to deliver at only screens “If someone is a walk in or if they have a reason”. I called and asked.

But he wants me to talk to my groino person because in his medical opinion marijuana is the single best medication I can be on for my constellation of problems. This is the first doctor who has been really certain and I can’t express how that feels.

I’ve got a real fucking problem with needing validation from someone with a god damn set of letters after their name before I believe the experiences I’m having in my body. It doesn’t help that most people with letters after their name tell me I’m doing everything wrong.

Hey, there was a recent study overseas showing that CBD helps bones knit better after a break. Because marijuana is magic.

In five hours I have a phone call appointment with the charter school. Sounds like the kids did make it in. Phew.

I just… want… slightly less responsibility this year.

Today Beautiful is coming over for tea. I feel so lucky.

Tomorrow we are hosting a kid RPG event. I suspect it will go well because Noah has put rather a lot of planning into this and he plans well. The age range could be substantial. I think we go down to four and we might get a teenager. He’s been braced that he will be helping the youngest ones learn the mechanics of gaming. But he thinks it sounds like a fun way to spend a few hours. Before he decides he needs to see if he will sleep through the event–because, teenager.

I get it. Totally cool.

If I could sleep through a day I WOULD WITH NO GOD DAMN APOLOGIES. YOU ROCK RIGHT THE FUCK ON.

For years I’ve been saying that exhaustion is a lifestyle choice for me. Now that I’m essentially being told I have adrenal fatigue that’s… a bad fucking idea. I have to stop. How? This is going to be hard.

My calendar is filling up. With medical appointments. Therapy and other medical support. I have to go back to the pain doctor three times in the next four weeks because going through these test results takes so fucking long they won’t try to give you that much information in one go. Your brain will drop too many important details. So they break it up. Sigh.

I told my physical trainer about what is going on. “At this stage it looks like exercise recommendations are gentle walking and stretching. I don’t know where you fit in.” First: HE DOESN’T THINK STRETCHING IS A THING AND HE NEVER DOES IT. That blew my forking mind. Whu? You are a physical trainer who doesn’t believe in stretching? How does that work. He thinks rolling out with a foam roller is totes enough. Second: with a combination of pregnancy and the need to stop raising my heart rate… where does strength training come in? That’s complicated as shit.

So we paused until I talk to the pain doctor more. We’ll do the last two sessions after we figure out what I should be doing. He’s going to talk to folks he knows in the physical training world because surely they know how to handle this problem. I worry.

Based on the research I’m doing… there’s a big difference between someone who has had these issues for a few months or under five years and… my whole damn life. The pain doctor strongly hinted that he doesn’t know if it is even possible to rewire my system after 30 years of this shit.

If only I had sought medical care sooner.

That sound is my heart breaking.

I’m FINALLY getting a sleep study. I’ve been asking for years.

In my head I keep coming back to “He doesn’t think a better medication exists for me.” On repeat. That has been the conclusion I have operated under for a long time based on my experience of living in my body. I don’t think a better medication exists. Finally I’m not being told that I just haven’t tortured my body enough–surely there is a more “approved” medication I can tolerate without wanting to die. Because it is not ok that I feel good so a medication that makes it feel good to live in my body must be bad.

It is hard living in a body that hates you as much as mine does. And then I keep getting pregnant because I’m fucking serious about my masochism.

I got 2 hours and 40 minutes of sleep.

fuck my life

I need to schedule an appointment to renew my medical card. Bah. One more appointment. Well, at least I’m already driving to forking San Jose a bunch. Sigh.

I got to have breakfast and dinner with friends yesterday. It was a lot of driving. I’m so happy I don’t leave my town today.

We have scheduled Sunday as a bed day. The kids say they would be happy to trade food delivery services for free screen time for a day.

I’m super thinking about it.

Noah and I haven’t had a bed day in…. years.

Rest. Oh glorious rest. And the Sunday afterward… the only thing scheduled is the kids coming back from Aunt Sarah’s. I don’t plan to do much of anything. See, I am resting more than usual for me.

I think I’m going to need to have a rule that I am back in my house by 6pm every day. I can’t go out to dinner with folks any more. By 7pm I need to be brushing my teeth and climbing into pajamas. I just have to. I can read… not on the screen… after that until 8 or 9. I’m not going to enjoy this. But I have to do it if I want to stop being in horrible pain All The Time.

So if you want me to come to your sex party, it needs to end by 5pm, mkay?

I can’t make exceptions any more. I can’t burn the candle at both ends. That candle is out of wax.

I keep seeing references to the idea that recovery from this is awful because when people feel the slightest surge of returning energy they want to “go back to normal” then they fuck themselves up extra. Yeah, that sounds like me. Ahem. Which is to say… even after I start feeling way better I have to keep acting like I still feel like shit.

Next week I only have one medical appointment. It feels like a miracle. There are five the week after. Four the week after that. I’m tired. This week had six. Not all of these are for me (thank goodness) but still.

Being disabled is a fucking job. And I’m barely disabled in the scheme of things.

I told the new shrink I’m working with to be careful reading my book. Do it in chunks and make sure you have emotional support when you finish a section. They said, “Wow. You are worried about me and you are checking my boundaries.” I said, “I don’t really want to be responsible for traumatizing you. It’s a hard book.” They thanked me and said they will read with caution, but they want to read so they can help me more. Sounds like a good approach.

I’ve tried to go back and reread No Shame, No Secrets, No Silence and I can’t because it feels so fucking upsetting. And it’s my life. Yeah, read it with caution and support.

It’s worth knowing that such things happen to human beings. But it hurts.

Privilege is such a funny thing. If you read that terrible, sad, horrifying book it’s kind of hard to say that I’m a person with a lot of privilege. Only I completely am. Even when I was a kid I had a lot of privilege. But bad things happen to people regardless of privilege. It’s orthogonal.

I deleted the birth board forum app from my phone. My hands hurt and I need to stop. I will just have to cope with not getting that kind of interaction. It’s a drama fest.

It’s not like I have a shortage of real life interactions with humans. And if you include Skype I’m deepening relationships with fantastic people who know me who live far away. So I’m not really in a position to truly need the online forum stuff. I feel like I was way more isolated during Eldest Child’s pregnancy. At this point I have so many friends that scheduling with everyone is practically impossible. I’m… in a good place. Now if only I could convince my brain of that.

Shit. This week I’ve had six friend dates and we are having a gathering at our house. I’m not fucking isolated.

I have five social engagements next week too. I’m not hurting for seeing friends. (Have I told y’all enough lately how much I appreciate that you show up when you say you will and you are honest about what you have to offer? I’m so fucking lucky.)

None of this happened by accident. I built and culled a network until I have a rock steady group of people who carry me when I can’t carry myself. I don’t have the biggest network of people inviting me to raucous parties… but I can’t be that person ever again any way. I’m in a solid place.

I’m going to stop for just a minute and think about the fact that *I* built this. It didn’t happen by accident. I was not born into a place and position. I don’t know these people because it was inevitable and mandatory. I know these people because I picked them and pursued them and they reciprocated.

Sobonfu told me I would have to build my own community because I would never fit into anyone else’s. She was right.

My friends are older than me and younger than me. They are a wide range of nationalities and ethnicities. They span the socioeconomic spectrum from filthy rich to barely surviving. My friends are incredibly diverse. My friends inspire me to think that I could be different, because look at the fantastic variety of life they represent. I have so many beautiful models of how to be happy or healthy in my life. They all do it differently.

I never imagined that I would get to this place. I don’t feel this was a slam dunk. This was not inevitable. It’s a fucking miracle.

And now I need to figure out how to internalize that this network really exists. I need to figure out how to calm my body down so I can just enjoy the hard work I’ve done.

I am so very lucky. And in 32ish more weeks, I get to meet Lightning. What do I have to complain about?