I was responding to a comment the Quiet One left and it occurred to me that this is something I should put here to remind myself later. And then I expanded it like whoa.

I still know a lovely gal I met in kindergarten. I know most of the folks I was tight with in junior high and I’ve spoken to most of them within the last month. I rarely see pieces of my high school crowd but we stay in touch. I know a bunch of folks from junior college. I didn’t make friends during my bachelor’s degree outside of the bdsm scene but I still know many of those folks. I still know folks I met in graduate school. I have friends from the home schooling group we left. I even still know people irl that I met on forums years ago.

I keep people.

In communities spread far and wide. With personalities so diverse I’m sometimes shocked these folks have a crossover person at all.

I don’t have to think I am worthy. They do. I am not the one who has to decide if I am good enough for them. That’s not my choice.

I keep the people who treat me the way I want to be treated.

The gal I met in kindergarten? She was the only school friend in elementary school who ever sent me a letter after I moved away. I carefully hoarded that letter for years. It was a talisman. Which was a little weird when we had some less friendly interactions in sixth grade and I barely masked my desire to weep and rend my clothing and cover myself in ashes.

I’ve always been kind of melodramatic.

Later in high school there were two girls in Bakersfield who wrote to me when I left. They were harder to keep in touch with. Went off to missionary work.

People who write me or call me or reach out to me or ask for a date…

It feels like it pulls to a magnet buried deep in my belly. “Yes? You wanted me?”

I’m kind of over feeling numb to the Bonus Mama divorcing me. It hurts so much. I get why she did it. I don’t even think she was wrong to have the feelings she had. I had to speak up and advocate for the kids. I just had to. Yes it was over stepping. Yes I’m a pushy bitch.

But I had very serious clinical reasons for my recommendations.

It doesn’t matter. I wrecked the friendship pushing an issue I didn’t have the right to get in the middle of.

Do you want to be happy or do you want to be right?

I need to know I advocated properly for the kids. On my dying day that is the part I will be held responsible for.

It doesn’t matter if I made someone angry. I had to speak for the children in front of me who couldn’t speak for themselves.

They were signaling distress. You just had to read the cues.

And that means I’m an asshole.

Parents don’t want to hear, “I love you and I know you have tried your best. Your child’s needs aren’t being met. They need the opposite of what you are doing.”

No one wants to be told that. Well, except for me I guess? I go pay money looking to be told that.

I need help seeing where I’m fucking up. I can’t help my kids if I don’t deal with the ways I’m fucking up. Everybody fucks up. Where you draw your boundaries around that varies based on your needs and tolerances.

I am not you and you are not me. We fuck up differently. Or maybe we fuck up the same and it lands differently because our kids aren’t the same. I don’t know.

I didn’t understand, when I was 17 and I decided I wanted to home school, that I was trying to commit myself to a rigorous system that was closer to individualized therapy than what most people consider “raising children”. At least… that is what the people who spend time around me and my kids tell me. “Your explanations sound exactly like the therapist who comes to our house.”

I provide a variety of different kinds of therapies. I do it seamlessly and in the flow of just living.

Because Stanford was pretty sure and I’m pretty sure that EC is dyslexic this year will involve a very different type of spelling practice. Pre-tests will use a pencil and paper then we won’t write again. We’ll use physical materials so EC gets the kinesthetic experience of building the sounds of language with something less symbolic than a line on a paper. I’m going to look for as many weird ways to practice as I can. Sticks on a walk through the park. Clay. Sticking together those weird puff beads. Making words on the perl bead boards. It’s going to be different from time to time to keep her interested. It is hard for her to visualize how letters work. That makes a lot of sense to me. I learned how to see words like constant text on a computer screen but EC isn’t there. That’s ok.

She needs something different.

I’m trying to believe that I’m not as bad as I feel I am. I really want to believe that there is some hope that I can be a good enough mother. I really want to believe that I will be able to raise people who will grow up to like themselves and have lives they enjoy.

I don’t need them to be so rich. I don’t need them to be so educated. I don’t need them to be high status.

I don’t care if my kids pick up garbage for a living. My cousin did that for years. His girlfriend worked at the waste disposal company until ill health forced retirement.

I would take pride in my child having a work ethic.

And yet I know I’m “supposed” to be priming my kids to believe they Are Not Successful unless they Go To College and Get A Good Job and Get Married and Have Children.

I tell my kids that I don’t care if they go to college. There is money sitting there waiting to help them if they want to go… but they don’t have to go to college. It’s not required. I tell them that if they want to have any kind of work life or home life that’s not my business. I want them to be happy with their life and I don’t care if it involves a romantic partner or a legal ceremony or children.

You owe yourself a life you want to live. You don’t owe your parents shit.

And if your parents yell at you about your choices when you are an adult? They are abusive assholes.

Am I an abusive asshole to my friends? To be fair I haven’t yelled at someone about a choice that didn’t impact me that I didn’t agree with in ten years. In recent years when I’ve had a concern I’ve had a speaking voice conversation. I think.

Christ. I’m probably forgetting something.

I’ve yelled at Noah about completely stupid shit. I do think our relationship has abusive elements. I think it isn’t that I’m the “victim”. I think that given where we both came from… we have learned a lot about healthy boundaries but we still aren’t where we need to get.

I. am not where I need to get.

Ok, I am not diagnosing myself with this at all but this was interesting to read. That was the second link that came up when I googled “autistic difficulty controlling voice volume”. It’s really interesting how having a new shrink say they think I am autistic makes me think of weird little tics that go back to childhood. I have a lot of weird vocal variation. I work on it. I try to control it. I vary in ability.

I seem so normal.

Do you know how fucking hard it is? Over time I’m starting to understand why it has been so hard for me. I feel less bad about not being better at it earlier.

It’s hard that I won’t take more medication to try and help lift my mood because I’m pregnant but it’s not actually great for the pregnancy to be crying all the time.

Bodies are shitty.

I’m struggling with all the stuff around identity and self. I’m feeling really ashamed of myself for not having made more progress. I have not managed to turn every person I poured tons of energy into a lifelong friend. Some faded away and some told me to go fuck myself.

I’ve had a fair number of people break up with me after I give them an opinion they don’t want to hear. Whether I am objectively right or not is… meaningless. Sometimes I have been proven right in the long run. Sometimes I don’t find out.

Either way… I have lost my friend.

And it’s my fault. Because I can’t keep my fucking mouth shut.

Because I have to share my stupid piece of shit opinion.

Where the fuck do I get off? Why in the fuck do I try so god damn hard to control everyone?

Because I want people to look at me the way I look at other people and give their opinions. I don’t expect people to act on my opinion. But yeah… I do let people know when I have judgments. Because I’m an asshole.

My closest friends tell me I’m fucking up. They tell me when my actions are out of line. They do it privately and tactfully. I get called to the carpet. And I listen. I don’t always agree. Sometimes I respond with a long, spirited argument where I explain why their advice sucks because of these dozen factors they didn’t consider…

But I really like that dynamic. That dynamic can’t exist until I know someone well and they know me well.

And you know what? My experience of life is that most people get horribly upset if you tell them they are fucking up. People want to be told “You Are Awesome” without earning it, without working for it, without deserving it.

I ain’t got time for that game.

So I’ve burned through some relationships. And I’m feeling incredibly, intensely shitty about it. Because clearly it is all my fault because I am such a shitty person. Who is the common denominator in all these failures: me.

And it becomes more clear with every passing month just how badly I damaged my marriage last year.

I’m feeling like a failure at pretty much everything.

Our ES (Education Specialist) with the charter school homeschools her kids independently because she doesn’t want to mess with the charter rules. She was kindly and gently curious why I’m using a charter this year as clearly I have more her personality type. I felt really ashamed of the fact that I want the oversight so I know I can’t fall into a rut and stop doing any schooling for months around the end of the pregnancy and after the birth. We will have to keep working. We have deadlines for turning in materials. We can’t fuck with that. I can get in actual legal trouble if I slack.

And I need that insistence this year and I feel really dirty and bad because I know I need that.

I’m feeling really weird and guilty and ashamed of falling really far behind on gardening. I haven’t touched my yards in 4-5 months. They look like it. I have a collapsing hazard right in my front yard and I just…haven’t dealt with it.

I’ve been sitting on my ass in between driving to fucking doctor visits. I walk some, yes, but Jenny can vouch for not much in the past couple weeks. Not before I went to Alaska and not since I got back. I just…

I’m so tired.

But the tired is partially that walking up a hill through a river of molasses in January feeling. I’m weary. I’m feeling the depletion. I’m feeling Lightning suck the life out of me. At 15 weeks pregnant I’m not back up to pre-pregnancy weight. Barely down, only 4 lbs to go till I’m back to where I started. And the doctor I met yesterday was lecturing me on how I need to make sure I’m only eating the extra 300 calories a day I’m supposed to eat. Oh fuck you motherfucker. I’m lucky if I can eat an adequate number of calories for a non-pregnant day. So shove your fucking condescension where the sun don’t shine.

And the midwife in the practice, who spent a lot of time looking at my records, had in my previous visit told me, “EAT. Eat. Eat as much as you want. Eat anything. Eat constantly.”

Everything is feeling like nails on a chalkboard.

Folks are clearly trying to be nice to me. I can see the gestures. I can see the thoughts. But like… I’m running from mentions of my birthday and I’m crying and wanting to freak out. I don’t really want a birthday this year. It’s not about turning 36, whatever.

I miss my mother. It has now been half my lifetime since I spent a birthday with her.

Maybe that’s part of why I’m tanking. This is a huge milestone and I haven’t been thinking about it as I’ve been rapidly multiplying my tasks.

I’ve almost been out for as long as I was in. Just a couple more weeks.

Do I feel proud of what I’ve done in those 18 years? Yes and no.

Do I feel proud of me? Yes and no.

I wonder if my mother would feel any pride if she knew what I’ve done.

Many of the people who have sworn up and down that they were my family… that bond turned out to be incredibly severable. 

I know Noah is proud of me.

I am a selfish piece of shit and I wish that my mama thought I was her most successful child. I am the only one of my siblings to graduate from high school or college. I’m the only one who hasn’t been divorced before 21. I am a fucking better parent than my siblings because I have neither raped my children nor used corporal punishment as my primary means of discipline.

But how fucking shallow.

Being the scapegoat means that no matter how far above expectations you come in… you’re still out.

But I divorced her. What the fuck.

Yeah… but I divorced her because folks were fairly actively covering up for ongoing child abuse. I had just cause. It went past our generation. That’s so heart breaking.

And the fact that no one in my family thinks they should “get involved in other peoples business” it just keeps happening. Generation after generation.

Thus I share my opinion whether you want to fucking hear it or not. Because I’m not going to act like your actions happen behind a fucking wall. I see what you’re doing.

Most of my opinions are positive. Folks get done with me when I get to the point of voicing a serious criticism. Given that I know how poorly most folks take such efforts I don’t really do this sort of thing until someone has been in my life a long time.

I wrote that B’s dad cheating had an impact on me. I told A that given that she just had back surgery she really ought to prioritize a real mattress over getting a new iPod given that she was sleeping on an RV mattress laid directly on cinder blocks. Among many other similarly none of my damn business opinions. Like what I thought of everyone in her family just glossing over the fact that her father had completely financially ruined his family by maintaining a series of pre-teen Peruvian sex worker companions. He would fly down several times a year. He bought a house and would let them live there.

People don’t want my opinion.

I get that.

Don’t worry, I know that my diarrhea of the mouth makes me a piece of shit. But not being this flavor of piece of shit would mean that I had to be a different flavored piece of shit and I’m just not up for the effort of that kind of change. I mean who has time for that.

That would be a lateral and perhaps a slightly downward move by my moral code.

So I’m a bitch.

Don’t worry. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know. I know.

I really should go to bed. I can hate myself tomorrow. Tomorrow is another day…

Future Middle Child turns seven on Monday. They asked for a party this weekend. They haven’t been able to have a party at home in years because we travel on their birthday so often. It seems more than fair to let the kid have a party sometimes.

But I’m seriously exhausted. So I told kiddo they could send out 10 invitations because that limits the crowd size we have to accommodate. We know waaaaay more people than that and I just can’t handle inviting “Everyone” to every thing. I have limits.

FMC split the invitations approximately half and half between non-breeder adult friends and kid friends. When kiddo made this decision it seemed a little interesting to me. Why not more kids?

Ah. Now I understand why. We’ve gotten a positive RSVP from one kid and all the adults. Kiddo understands the people in our lives. That’s why kiddo asked a bunch of adults… who are willing to show up.

I just wish that the parents of kids could say “no” instead of saying, “We were invited to a different birthday party on that day and we are WAY closer to that family so we are going to their party instead.”

And people like to harp on how I lack tact? Oh for fuck’s sake.

No is a complete sentence. You don’t need to tell me that other people are more important to you and that’s why you are saying no.

I’m actually getting to the point where sending shit out to our Google Group is similarly challenging for me. I feel like I should cull the list of people who are rude in how they decline invitations so I don’t feel so freaked out about sending out a big group invite.

Every time I extend an invitation you don’t have to use that as an opportunity to tell me I’m not important to you. It’s just not fucking necessary. You can say no. You can say you are busy. You don’t have to say, “We were invited to something else by folks we care more about.” That’s shitty.

But folks who don’t have mental health diagnosis are generally not open to feedback about their behavior being rude as fuck in my experience. I think I should just cull the list.

If I haven’t had a pleasant conversation with you in over a year or if you have never responded whatsoever to a single invitation… you are now off the list. Cull, done. If I’m using this group to manage my social anxiety and having some people in the group means I can’t use the group anymore because of increased social anxiety… I get to change the terms. I’m permitted. And I get to do it by fiat.