I feel like I am always surprised when an intense suicidal jag comes up. Why so intense? Why now? It’s not like things have actually hit a fever pitch of bad in my life… why now? I don’t know. Because these are the cycles I live with.

Lightning spends all day and most of the night whacking me telling me that more life is coming and death is…

I don’t even know. But good grief this kid is lively. It’s hard to sit around and think about offing yourself when you have something this alive inside of you. I’m capable of doing it because I can multi-task like a boss… but it’s kind of weird.

I don’t really want to kill Lightning. They clearly are ready to be born and to make an impact. Probably with their fist or foot. Ow. Some of these feel like out and out head butts.

In that way I have of not really acknowledging “now” and instead focusing on future tripping so that I’m constantly preparing for a future I may not have… Noah is really encouraging me to do baby prep. There’s a big piece of me that feels like I’m being ridiculous for buying anything for this baby. In this minute I still feel like I shouldn’t be here in four months.

But I made a list of all the shit I probably ought to get at the consignment sale anyway. Because if I don’t off myself… I’ll need this shit. And if I do off myself getting rid of that crap will be the least of Noah’s problems.

Oh, hey K… did you hear that there is a new fire in the Santa Cruz Mountains near Boulder Creek? There is an evacuation center at Lakeside and somehow that feels so close and scary and like it is part of my story even though I don’t live there now. Bear Creek Road is shut down and that’s… that’s so close to where we grew up. My family is still there in the mountains. My family’s home is risking being burned down. My bio-family should probably be looking into evacuation. My extended, very disabled, very poor family should be looking into evacuation. I feel like a monster because I’m not calling Auntie.

But I’m not calling.

Auntie and all three of her kids and one of their partners and probably my mom are living less than 10 miles from this fire.

And I’m not calling to offer help. Even though they kept me alive as a kid.

I’m sorry, mama.

Yesterday my kids asked me if my mama was pretty. It was kind of funny because I wanted to say no, but I say yes too. I think she started out a pretty woman and then life was really unfair and the tracks of her life walk right across her face.

You can’t fake or hide grief lines very well. There are these deep gauges that folks get in their face, lines that go from the corners of the mouth up to the nose. The deeper those marks go the more grief you have carried. The more time you’ve spent crying or trying not to. It’s not really mistakable. When I notice that someone has them I feel this wave of compassion and comradeship–I understand.

I wear my life on my face too. No amount of moisturizer will cover these lines and tracks.

We had a family therapy session yesterday. We walked out with some ideas of how to handle some issues we’ve been having. I feel it was a fairly productive situation. I have endless appreciation for the fact that my kids are willing to be honest and frank about what they are doing and why. “Sure I smacked so and so. I was feeling X and it seemed like the right thing to do.”

*blink* Well… at least we can talk about it…

I grew up with so much denial. Why do I write down all of this awful roller coaster of emotion? So that later I can never ever deny that it happened. Yup, I was genuinely that difficult.

Things are hard but feel like there are whiffs of more positive with Noah. We’ve tried some different ways of having sexual contact and it went better than normal. But we are both so raw and untrusting that every step and every attempt at anything is complicated. We are clinging to each other in that lost child way we have. But it feels like the wounds are still actively aching.

How in the fuck do we make this work? I need for my cunt to not be hurt anymore. Even if the cost is that I am the shittiest wife on the planet who will not meet her husband’s needs. I’m feeling better every day about my desire to fire the therapist who spent 5 years telling me I needed to compromise and put out because Noah does so much for me I owe him.

I don’t need more of that god damn voice in my ear telling me that I owe anyone my cunt.

I’m not opposed to touching Noah’s body. I’m not opposed to being part of his sexual life. But I need that to not mean that I am required to submit to burning pain as part of the deal. This has to change because I am not physically nor emotionally capable of continuing to do that and be ok in other areas of my life. I will have to blow things up in very bad ways in order to cope with that and that’s going to create other problems. If I have that much pain brought into my life all the time… I have to cope however I have to fucking cope and I don’t give a flying fuck if you like it.

And Noah’s really opposed to some of my coping methods because they hurt him a lot. Fair. So let’s stop damaging me, m’kay?

I can’t pull off the amount of boring and staid I pull off and be constantly pushed into dysregulation by pain like that. The amount of pain I deal with from my body in general is bad enough. I can cope with back and hip and neck and arm and shoulder and head pain with just being surly. It’s a deeper ache that I process differently. The burning active injury feel inside my cunt is different and activating in a very different way. I have to either face it head on and do as much sexual activity as I can to cause the area to go mostly numb so I can step into a dissociative state to deal with it or I need the god damn pain to stop.

Because this pain is something I can’t cope with and pull off this mommy-act I play all day.

This pain means I’m just a worthless whore and if that is all I am then I need to be that with a vengeance.

It’s complicated.

I like the role I’ve been playing for years now. I like the way my kids look at me. I like that when they are having big feelings a lot of how that manifests is for both of them to literally fall out of their beds because they are reaching for me because they need the physical contact to reestablish connection.

We fall asleep differently when Noah is around. Noah requires silence and stillness in the pre-bed ritual. When he’s gone the rest of us wiggle and flop back and forth like a fish dumped into a boat. We talk for 20-40 minutes about the stuff that’s bothering us and we talk about how to cope with our big feelings. Noah doesn’t love this period. It’s distracting and bothersome for him. I call it getting out the wiggles and it helps me and the kids. Last night I told Noah to chill and let us do it when he asked us to shush.

The kids needed the extra snuggling and talking really a lot. They are struggling to make their own sense of living with a depressed mother and their parents are fighting about something and they are transitioning away from their beloved babysitter still and they are adjusting to this school having OUTRAGEOUS REQUIREMENTS LIKE TURNING IN TWO ASSIGNMENTS PER MONTH PER SUBJECT, OH THE INDIGNITY and a variety of other such factors. They are taking a lot in and trying to figure out what it means to them. A lot of how they do that is to lay on top of me and talk about how they are trying to put the pieces together.

I feel so honored to be part of this process. I love you.

I don’t want to hurt them. And leaving would hurt them so much. Noah would try to be as emotionally supportive as I am…. but I think he’s not even aware of just how much emotional support and scaffolding I provide.

My kids have never really had to struggle with hard feelings on their own. They have had me around their entire lives to go to, “This one is super hard huh? Yeah. Getting through the big hard feelings hurts and it’s a struggle and you don’t have to be alone for it.”

It was funny having the family therapist kind of nod in agreement/appreciation of how I take myself away from the children to go cry. Adults have to manage their own shit; it’s not ok to ask a child for support. I mean… that’s such a funny weird line to walk. I actually did allow the children to comfort me/grieve with me over my cat dying. That was a very appropriate kind of grief to share.

My horrible crying that goes on and on and on year after year… it would be wrong to share.

Sometimes my kids look at me with these shining eyes and they tell me that they really appreciate that they have never had to be alone.

One of my children talked yesterday about how they are struggling to deal with half an hour separations from the family because it feels like it will stretch into YEARS OF BEING ALONE. I understand that feeling so well, but it’s really kind of hilarious in the context of our little family. I gently teased about the YEARS part and they stepped it down to MONTHS and then got to WEEKS… and I said, “It really does feel like that, doesn’t it? And that feeling is so hard to live with because even five minutes starts to feel like a whole lifetime.” They nodded in this sad and heart broken way.

They are so real and so honest and so present with everything they feel. I love being near them.

EC is ready to start doing the pre-teen pull away thing and FMC is flipping the fuck out. FMC is feeling abandoned by their sister and by me because a baby is coming. EC wants more time on her own to be quiet and contemplative and to be thinking about what being a teenager means. FMC is all “What do you mean you don’t want to play dolls with me forever?!”

This is such a normal milestone to have to work through. It’s hilariously ordinary and that is just… whoa. This isn’t trauma, this is life.

But life hurts too.

Both kids are finally talking about their anxiety about how things are going to change when the baby comes. It is sinking in that they will get less direct attention from me and they are both clinging to me like a life raft. FMC is saying that they need LOTS of dates in the last few months here because they need to fill their bucket up until it is overflowing to help them get through the drought.

EC is in this point where she feels she should be trying to be an adult and I’m ragging on her to stay a kid for a few more years. “This time passes so quickly and you never get it back! Be a little kid for EVERY MOMENT YOU CAN.” She wants to be responsible and a good example. I told her she can do that by being the best little kid she can be and not striving for being an adult before it is time. She gave me that funny “I see what you are doing there, mom” look. I love that look. It’s like I’m gazing into my future at all the times when she is going to get sick of my bossing. I can’t wait. “I can handle it, mom”. Yes ma’am. I know you can. I was just… helping.

I want to die because carrying the burden of being the source of pain for so many hurts. And I’m a coward. I don’t want to hurt like this anymore.

I want to live because people look at me in the most beautiful ways I can imagine and I’m really not done being looked at like that.

Life hurts.