This is why my kids see therapists. Because having a parent with mental illness sucks. Having a pregnant mentally ill parent sucks so much more.

I really kind of lost it on Friday. I was not ok. I was cycling through crying and raging and the kids were… really freaked out. Which is appropriate and fair and reasonable and completely understandable. I did my best to clarify over and over that I was losing control of my brain and my body and it wasn’t because of them and it wasn’t their fault and I’m so sorry I sound like such a nasty bitch. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.

But sorry bakes no bread.

Yesterday (since it is past midnight) the kids kept coming into the room where I was and asking…. “So… how are you feeling?” They did it so many times I did get kind of irritated. I told them that if what they want to know is if I’m about to go off and start screaming at them again they might get a more productive answer if they just ask that question. Because “So, how are you feeling” 95 times in a day is not going to get you the answer you are looking for. You don’t actually want a minute by minute run down on every thing I feel. You want to know if my feelings are big enough they are going to cause consequences for you.

Which is a completely reasonable question.

But let’s phrase the question in a way that will give you the answers you want instead of soft shoeing around the topic. It’s more useful all around.

I told them I’d much rather them ask me if I’m on the verge of screaming. That is what they want to know. They nodded and said they will try to ask it that way since yeah… that is the data they are looking for.

I didn’t scream yesterday. It was just Friday.

I feel like my brain is exploding and melting at the same time. I’m really overwhelmed. I told both kids that even though folks keep asking me if I’m going to have a fourth child… I can’t do this to my children a fourth time. Pregnancy is so hard. I’m so psycho. It is so hard to stay in control. It takes…. something I don’t have to feel ok during pregnancy and a fourth pregnancy wouldn’t be easier.

EC agreed that this would be a really hard process if we had a baby around who needed care and attention while I was freaking out. She says thank you that I don’t want to do this again. Yeah… I have limits.

I’m a selfish terrible person and I am having the third child I desperately wanted. But that’s it. I’m done.

I’m out of creative “give” in this life. I have nothing more to give to create a person. I’m empty.

Which is rough at not-quite 29 weeks.

I am amused that I still have an apron. The apron is the flap of floppy skin on your belly you get after pregnancy. I know that some people get this from weight gain/loss without pregnancy but mine decidedly came from pregnancy. And I still have it at 29 weeks because I haven’t gained much weight (still hovering just below 9 lbs judging by the only consistent scale in my life). Heck, in most sitting positions I still have a chub line at my belly button. For someone who looks so pregnant I look rather fat and not pregnant. Which I’m not minding. It’s just funny to me.

I had a very hard time on Thanksgiving with the fact that a friend invited us to have dinner with her family and then… she left to go to another party with her partner and left us there with her extended relatives including her crazy ex-wife. It wasn’t a bad day but I’m having big feelings about it. I have already told the friend that I’m upset. She said she wants to make it up to me. I will hold my breath for that approximately never.

I feel like part of the feeling of emotional/spiritual collapse I’m feeling is how much it sucks to live in the bay area. The bay area is so big and so intense that no one has a lot to give. I do a lot of things for a lot of people. I have zero expectation of reciprocal relationships. I don’t give to Person A because I expect Person A to be able to turn around and do something for me. That’s not how life has worked for me. Instead I help people and I hope that someone will show up to help me. In many cases, this works out super well for me. It’s not going so well right now.

My friends are busy people and I have no right to expect anything from anyone. If I were to ask and be real specific and beg a sufficient quantity of people I could probably get support. But it’s draining and exhausting and I don’t have that to give right now.

Like my buddy telling me that I need to hurry up and find a babysitter replacement so I can get more support. “Get on care.com!” People say. To you people I say: I fucking hate you for saying that. My experience of searching for babysitters online is that I can spend $40 a month to send messages to people who will either never respond or will schedule an appointment and then flake or people will call me up and offer me services I specifically don’t want. Like for this old lady to babysit my infant while I drive my older kids all over the bay area because surely when I put up an ad for driving assistance what I want is to lose time bonding with my baby instead.

Stop telling me to just get on care.com as if that solves my problems. It creates a whole new job and set of expenses and I’ve tried it multiple times over multiple years and the closest I came to a successful hit was when I ran into a former student and got to find out that she was in grad school. She wasn’t available to babysit…. but I’m thrilled to hear about her college experience.

It’s not easy to get help or support. It’s a whole extra job to find someone who gives a shit and who will show up.

I miss my babysitters family so much. The babysitters mom is the main person who calls and checks on me and who wants to hear every detail about how my pregnancy is going. I am so sad that their family moved to Hawaii. I am grieving them so hard it feels pathetic. Her mama was the only mama who had time to just…. show up for me. She has an uncanny knack for poking me when I feel at my lowest.

I am so grateful she reaches out to me at all.

But I have this life where I spend a lot of time feeling physically isolated in a crowd and it makes me crazy. I live in this densely populated place and I feel like I don’t get to see people in person for support almost at all. Having all my friends be online is… not perfect.

It doesn’t help that most of my closer friends are currently going through their own crises issues. Chronic illness/cancer/job stress/there is no end to the difficulties hitting my friends. So I feel like a selfish asshole asking for anything from anyone. I don’t deserve it.

My fucking money can keep me warm.

But I can’t pay for feeling like people care about me. I feel incredibly expendable. If I am not available as a worker to provide something that other people want there isn’t a lot of point in dealing with me.

I’m still driving far to provide other people with emotional and physical and logistical support. Because they need it.

And I cry the whole way there and back because I don’t deserve the same thing.

It isn’t that I expect my friends who are suffering to suck it up and provide support for me. It’s that I am sad that with all the people I know there is no balance to it. Yes yes it is my fault that I don’t ask for more help so people don’t knnnoooooooow how to help me. Yes. I know. It’s my fault.

It is my fault I was stupid enough to get myself into a situation where I needed support when it doesn’t god damn exist for me.

stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid woman.

That’s not fair. Noah is amazing. But Noah is so tapped out it isn’t funny. He’s trying. He’s really excited that this pregnancy has involved more “Run out and buy me x food” than all the others put together. He feels like he has arrived at his favorite kind of usefulness in this lifetime.

But I feel like I’m drowning in feelings most of the time and I’m not supposed to talk about them because my children are always around and it’s not appropriate in any way shape or form for me to talk about the intensity of my mood swings around them. So just shut up you stupid bitch.

And that makes it much harder to keep a solid rein on my feelings. Which makes it harder to not scream. Screaming is the result of all the things I’m not allowed to say giving extra intensity and power to the few things I am allowed to say.

I’m really struggling with the fact that it is my job to emotionally regulate everyone around me. I’m supposed to help everyone give names to their feelings and figure out how to handle them appropriately. WHEN IS IT MY GOD DAMN TURN TO HAVE SOMEONE JUST SIT THERE AND WATCH ME AND HELP ME MANAGE MY OVERWHELMING FEELINGS?!?!?!?!?!?!?! I’m bitter and I’m angry about how much I am expected to be able to give/teach without having been given/taught it myself.

I was reading something yesterday where a woman who is an autistic engineer talks about how frustrating it is that she is constantly told that she should teach men how to deal with feeeeeelings because the dude “might have Aspergers” and he needs help. She’s frustrated as shit and I wanted to jump up and down and scream THAT IS LITERALLY MY WHOLE LIFE. I have been in therapy for decades, yes, but I’ve never had someone be willing to hang out with me during real life and do the management of feelings thing. But an awful lot of fucking people just expect me to do that for them.

Fuck everyone.

I haven’t looked at Mint in over a month. It is going to be really painful when I do. I need to get up to date on tracking transactions and I’d much rather climb into a full bathtub with a razor blade.

I feel like I don’t like anything about me.

I am feeling really tired and frustrated with people expressing frustration with my crying. I got to the point of crying this much because it was the result of no longer doing so much self-harming. It became the coping method that replaced all the things I’d much rather be doing.

But crying is manipulative. You only cry because you want to control people.

So basically what you are saying is I can not have feelings in my body that are not about you. Who is manipulative and controlling here?

People want to have the public cover of telling me not to self harm because that is the correct party line to make them feel good about themselves. But they would much rather have me self harm if it means I shut the fuck up and don’t tell them about what I’m feeling and don’t impact them with my emotional reaction in any way.

A quiet bitch is a better bitch.

We went to Dickens Fair on Saturday. I saw a bunch of people I knew. I didn’t speak to anyone. I carefully avoided eye contact. I have nothing to give and I’m well aware that they don’t give a shit about me. “Once a Fezziwigger always a Fezziwigger” is a fucking lie. I didn’t even set foot in the dance area. I avoided Mad Sal’s because I didn’t want to see my rapist. My charming, funny rapist who is still so popular.

I know who has importance in the scheme of things. It isn’t me.

I want to leave the bay area.

I would like to move somewhere that I haven’t been helping people for 20 years so I don’t feel so bad about the fact that no one gives a shit about me.

It’s not that “no one gives a shit.” Blah blah blah. Busy/tired/have nothing going spare to give/etc. I know. I’m not angry or bitter about any one person. I believe and accept all the reasons *you* are not available.

But there are so many of you and no one is available. That collective failure hurts. It’s not that I’m upset with anyone individually. I get that *you* have nothing to give. I really do understand that.

If only I had fewer needs. Then I wouldn’t be such a problem.

I really shouldn’t be typing. But I can sit here and break my teeth or I can type. Fixing the teeth is even more expensive than fixing my arms.