I think it is very likely that this is my last kid. So when the ultrasound technician asked if we wanted to know what genitals she was seeing… I said yes.
FMC says we are allowed to use the name we picked to assign to someone of a particular gender but we still need to refer to the kid as they/them until the kid declares a gender.
So this may be confusing for folks who are following purely online because I’m not going to announce the name here. Nyah.
It isn’t really about the assholes on the internet. I’ve been on the internet for more than 20 years. I know there are assholes on the internet.
It is that the assholes are echoing my fears. The assholes are echoing what it feels like my friends have come to my house to say to my face while I have been pregnant. Twice. Two pregnancies almost a decade apart. I’m a bad mother because I am mentally ill and I’m not a good person because I don’t care more about global population issues than I care about this horrifying need to have a family.
I think that one of the meanest lies grown ups say to children is “Sticks and stones may break my bones but words can never hurt me.” I’ve been hit with sticks and stones and whips and fists and… lots of other things. Those wounds heal. Do you know what doesn’t heal? The things people say that crawl into my brain.
Also: my keyboard is not working properly since I got it back from the apple store and this is pissing me off. My W key isn’t working right. I have to hit it many times before it registers and then it shoots out several W’s in a row and this shit is seriously irritating.
All the random people in my life who have told me I’m so “great” are fighting against the words of my parents and my siblings and my friends who tell me I’m not.
It was lovely seeing Pam’s baby sister yesterday. We had a great chat. I feel like I’m kind of a wind up toy. If someone comes over and wants to see me I can turn on the fake charm and I can act like a person who is alive and functional and everything. I can seem fine. Then they leave and I feel myself wind down again until I’m staring listlessly and all I want to do is cry.
I told her about something that is coming up that I’m feeling a lot of anxiety about. She told me I could spend the day texting her or calling her for support. Yeah. That won’t happen. Even though she’s very sweet to offer. I can’t do that. I’m in that place where any amount of rejection or appropriate boundary setting or “I can’t do that” feels absolutely catastrophic. I’m not asking people for support I’m holding them hostage in my mind if they can’t do what I need. And as long as any amount of “not now” is that big and that painful inside of me I can’t ask. It isn’t fair or appropriate. It’s only ok to ask if “no” is a perfectly acceptable answer.
I used up all the “asking” I get for a long time in arranging childcare for labor support.
I’m trying to read up on why antenatal depression is such a bad thing. Ok, the disturbed sleep and lack of eating is clearly a problem. Does it really matter if I cry for several months straight? I mean really?
In 4 hours I go in for an ultrasound. Probably my last pregnancy one. Maybe forever. I’m 26 weeks pregnant today. One more week till the third trimester. This incredibly active person residing inside of me could live with a lot of medical intervention already. That’s so amazing. That would suck and be expensive so I’d rather not…. 14 more weeks is a very tractable amount of time. The white board calendar system we use shows up to 36 weeks now. That’s kinda alarming.
Ok this W problem is seriously fucking pissing me off.
The kids have been pushier than usual about asking about the crying. I tell them that it is a hard question to answer for them because it isn’t ok for adults to ask kids for emotional support, that train goes one way. But I also really don’t want to lie or keep secrets so this is tricky. I told them that I’m crying about a bunch of things. I’m crying about old stuff I really won’t explain at this point. I’m crying because my body hurts. I’m crying because I’m really not as good of a mother as I want to be and I feel really bad about that. I’m crying because my bucket is empty and I don’t know how to fill it and that’s really hard.
It was kind of a funny exchange with EC.
“You know how we are talking constantly about impulse control with you kids? You know how I’ve been yelling a lot more than usual? I’m struggling with my own impulse control and I feel really ashamed that I am failing so much right now.”
“Mom you don’t yell that much. I mean, probably more than we deserve because we are perfect, but you don’t yell that much.”
The delivery of that snottiness was so smooth.
I tickled her a lot for that one.
Perfect. Snort.
I love you. I think you are wonderful and I’m glad every day that I get to know you.
There’s a bunch of stuff I’m angsting on really hard right now and none of them feel ok to write about. So I should stop for the day. Otherwise I’ll try to be all slick and talk around these problems and I just can’t do that right now.
I get to leave for BART in a few minutes. Pam’s baby sister is coming over to visit. Assholes on the internet think I suck but my friends love me. Sometimes even the siblings and parents and aunts of friends love me because they see that I have been a good friend.
Some people don’t think I am completely bad.
I feel ashamed of myself for everything lately. I feel guilty for needing so much conversation to feel connected. I feel like I am a terrible person for still having big feelings about how my last labor went so I’m being really fucking demanding this time and I feel like that makes me a bad person.
I was stupid and I talked about my paranoia and fear about labor on the birth board forums and I got told off up one side and down the other. Because I don’t have a mother or someone who just wants to help me I don’t deserve help. The fact that I asked around and found a friend who could agree to the intense demands I have for labor support mean I’m a complete asshole.
What I want: someone who can be available from a few days before my due date, someone who will not want to keep my kids for a few hours then give them back (I absolutely believe that the stress of no one wanting to keep my older kid for very long made my last labor so much worse–I could never relax; I spent the whole time worrying and fretting about the fact that neither I nor my child are important enough to just take care of us for the duration of a difficult and traumatic event), someone who will stay through multiple days if necessary and just make things happen so I don’t have to be scared all the time, and I want someone my kids have a pre-established relationship with because frankly all of us are scared.
I almost died last time. I think it will go better in a hospital, but we all have anxiety around the fact that this is a traumatic event that kills a lot of women and has for all of history. I don’t have the sturdiest body. In the opinion of Darwin, I should already be long dead. So this is scary.
The people on the birth forums told me that if I don’t have a mother who loves me then my husband should stay home with the kids and I should labor and deliver alone because that is what is “appropriate”.
So I’m a shitty person for asking around among my friends and getting firm commitments from two people (a primary person and a back up person) for multiple days of uninterrupted care and they can hand off between themselves if there is a problem.
I’m bad because I want both my husband present and my children to be taken care of by a friend instead of a stranger.
I was told that if I hire labor support that’s fine. But we don’t have a current person we pay who could be available for that. So I should find a stranger.
No.
Strangers are not dependable for sudden labor support. I’m sorry.
I’ve actually provided labor support for several families in the last seven years since I had my second child. Even for folks I’m not that close with but I know them through various communities. I tell the parents: call me when you think it is getting to be early labor and I’ll come get your big kid(s). I will keep them until you are ready to come and get them a day or two after the birth. Bond with your infant–that’s a big deal and we will be fine until you are ready. I can handle anything that comes up.
I’m good with kids. Especially kids who have BIG FEELINGS and are feeling scared about a family transition point. I can talk all day and all night about how having more people to love doesn’t mean your parents will love you less. It means more love in the house.
That’s what I wanted last time and I really didn’t get that. I got a few hours at a time and my kid came back each day. I can’t experience again what happened to me last time. I don’t have the resiliency.
I feel sad and like I’m not a good person because I need help and I’m demanding it from people. I’m being too specific about the form and shape of the help and that means I’m mean.
This is contributing to my overall feelings of shame that I’m having another child. I shouldn’t be doing so from a population point of view. As I’ve been crying this week I can’t get the words out of my head that it is completely unavoidable that I am a bad mother because I am mentally ill and I should have aborted my first pregnancy and never inflicted me on anyone.
I’m feeling so much like it would have been better if I had been aborted and then I never would have existed to be so bad and do so many things I’m not supposed to do.
Today at the end of my chat with Jenny she expressed very mild and loving exasperation that I haven’t approved her as a friend on Instagram. She strongly hinted/pushed that I should get on putting pictures up for her including pictures from the wedding renewal she missed last year due to Zika concerns.
You don’t know how you made my heart explode with joy. You love me so much that you are demanding (in a loving non-aggressive sort of way) that I share more of myself with you.
I spend so much time feeling like I am a bad person because I share as much as I do and no one wants/needs to see this shit. I think back to the therapists who have told me that I shouldn’t share the things inside me because I hurt people and that makes me bad.
But you love me so much that you ask for more.
I’m going to cry about that for a while. But it’s a good kind of crying.
I love you, Jenny. Getting to know you in this life has been so wonderful.
I need to distract myself and expressing my feeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewings isn’t helping very much. So here’s some stuff I need to start writing down. I’m going to write a series of posts over the next three months. I’m going to document as much as I can about how I say things and why I say them. A friend is going to stay with us for a bit around my due date (because even as I whiiiiiiiiiiiine about how I feel like I can’t ask for things… I did a better job of arranging labor support this time than last time. I was way more clear and demanding about what I asked for and I did find a person who could say yes. I feel like karmically I have used up my asking for a while.)
S&R stands for scripts and routines. You are going to see that attached to all of the posts.
I’ll start with mornings.
In the morning the kids wake up sometime between 5:30 and 7. Obviously it is better for me when they sleep later but… what am I going to do? Rarely if we have an outing that goes late they sleep till 8 but it is incredibly freakish. Don’t expect them to sleep past 7.
Most of the time the kids want to immediately move to the couch with me for a morning snuggle. Noah usually makes breakfast while the three of us sit on the couch and talk about randomness. I assume that your routine will more closely resemble that of the routine we maintain when Noah is not around. So we’ll skip over the ridiculously awesome part of every day that involves Noah cooking. You’ll get that part when we aren’t in the hospital.
I have no idea if the kids will want to sit on the couch and have a morning chat with you. My attitude towards this kind of stuff with the kids is that I rarely offer but I don’t refuse. You of course will have your own comfort level. You can decide if you are comfortable with two minutes or twenty. Or more. Chatting with them is fun.
When Noah isn’t here I wait until the kids complain that they want food and I get up. I tend to go back and forth between a couple kinds of breakfasts with the kids. I try to make sure there is a fruit and a protein. I go back and forth between a carbohydrate or a vegetable but I rarely do both at once.
Examples: fruit & granola & yogurt, eggs & potatoes & bell pepper in a stir fry, breakfast pastry & fruit & lunch meat, cereal & fruit & milk & cheese, nuts & fruit & cheese & bread.
I’m not saying you MUST FEED THEM WHAT I DO. I’m saying this is what I will have in the house. If you want to feed them whatever the heck combinations you want… rock on. I just find I do better knowing what a given child is accustomed to because then the little sucker argues with me less. Like, if you want to give vegetables and carbs and protein for breakfast it’s not a big deal. They eat a lot of fruit.
You’d better believe we will have a full larder of food when you are here. Going to the store won’t be an issue.
Like, when we run out of fresh fruit… we have lots of canned/preserved and the kids love it.
After breakfast I ask the kids to get dressed and brush their teeth and their hair (EC doesn’t really brush her hair and I don’t care).
I notice that I tend to divide the day into little checklists I rattle off on my fingers. I try to keep it to 2 or 3 things per list. After breakfast the three I say repeatedly: hair, teeth, clothes. They still need reminding. We are not a household that likes hygiene. We have a grudging relationship with society where we admit that other people require it of us.
After that I walk over to the chore chart list and I say, “Ok… what chores need to be done?” The kids usually need to be told to wash their hands with soap before unloading the dishwasher. Because of course they do. It’s not like we have had this conversation every day for years or anything.
Ahem.
Everyone is responsible for clearing their own dishes to the sink/counter area. Usually a grown up loads the dishwasher but the kids are completely capable of doing so and I will probably ask them to just do that. They get a butt-load of points for washing dishes so they are usually happy to chip in.
The chore list is important because they earn points for their chores. Washing dishes is 20 points and that’s really forking high in our scale. I think it’s twice what any other chore is worth (I’m too lazy to walk over and check) because it is so far an adult chore and them doing it is covering for something an adult should be doing and they get bonus points for that.
EC is supposed to sweep the floor as needed and check every day. In practice this means she does it when I tell her it’s gross and we are going to get bugs.
FMC is supposed to mop about once a week. Of course this means they do it approximately when I go, “Dude… this is nasty.”
A lot of their chore list are “suggestions” and not requirements. If they do those things they get points for it because we are trying to encourage habits but I don’t require them because I’m not that big of a hypocrite. I don’t do frequent sit ups even though they would be good for me either.
But they empty the dishwasher and set the table as a pretty major “every day” part of the habit of life.
We try to get chores done by 9. Then we transition into academics.
Right now we have to deal with the fact that we have to produce documentation for the charter school. That means work books. Boooooo workbooks. The kids have a huge stack in their play room. They prefer to do stuff on the computers. FMC has to do 15 minutes a day of this reading program. That’s on the computer and they know how to log in. Both of them would love to spend most of the rest of the time on Khan Academy doing math and JavaScript… but we can’t turn that in to the charter school.
I require them to do a solid hour of work on something that can be turned in. We have to produce for: language arts (spelling, writing, or grammar all count), science (we have a huge number of options here from reading a science oriented book to them and having them draw pictures to we have really awesome curriculum for biology, chemistry, and physics… there are so many cool experiments in the workbooks), math (Khan Academy doesn’t count! EC can do Life of Fred or one of the other workbooks; FMC has several workbook options), and history (read a book about a historical person and write a book report, work on the CA history comic book or time line, watch documentaries about history and do the workbook write up).
After they work for an hour on stuff for the school they get to play with something academic for another hour. I don’t really care what they do. Sometimes they do language stuff (we have Signing Time videos and FMC works on Duolingo). Sometimes they play on Khan Academy for a while (EC in particular is into their coding stuff). They like playing Human Resource Machine. Sometimes we research something kind of random like the history of fashion or something about travel or researching a person or watching videos in another language or something. We do a lot of stuff. The general motto for this is: Be Curious.
Ok. That’s all I have in me to write today.
I feel cranky and sad and anxious and like I want to get in a fight. If I sound bitchy… it’s probably true. I am bitchy.
My kids are in a needy state. Those come and go. They need a lot of hand holding and explaining and support and I’m supposed to be happy and loving and sweet the whole god damn time.
I’m trying really hard to meet Noah’s needs for sex while respecting my bodily limits but I feel like I’m walking this line. I still don’t feel like I’m trying to meet my needs for sex. I’m trying to not be a complete failure as a wife which… isn’t feeling very good.
Noah keeps telling me that he could make space in the calendar for me to go see someone or do something and my internal narrative is “Wheeee I could drive really far and hurt my body so someone can pay as much attention to their phone as me. How fulfilling.” (Which isn’t how it works 100% of the time… but is really fucking frequent with a lot of people.)
I’m in this shitty place where almost everything that anyone could do would be not enough so I can’t ask for anything at all because then I might act like someone trying hard isn’t good enough and then I’m a bad selfish person so I should just shut the fuck up and ask for nothing.
I feel empty and sad and useless and stupid.
It is really hard that the more I need the less I am capable of asking for or accepting.
And I’m so frustrated with the entire existence of my body. I feel like I can’t do anything right. I can’t even eat or sleep right because I am so stupid and pathetic. So fucking broken.
Geez, why don’t I just settle down and take these stupid anti-depressants and everything would be fine. Only I’ve tried that and it made living so much worse. But I’m a liar who is not to be believed when I talk about my body.
I am not a reliable narrator.
I know that there are times when it doesn’t make a lot of sense to talk to me because I just twist everything and make everything awful and that’s on my head.
I feel like I “should” go find fulfillment from doing more chores. I should just work more. My garden has been heavily neglected for a long time… I should get my lazy worthless ass in gear.
But the thing is…. I think that in my heart I was making the garden and I was making the bathroom because I hoped I would be capable of making a space where people would want to come over and hang out because it would be fun for them too. And I have pretty much failed at that. And so instead I sit here and berate myself for putting this much time and money and energy into something that no one cares about.
Because… everyone else is busy living their lives. As they should be.
And my life is supposed to be doing laundry and driving people to the things they want to do and smiling pleasantly and not saying anything that will make anyone feel uncomfortable.
So basically I should just shut up because I’m a horrible person who makes everyone uncomfortable.
It’s not a good day.
How my new OB might feel about me taking the placenta home. My whole medical team has been expressing concern about postpartum depression given how my pregnancy is going. I said, “If I eat the placenta I’ll do ok!” Now I need to talk this OB into that course of action. Oh boy.
Bodies are weird. We don’t understand them very well. We don’t know why they work the way they do. We know that humans are one of the only mammal species that doesn’t habitually consume the placenta. The placenta is full of good shit, yo. That’s nutrition. That’s vitality. That’s half the shit my kid stole from my body to deplete me during the pregnancy. I want it back, motherfucker. I need that shit.
But I’m going to have to walk the gauntlet of current mores and taboos. It’s TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine). Don’t act like this is some newfangled idea. I’m just saying. TCM has been doing good stuff for people since white people were too stupid to have doctors wash their hands between patients. Let’s not act like white medicine is superior or has more standing, m’kay?
There is apparently an Ayurvedic doctor near me who works with pregnant and post-partum women on emotional balance.
My city is so much cooler than I thought. I’m not sure these services were here 7 years ago.
Not that I have a lot of interest in seeing another medical practitioner. Good grief.
But the Ayurvedic doctor does placenta processing……
I fully believe that my postpartum period will go better if I consume my placenta. So I’m going to have to push for this issue even though it feels kind of weird. No I don’t want the medication you could give me for nausea… I just want your lack of interference when I want to consume an organ I expel through my cunt, ok?
If I’m really desperate I will eat more of the placentas I have left in the freezer. TCM says you consume placenta for a few months then you store the remainder till menopause because it helps with hot flashes. I’d much rather consume my decades old placentas to deal with hot flashes that take some other kind of pill. I’m a weirdo. So I’m stocking up. I will find it interesting in the future if I go back and forth between the varying placenta’s and have different levels of responses from different pregnancies. Like, FMC’s placenta was incredibly wet. The pills were hard to make because it just didn’t want to dry out. It’s been stored in the freezer for years. How is it going to work out years from now? (TCM doesn’t involve the freezer but modern touches abound through all customs.)
I sort of figure that with what I’ve eaten and where I’ve stuck my tongue… a placenta is genuinely not that gross.
It’s all about your perspective. *cough*
Ultrasound scheduled for Wednesday. Because we are so late on the anatomy scan I’m sort of hoping the kid will flash us and there will be very little doubt about the genital configuration and I can stop wondering about testosterone load… but I’m not going to ask and I’m going to request that the technician not find out on purpose. An accidental flashing would be fun though. Then I can pretend I’m not a nosy bastard who wanted to find out early. The suspense is killing me. It wasn’t as hard to wait with the first two kids.
I’m feeling a lot more like I may be done with this process. Pregnancy is so hard. I’m getting old. I know that many of my friends started having kids at the age I am right now. I don’t know how in the fuck they did that because my body feels like shit. Maybe it helped that they didn’t have older kids? I don’t know. This pregnancy is easier than my first two and I feel just god damn over this process. I’m not sure I can handle giving Lightning a buddy. And given how my oldest two get along like oil and water lately… maybe a buddy isn’t such a great thing. Ok, so they are mostly best friends and this is a phase… but it’s a phase that is going on too long and I really wish I were the sort of person who believed in boxing ears.
THEY FRUSTRATE ME SO MUCH. GENERATIONS OF PARENTS HAVE BEEN ALLOWED TO INFLICT PAIN ON CHILDREN WHO ARE FRUSTRATING. WHY CAN’T MY GENERATION?! THIS ISN’T FAIR.
Ahem. I will not be hurting my children. BUT SOMETIMES I’LL THINK ABOUT HOW SATISFYING THAT MIGHT BE IN SOME MOMENTS. I WILL THINK IT! I WILL!
I love the way my children smile at me smugly and say, “You won’t hurt us on purpose. You’d feel too bad.” So no… I won’t hurt them on purpose. I am a klutzy fucker and sometimes we run into each other and we both think it hurts and sucks. But that’s different.
Life hurts enough. You don’t need to have your parents hurt you on purpose.
Your parents are going to hurt you enough even if they do their best every day.
Every parent hurts every kid. No matter how well the dynamic goes. There is pain. I didn’t understand that when I was younger. I thought there were parents out there who were so good they inflicted no pain. Life has shown me otherwise. All parents hurt their kids. The question is about how much.
I tried to cut FMC’s toenails last night. No blood but I did cause some wincing and gasping. I said, “This is why I’ve been trying to teach you to do it to yourself. I can’t feel when I’m in the wrong place and you can feel when it is the wrong place on your own toe…” I know why my kids are afraid of nail cutting. I’m not great at it.
This is why my children chew their toenails because it is better than having me trim them with clippers.
Sometimes I fear it is weird in a way that is a problem… then I shrug and think if that is one of their bigger problems in this life they are doing so well I can just smile and go about my day.
I think it is funny that the kids have been complaining about wanting separate space from each other so I bent over backwards to find ways for separate space in the house…. and neither kid will take advantage. Instead they follow each other around like magnets complaining about how their sibling won’t obey commands. It’s hilariously irritating. Both of them want to be in charge of the other so damn bad. I was looking at something yesterday that talked about bullying and about how it is really all about dominance challenges. Holy shit yes. In this house we are living dominance challenge behavior non-stop. I need to find a new way of talking about this with the kids.
I keep asking my kids if they want more classes away from each other. Do you want us to create more structural space in your life where your sibling doesn’t live?
Nope. They don’t want space. They want me to force their sibling to obey them. In both directions. Well I won’t be doing that. So instead… we fuss.
I PICKED THE WORST TIME TO GIVE UP HEAD BANGING.
It’s fascinating to me the way they both want space and want their sibling tucked up right next to them no more than inches away because if you are further away you might miss something and you need to see everything I see from now until forever. They treat one another like the mandatory witnesses for each of their lives. It’s lovely and so frustrating.
Even as I grind my teeth I smile. Because it is hard and glorious. This feels like what family is supposed to mean.
Once in a while someone will want to kibbitz with me about how inconvenient having kids is. I always feel like an asshole when I say that I didn’t have children because I wanted convenience. But it’s very true. I didn’t do this gig because I wanted easy. I wanted hard but worth it.
I learned that one from Sarah.
I think I can go back to sleep now. I ate my cheese. I no longer feel like I’m flashing hot and cold on my way to puking.
String cheese is the best substance in the world this pregnancy. Bless you, mozzarella. You’re my only hope.
I keep feeling like I should put together a binder with all of my medical results and data. Then I am reminded that having such a binder means that many doctors will view me negatively as a drug seeker and they will refuse to give me treatment because I will be seen as a problem.
So I sit here and feel anxious and don’t follow through.
But I have spent literally years going around in circles trying to get a Lorazepam prescription. I don’t want heavy drugs. I’m not looking for opioids. I deal with my chronic pain through a combination of white knuckling and pot. I’m not asking for heavy mood altering medications. I’m not asking for anything intense at all. I don’t even want a god damn daily dose. I want a mild anti-anxiety drug.
That now I am being told is the correct first line of treatment for my problems. After years of begging and being told no. I am so frustrated.
Now I have the gene testing proving that most psych medications aren’t going to work for me. I have the failed CPAP study in my history showing that I do not have severe sleep apnea and I am not a good candidate for that sort of therapy. It doesn’t solve my problem. It took so much begging to get this damn sleep study in the first place. Despite people telling me left and right that I should have had a sleep study years ago and they are so easy to get.
I was told to go home and take a Zyrtec.
It’s kind of like how I had to throw a kicking screaming tantrum before my last psychiatrist was willing to test me for ADHD. She said that she didn’t think that was important until she had gotten me stabilized on medications I didn’t want to be on. Even though knowing that piece of information changes how my treatment model should look.
I’m so frustrated.
Even though she was the one who did the gene test and she HAD PHYSICAL EVIDENCE IN FRONT OF HER that these medications were unlikely to be terribly effective for me… I have to try everything or I’m not really trying and I don’t care about getting better.
If I don’t give up more years of my life to the misery of drug testing then obviously I don’t care about feeling better. Like, duh.
I have already been through years of drug testing. Literal actual years if you add up all the months put together because I did it in batches at different periods. And all the way I’ve been saying, “I don’t want drugs.”
If I put together a binder to document why I don’t want their drugs I will be labeled as a drug seeker and I will be denied the treatments that are appropriate to me. Until I get on the drugs they think I should be on. The drugs that will hurt me.
It’s kind of like how I get to 35 and talk about my sensory sensitivities and all the ways I struggle to conceptualize people and all the elaborate mechanisms and rituals I have created to pretend I’m normal and a well educated clinician says… “Yeah you are autistic.”
That would have been god damn useful to know more than 20 years ago.
But that requires looking at me and listening to me beyond “Wow you have big feelings let’s medicate the shit out of you until you are compliant and then I’ll talk to you about something else.”
No. That’s not acceptable. It’s not ok to say that I don’t deserve help until I am fully compliant with demands that hurt me. But that’s what doctors have effectively told me for many years. I find doctors so terrifying.
I’m really grateful the new OB asked a lot of questions and mentioned that there are mixed reviews of pot during pregnancy and when I could rattle off all the specifics of the studies she was off-handedly referencing she backed right off and said, “You probably know more than me then.” That’s what respect from a medical provider looks like. My current pain doctor isn’t willing to test me for EDS even though several people on my medical team want him to… but he is otherwise very responsive to my comments and requests and he is thrilled to support the medication plan I want. He says that I have a really good handle on medication stuff and he’s happy to hear that I am not looking for increased pain management through drugs. His entire job is helping people who are crumbling from pain cope. He thinks I’m doing great on that front.
The current OB office is poorer looking, the furniture and building look shabby. I feel like it has translated into the OB not having time to worry about stupid shit. She’s not stressed about my pot usage. When I can demonstrate that I have extensively researched the consequences she didn’t argue or push. That’s not something she has time to worry about. I didn’t feel pushed into deciding shit I don’t care about. I didn’t feel judged about my weight or relationship status. That was nice.
I think that medical providers are very important. I think that I have to deal with them. It is hard getting to the information in their brain that hides behind their innate prejudices.
Having a body sucks.
Today… I don’t have to drive. Not at all. I don’t have to get in the car. Tomorrow the kids have martial arts and we could walk over to prevent driving and then I’d get three whole days free of the car in a row. I think that sounds brilliant.
EC’s out of town writing class was cancelled because the instructor feels like she is failing to get the impact she wants to get so she’s just quitting. Well… that’s one way to run a school. Ok then. But on the upside that means I no longer have to drive to Santa Clara on Tuesdays. That’s a big forking relief. That means my mandatory out of town driving is more restricted now and I’m thrilled. That’s a good four or five days a month of freeeeeeeeeeeeeeedom.
I was reading an article yesterday about some rich famous person talking about parenting. They said that they don’t do gifts at Christmas at all because they don’t want their kids to be spoiled or entitled.
Dude, your kids globe trot with two nannies.
It is interesting to me where other people draw their lines. I think that everyone has their own strengths, resources, and deficits. Parents have different things to offer. Some of the best parents I’ve ever known were very poor and they struggled to meet material needs but they were absolute rock stars at providing for emotional needs. I know a lot of children of rich parents who have never managed to feel loved even though all of their material needs were handled with aplomb.
I think about sexual assault so much. Apparently so do my children. What is it? What does it mean? There are all these gradations and nuances. Sometimes it is hard for me when I talk about incest and someone says, “Oh me too!” and it turns out that one time their parent touched their genital area through a blanket and that made them uncomfortable.
I feel like an absolute piece of shit for playing the Oppression Olympics. I’m not really. I’m trying to understand why that event in an otherwise safe and well provided for childhood causes so much damage to some people when people like me are expected to shrug off much more invasive experiences while having no other needs met. It isn’t that I think that I have suffered more than everyone so only I get to be thought of as a victim… I haven’t suffered more than everyone and I’m far from the only person to have been victimized in this life… In many ways I had a sheltered existence and I know that.
I am capable of recognizing that my life involved a lot of privilege and advantages. I was blessed and lucky even as I was traumatized.
People can only know what they know. People can only know food insecurity or food security. Stable housing or unstable housing. You experience what you experience and you set your internal understanding of the world based on what you’ve seen. Part of what makes this so weird to me is that I’ve been inside so many different sets of expectations… I don’t know what I should get. I know that other people get different stuff than me for better and for worse.
I think of the little children who are raped to death. I didn’t have it so bad. I think of children who are pimped out to many many many adults. I sought out sex but it wasn’t forced on me like that. It’s different.
I can no more understand the physical and emotional impact of more severe abuse than my children can conceptualize my life. That’s weird.
But I feel like somehow there has to be a conversation. There need to be more words invented. Coercive rape. Date rape. Sexual assault. These words don’t begin to convey the full array of unwanted sexual activity that happens. And where is the room for jostling in a crowd or a wrestling accident?!
I’m not saying that sexual assault can’t happen in a crowd. I hear some scary things about trains in Japan.
But where is the line between a little kid who probably doesn’t have well developed impulse control thwapping another kid on the tush and someone harming another person for their sexual gratification?
I tell my children that if they are confused about this topic they are just like all the other grown ups in the world because all of us are flailing and struggling with this topic at this point. We have huge batches of folks coming forward to talk about sexual assault and what it means and there is a large scale societal effort to change the current level of tolerance for large scale sexual abuse.
But what does it mean? How do we talk about it? How do we teach kids where the lines are?
I’m seriously all about ask culture for this shit. Guess culture feels like poison to me.
When my kids were younger I remember them crying at the park because they believe you can’t play a hitting game without verbal negotiation and other kids would just start hitting. There is no group consensus on boundaries or consent.
I think we surprised the family therapist a little when my kids narrated through how they should escalate boundary violations up through responding with violence. You ask the person to stop touching you first. You ask an adult to help redirect another kid who is touching you in ways you are not ok with. If your words and the teachers words don’t help… go ahead and hurt the kid to make them think it is a bad idea to keep touching you. That’s fine. You have the right to defend your body.
And this is part of why they aren’t in school for a zero tolerance policy on self defense. I know how little the schools can do to dissuade bullies. I know that hitting often works. Ok.
Do you want to be nice or do you want to be effective? Be nice as often as you can… be effective when you have to be.
I tell my kids frequently that escalating to violence is a dangerous thing. You never know when the other person will take your escalation as full permission to beat you into a bloody pulp. (My cousin was hospitalized for several weeks after initiating a fight at 19… be careful who you fight.) You never know if that other person has an older sibling or parent who will think you deserve whatever they want to do to you. The minute you escalate… you are opening the door to more violence being enacted on your body. Be very careful how and when you do that.
And if you do escalate, don’t fucking fight fair. Get that motherfucker off of you.
I don’t know if this is good advice or bad but it is the best I have. Avoid fighting–it’s not a good idea. If someone won’t leave you alone… you need to convince them you are a bad target. I don’t know another way to stay safe.
Being a doormat and being afraid of violence results in a lot of extra abuse and I say fuck that shit. You don’t owe someone a kind rebuff. You don’t owe someone backbends and contortions to tell them no in a way they want to hear.
You owe yourself integrity and that’s it. You need to be able to look yourself in the mirror and think, “I did the best I could.” That’s it.
The farther I am from the experience of being raped the more interestingly ambiguous it is in my head. Why did it feel so very traumatic? Why does it stay in my body still? Why do I remember it so strongly? Why does a penis going in my mouth matter so much but someone grabbing my kid’s butt doesn’t seem like such a big deal?
I want to make justifications like “I was being put at risk of STDs or pregnancy and my kid’s life was not at risk of being dramatically altered” but that’s bullshit. I do think part of the reason I am so god damn angry at the men who were friends who raped me as an adult was because I had clearly communicated my sexual boundaries (Sex is great! Condoms are required!) and it didn’t matter. My attempts to keep my body (and theirs) safe didn’t matter in comparison to their desire to have a wet pussy touch their cock. That felt demeaning and debasing and violating.
But frankly the kids who raped me weren’t risking STDs or pregnancy. We were all too young and inexperienced so that’s not really it.
I don’t know what it is.
I for one am thrilled that more male survivors are speaking out. Thank you so much for your courage. I wonder when we will as a society be ready to address sexual assault as a whole phenomena and not a “violence against women” issue. Lots of women perpetrate sexual assault. Lots of men and non-binary people are assaulted. I don’t think that we will be able to really move the needle on this topic until it becomes less about “Those icki penis enabled people.”
I want to know what builds someone’s internal understanding of safety such that unconsented sex acts are traumatizing.
That’s a weird word. Unconsented. Forced. Coerced. Manipulated. Unwanted.
I wish there was a way to talk about all the unwanted sex. All the gradations from “I don’t want to do this but I feel like I should and I’ve never said no” to “I said no but I didn’t fight” to “I fought with all my strength and lost.”
We need ways of talking about the degrees and it just doesn’t exist and I feel like my language is failing me.
I wasn’t trying to rag on polyamory. I know people who have raised kids well in polyamorous families. People don’t fuck up their kids because of polyamory. But I’ve seen a lot of people do polyamory in shitty selfish ways that hurt their children.
As this guy mentions in his piece, hurting your kids can come from playing too much golf. It’s not about whatever activity/person takes you away.
Neither Noah nor I started dating by being gone for 2-5 hours a month. We started by having the time we were gone on dates being measured in days. We are obsessive selfish assholes. We can be obsessive selfish assholes who have to mostly focus on our nuclear family or we can be obsessive selfish assholes who build a network of people we make commitments to and then who gets the short end of the stick?
I do this with platonic friendships to a lesser degree… Noah doesn’t fall into platonic stuff the way I do. I fall in love with everyone. Noah tends to need more intimacy for that.
But we have these ambiguous relationships in our lives. Like Pam. She’s been one of my Most Important People for almost 20 years. When we met we were both dating the same boy. I had sex with her way long ago and there’s been group play since then. When I felt pathetic and inadequate because I was not up for sex during previous pregnancies… she and Noah had sex a few times. (She was in a dry spell of her own so it was reasonable timing for her to blow off some steam.) And she’s the person we both call when we are having problems communicating with one another.
That’s god damn complicated. Is it polyamory?
Part of the reason that Pam is a healthy person to have in my life is she encourages me to prioritize my needs in a way that frankly I need to be encouraged. She’s self absorbed and she thinks I should be too.
But she says that while having an intensely close relationship with a huge extended clan of people, all of whom she sacrifices for in one way or another. So she’s self absorbed… only she’s also incredibly generous and considerate and thoughtful. She’s a good example.
I feel like we have not had a lot of success with having folks who have a more ambiguous set of rules come in from Noah’s side. I’m not sure if this is my petty jealousy or if there is more than that.
In my defense I’m better friends with most of his ex’s than he is. There are the notable exception of a couple who hate both of us with a passion. That’s legit. It’s not that I’m rude or a problem with his ex’s. I invite them over. I chat. I send birthday presents and keep up with their children.
But we don’t have someone who is intensely important and a pillar of our relationship from his side and I feel like that is a complicated thing.
I feel like I alienate his friends. I feel like I am unacceptable in some major way. Part of it is how fucking judgmental I am.
But his friends say things like, “I couldn’t possibly be responsible for all of the kids while you eat dinner.” Then they go back in the restaurant and leave me outside to wrangle all six kids while every other grown up eats.
Yeah. I’m a judgy bitch who isn’t going to act like that is fucking ok. I’m going to act like if you are a father who wants group god damn outings you put on your big boy pants and you fucking figure out how to wrangle kids. You don’t expect to have a woman come fucking rescue you. This shit wasn’t easy for me to learn. I have an explosive personality. I have anger issues. I have impulse issues.
HOW COME I HAVE BECOME THE DEFAULT GROWN UP?!
To be fair this was years ago and at this point I’d kick Noah’s ass out of the restaurant and tell him to do it because he is more than capable.
But that one night was awkward.
Meh.
I judge my friends and they tell me that I’m getting judgy and I back off. This dynamic works.
His friends… they just kind of avoid me.
Even when Noah does have friends I get along with it gets messy. I was working on being closer to one of his friends and then he told me that I was stealing his friend and now he couldn’t be close with the person. I stopped talking to them.
I don’t want it to be my fault Noah can’t have friends.
I spend a lot of time feeling hyper aware that Noah married beneath himself and he is getting a raw deal. I’m not easy to live with. I’m a needy fucker. I’m controlling. I’m moody. I’m bitchy.
And I feel this never ending wave of shame that this is how I am after getting a lot better.
I talked about being interested in finding a volunteer opportunity. I’ve been at a place for a while where it doesn’t seem safe or wise for me to introduce anything mandatory in my life that might impact my moods because the people in my house don’t want to deal with it.
I’m too much of a problem when I’m bouncing off people.
The homeschool group was awful for me. I did that for three years I think? It was so much driving (which hurts me physically) and I had to spend a lot of hours in careful performance mode because I was well aware that it was not a setting designed for my safety. I needed to just shut up most of the time. Or figure out how to be a helpful contributor while following everyone else’s rules of civility… that they won’t explain they will just get mad if I don’t understand.
It was fucking stressful.
Noah and I had an exchange in family therapy this week. We were talking about some behavior that a child was doing. He described it as not normal. I told him that one of the best things about my childhood and bouncing back and forth through a bunch of different environments is… I no longer think that I can judge what is “normal” based on what I’ve experienced. Unless you have done substantial research into developmental or cultural norms… you have no fucking idea what normal means. You know what you know.
It is hard for me to figure out what is important to say or not say or do or not do to fit in a crowd.
Part of the reason I’ve dropped most social groups (especially ones I ostensibly could bring my children to), beyond the fact that everything happens too late at night, is I know of too many rapists and I don’t feel safe in communities where protecting the fee fees of the rapists is more important than the many victims that are driven out of the community.
Jesus, I got off a home schooling mailing list because folks wouldn’t stop promoting the magic act of a dude who raped me.
It is hard for me that my child thinks that someone patting them on the bottom when they walk past in class is “sexual assault”.
I think to what was happening to me at their age. I had multiple people force their dicks into different holes in my body while I cried and begged them to stop.
Dude. Shut the fuck up.
But this is the only life they’ve ever had and they only know what they know and they are literally incapable of perspective.
That’s fucking hard to live with.
I neither want to invalidate their experiences nor encourage this god damn fragility. Life is too fucking hard to be broken by little shit.
Watching the hysteria my children feel at the stupidest of boundary violations… I think I understand why most people who have lives like mine die. People genuinely do have different capacities for suffering.
I think about the ways I run towards difficulties and the way I freeze up at terrible moments when I should be protecting myself.
I think about how my current problems are my fault because I refuse to conform and figure out how to fit in and be nice.
It hasn’t ever worked for me.
Part of my current problem is my unwillingness to act like my cunt matters so sometimes my problem is being too nice. Is it niceness? Is it a manifestation of what I perceive myself deserving?
Deserve. Deserve. Oh fuck deserve.
I think Pam is so important because she has chased me more than any other woman alive. She wants to know me and she’s willing to carry the burden of reaching out to me when I can’t reach out to anyone. She calls. She writes a personal journal that is nearly as detailed and fussy as this blog and she emails it to me so I can know her.
I want to know her. I want to know about every lunch date with every 2nd cousin twice removed.
Her sister is coming over on Tuesday. We are thrilled. Seeing her baby sister is always a treat.
I think my relationship with her is about as close to the anarchic relationship ideal as I can get. I don’t own her. We don’t have long-term messy entanglements. We show up because we want to as individual people on our own paths.
I watched Before Midnight. It was the third movie in a series. Before Sunset and Before Sunrise I think are the other two titles. I might be getting them out of order. Basically these three movies are a series of conversations in this couple’s life over an 18 year period. Each movie covers a conversation that takes place in 24 hours. The third movie is pretty damn bitter.
I know that some people divorce and go on to find happiness. I don’t think I would be one of them. I think I get one chance at happily ever after and no one promised me more good days than bad on that journey.
How do we balance our self absorption and our need for attachment?
I met my new OB. She is innately superior to the person I just fired because when I came in she started out by asking me a bunch of questions about my history and she didn’t make any rude assumptions. She didn’t give a shit about my weight nor deliver stupid lectures about how I should limit my calories. She can stay.
I returned the CPAP. Now my permanent medical record says I tried and failed a CPAP trial. That’s kind of awesome. Now I will stand a better chance of getting a god damn Lorazepam prescription seeing as in the opinion of the doctors who have been willing to examine my sleep… I’m hella anxious and in a lot of pain so a mild anti-anxiety med is the best sleep aid I can use.
It has taken years. But I can’t have that pill till I’m done being pregnant. I can live with that.
Acid reflux is kicking my ass up one side and down the other. I’ve vomited just about exactly once a week since the second trimester hit and I’m really over it.
Noah is in So Cal for work. Within half an hour of him leaving both kids started whining about how much we miss him. I find this kind of hilarious. We are so wrapped up in each other this can’t be sane or healthy. But we like it.
One laptop is back from Apple with a spiffy new battery. The other one is out for repair. I sent it in 57 days before the warranty expires. I’m glad it broke now.
The kids are whining non-stop today. I feel like I almost lost it in the car when one child was loudly complaining about how they were being kicked… but they sit in a high back booster seat. So there is basically no way they could feel it if someone were kicking them because it would go through two full chairs. And I could see that the kid behind them wasn’t kicking. SO STOP YELLING ABOUT HOW UNFAIR IT IS THAT YOU ARE BEING KICKED BECAUSE IT ISN’T FORKING HAPPENING.
I feel less depressed but more irritable and anxious than I did.
We are having constant conversation about how every time someone bumps into some part of your body that could be vaguely construed as sexual (like your butt or your chest) that isn’t the same thing as sexual assault.
I don’t understand why my kids have decided that every time someone trips and bumps their backside it is sexual assault but I’m getting pretty cranky about this. We are talking a lot about how there is room in this life for boundary violations that are not sexual assault. You can have a wrestling incident and not be sexually assaulted. Sometimes if someone kind of falls on your crotch… it isn’t sexual assault.
I’m really happy there are three therapists in the mix talking to the kids about that topic and not just me. I’m not sure I’m the best person to calmly talk about this topic with them.
This article is an interesting look at why Noah and I think that polyamory would be a bad choice for us in our marriage. I’m not slamming it in general for other people… I’m saying we suck at being fair with time and attention.
It’s important to understand how you fail.
I don’t want polyamory. i want to be able to perform the actions that will make me be considered “good” and that’s really god damn confusing inside my head. Sometimes in order to force myself into the behavior I believe is mandatory I take steps that look a lot like polyamory. I don’t think it is actually the same thing.
I have wonderful friends who are fun to have sex with. That’s not the same thing as poly.
I love a lot of people. What is polyamory?
Polyamory, to me, is someone other than the nuclear family getting to be more important than the nuclear family on a regular basis. Do I think that societies are best held together by monogamous nuclear families? I don’t. But I think that I have a hard time conceptualizing the needs of the people around me. I think that *I* fail to see people as complex organisms when I get overwhelmed. I think that I am already struggling with the cognitive process around observing my children as people on a life path of their own that isn’t about me or my experiences.
I don’t think I would be able to hold this model of them in my head very well if I were frequently hunting.
I want to get this right more than I want to be successfully slutty.
I want to figure out what real attachment is.
Because I’m pretty bitter about all of the “chosen family” people who have left my life. Forming bonds through sex has worked in some limited ways and it completely fails all of the other tests it has been put through. Not all of my chosen family people bonds were formed by sex. I still… don’t hear from those people any more.
I think I deserve the shunning I get. I’m not sure it is a bad thing. Now I’m not invited to parties with that crowd anymore. That crowd where I had to spend every party trying to avoid conversations with one or more people who raped my friends but my friends don’t want to explode the community so they told me and no one else. That crowd where you have to kiss the ring of the abusive bully dominant male in order to be permitted to stay.
I think my life is better this way?
There are consequences for being who you are, no matter who you are. That’s not just me. By and large I’ll take my consequences because I prefer them to the others I could manage to attain. I can only alter myself so much. I can only change the consequences I will get by so much. At some point you just get what you fucking get.
For good. For bad.
I get the veil of white motherhood. It’s a marvel to me.
I get to deal with the results of my face making people feel afraid because people like me have been historically dangerous for people like them.
I get access to more money than any one family deserves. Tax the shit out of me. No one deserves to be this much more safe than the rest of their country.
There are a lot of places I am not welcome because of my fucking mouth. That’s really ok. People deserve safe space away from me.
I believe that. People deserve safe space away from me.
Even if I “haven’t done anything to them”. They are allowed to feel like my presence is a problem. That’s an opinion folks are just plain allowed to have. That’s an experience of being alive that is true.
I really am the problem sometimes.
But I’m probably not the problem as often as I think. And I’m mislabeling some times.
I’m going through a hella fucking paranoid period and I totally feel like everyone, totally including those nice people who reached out to tell me that they love me and they would love to offer me support in some way totally hate me. Like, duh. It’s so obvious. Like, nothing could be more true.
Maybe depression lingers. But it feels more amped and paranoid and anxious.
I keep wondering why did we pick this time to have another baby? What is the long term symbolic significance of this timing? Whhhhhyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy do I want a third child so much that I’m willing to go through this?
You don’t understand how much I love this child. You don’t understand how badly I want another person to help balance the load of my attention. I’m allowed to give to my children. I’m allowed to boss them for a limited period of time in carefully delineated ways. I’m contractually obligated to provide for them. I choose to believe that by creating a new human being it is my responsibility to help them learn how to advocated for themself and figure out who they are and what kinds of support and accommodations they need in this life.
EC needs help with getting organized. I wouldn’t be surprised if she grows up and sets part of her budget for a person who can show up once or twice a year and help to clean her house. i don’t think she’ll feel bad. I think she will ruefully acknowledge that this is an area where outside help is a big deal for her. That’s how she is with most of her shortcomings at this point and I don’t really think this part of her personality will change. She’s good at acknowledging, “Ah. Here is an area where I should arrange help.” She doesn’t feel bad about it. She will cheerfully off all the areas she considers herself really strong. Life is about balance.
This period of disequilibrium is being rough for all of us. I’m amazed at how much of the kids current developmental issues are pinging big emotional stuff for Noah and me. We have scheduled more family therapy sessions for a while.
Growing up with a mentally ill parent has consequences. I’m trying to cause as little damage as humanly possible.
It’s kind of funny. Most parents cause damage. Sometimes only a little, but… it’s a pretty universal part of the parenting experience. There is this constant conflict between needs. Who matters more in any given situation?
I think that part of the reason that I want a third child and I’ll cheerfully take one at this point even though the timing is otherwise shitty is… I think it’s going to be a big deal at this developmental stage. We’ve got quite the tug of war going between the kids. Yes I’ve read a bunch of the sibling books.
It’s going to be a process. We all get to learn what it means to take turns.
Sometimes even I have to come first. But not all the time. That would be fucked up. It’s a balancing act.
There are no martyrs here. We are just people. People who screw up and try to not make that mistake again. We are people who are trying to figure out how to seriously care about the needs of other people.
It’s a process. It’s a science experiment. It’s a life.
Why do I introduce myself with the idea that I’m weird? Because that way people are prepared when it turns out to be true. Weird isn’t bad but I am going to react in unexpected ways over and over.
One reason I would like to move from this house? I’d like to be able to grow my own pot. I think that if I grew my own and processed it into pills… I would not care at all how much I went through and maybe I just don’t get to be a world traveler in this life. Later. After I’m done trying to restrict myself for pregnancy.
Lightning is coming. There’s no way around that.
But what is going to happen afterwards?
I really don’t know.