I went to the funeral to support my friend. I need to visit her again this week. She’s really struggling. Her boy was 23. It was an open casket event and I can’t get the smell of death out of my nose. I’ve showered a few times to see if that would help. I even went outside and smoked some pot even though I don’t do that very often these days because I want to stop smelling that. Even over the pungency of pot… I can smell it.

Death waits for us all. It is stronger than any other force.

Yesterday I think the baby started hitting a growth spurt. She barely made noise all day except for when she had a direct need. Mostly she just slept. When she sleeps that much and is so quiet I check her constantly because I’m afraid she could slip away. I want to know her so badly. You never know how much time you are going to get: a few hours, a few months, a few years, a few decades, a whole life. I don’t want to get to the end and feel regret about not spending enough time. So when my baby sleeps all day it is hard to leave her alone and just let her rest.

But I do it because that sleep time is when she grows and internalizes what she is learning. Don’t fuck with sleep, yo.

She’s so fat and jiggly and alive. I am so enchanted.

It’s lovely how my tenderness with the baby is still being extended to my big kids. We are snuggling a lot. They adore their sister. They are both learning how to interact with her and it fills me with joy. They both firmly address her as “My baby”. This baby belongs to all of us. I can imagine other circumstances where such an assumption of ownership would bug the crap out of me. But when it is my children feeling possessive of one another within the context of our family?

Heart exploding with joy.

My siblings hated me and desperately wished I had never been born. My children are deeply attached to one another and spend time every day saying they love each other and they are glad to be together so much. I’m allowed to be part of this.

I’ve run into more of the home schoolers recently. There is a core group from the community we used to join a lot that miss us. It looks like our summer will involve some touching base with people. Folks are sad we are leaving. My former neighbor is really upset. She is talking more seriously about going back to India because without me here… she truly has nothing. I’m her one friend here and her ex-husband is a nightmare.

It’s interesting finding out where people have depended on me and I didn’t know it. I am sorry to let you down. But I really need to travel. It’s like if someone were doing a Mentos/Diet Coke commercial with my insides. I feel absolutely bursting with the need to go. To find out who I am in different spaces. To find out how much I am capable of growing and expanding to meet new needs.

I have loved the bay area. I have found friends, lovers, and family here. I have met 100% of the most important people in my life here. I will always have ties to the bay. I wouldn’t be surprised if we came back every year or two for a visit. It will be different and a tiny fraction of people will still see us when we visit… and that’s ok too.

I can’t be all that important to all that many people. Monkey spheres and all that.

There are a lot of people here that I would prefer to never see again. It’s time to go. I feel eaten alive with the desire to avoid my fucking sister. I haven’t made an appointment with my pain doctor for a follow up partially because running into my aunt there is so distressing.

So much pain and there’s not a god damn thing I can do about it. Not for anyone.

EC still feels like my idealized self. What I wish I could have been if things had been better. MC still feels like a closer match to the reality of what I would have been like if things had been better–I still would have been a rocky person and MC is an emotionally tempestuous person. I wonder so much about YC.

Yesterday she was waking up from a nap and I knelt down next to her. She gave this gorgeous giant smile. I felt like I would melt into a puddle of goo. Yes oh my daughter, wrap me around your finger. I’ll do so much for that smile.

I love all of my children’s smiles. I feel like the older two inherited this quality from Noah of softening when they smile. They relax and lean in at the same time. It looks like they relax into visibly feeling safe.

Do you know how good it feels that someone can feel like that around me? I often make people feel alarmed, tense, threatened. I see people get rigid in my presence. I feel bad every time.

But not my family. My family relaxes and treats me like I am here to keep them safe instead of hurt them.

Even if I am a monster… I am their monster and that’s ok then.

My arms are on fire. My hand is spasming so much that holding a fork to feed myself is sometimes painful.

Baby skulls are fucking heavy.

I love my massage therapist and chiropractor. Losing them will be some of the hardest part of leaving the bay. Not only are they very effective, but we have excellent rapport. We are friendly enough to exchange spontaneous gifts. The conversations are fun bright spots in my week. I have a great community.

The baby is waking up from the larval state. It’s a lot of fun. She’s more purposeful by the day. She still mostly only complains when something is wrong. She’s a very chill person. I am not sure where she came from, surely not from me. I’ve never been so relaxed in my life.

I’m obsessively thinking about sex and bdsm and how to negotiate differently and what is it I actually want as opposed to feeling like I must do it? How do I learn to take out the compulsive self harming behavior? How do I learn how to actually know what I want instead of what I can take?

How do I learn how to advocate for myself in a useful way? I’m still trying to find out.

I can advocate for myself. Poorly. In useless ways much of the time.

It’s funny how watching my children teaches me so much about myself. I get what my therapists mean about I bring too much of myself to every situation. But I also see a big chunk of ableism in the commentary. Part of the reason I am so paranoid and controlling of my environments is because I do have a bunch of issues that need accommodation. I have disabilities. If I don’t advocate early or forcefully enough my disability issues are totally ignored and I suffer.

But there’s a balancing act.

I see this so very clearly when my children walk into every room and feel free to demand that everything in the world must conform to them. *cough*

Oh. Yeah. Ok. I see what y’all have been complaining about. *cough* Ok. I think I understand a bit more about how and why to reign that in. Ok. That makes sense now.

I learn so much from getting to sit near my children all the time. I like them so much and I am so enthralled with their development.

YC is glorious and grunting more forcefully and waving with more intention and she very nearly has head control. This is exactly where she ought to be.

MC is fierce and intense and so loving even as they struggle to master their inner impulses towards treating everyone like a mean attacking figure. They feel victimized a lot of the time… even when good things are happening. We are trying to figure out how to work on this, but it’s complicated. Perception is… hard to change.

EC is trying so hard to be a dependable peace maker and her ADHD means that she’s always going to struggle to be the person she wants to be in her head. Her follow through sucks. She has a tremendous amount of desire to follow through… ooh shiny squirrel! It’s a process. When I watch her behavior I understand with great intensity that she would need to be medicated in order to handle school. She can barely handle home schooling. Mostly… she doesn’t and I handle it for her and walk her through the process and that shit’s gotta stop soon. I tried to transition this responsibility with the points system and that failed abjectly. I need to find something else to try and I am not sure what.

I honestly want the moving to fill some of these roles for me. My kids rise to the challenge of change really well. Like me… they aren’t people who sit around and do the same thing well. My follow through isn’t exactly stellar. If I really wanted to live in one house for fifty years and work the same job for thirty years… I would need a lot more medication than I am currently on. I am not wired to do that.

I’m wired to learn something new. So is my daughter. How are we going to learn how to stay the course more together?

I feel like Noah could do more keep-on-keeping-on than I can. He doesn’t have the restlessness.

I feel so restless it is like I itch. But I have to stay here and deal with all the crap in a responsible, kind way. I can’t dump the responsibility on Noah or the kids. I don’t want to just trash it all and walk away. I want thoughtful culling. Which takes a rather lot of focus and work because Jimminy Christmas we amassed a lot of shit here. Even though I purge all the damn time!

Sarah is coming today. Maybe part of our date will be hanging out at Half Price Books together as I take a big batch in. Maybe. Sigh.

I got to see a friend yesterday I haven’t seen in a while. I originally met her when I was 17 and going to junior college. We worked in the theatre together. I feel so grateful that these threads of my life continue. She’s grown up a lot in a variety of ways. Yes, she still has troubles because she is still alive. But she’s changed and deepened and not softened… but relaxed into herself? Her presence felt much more certain now than it used to. She used to feel-to-me like she was almost afraid of herself. Now she fully lives in herself. I love watching people grow up. This is such a glorious gift.

Hey K–before I move… can we get together? I don’t think I’ve seen you since middle school. My last concrete memory of you is when you signed my 6th grade year book. Santa Cruz isn’t that far away. Maybe I could be silly and take a room in a hotel down in Santa Cruz for a weekend in the next few months so I could have a proper visit with all the Santa Cruz folk before we leave. I will miss you all so much. K is there. R is there. I wouldn’t mind going to Kiva and walking the main drag for a while and going to the Boardwalk with my kids….

That should happen.

ack bye