There is this thing that Middle Child does when he unloads the dishwasher. He likes to take every single plate that we own at once. That’s a big stack. More than once he has dropped a plate this way because he can’t really manage that tall of a stack yet. His desire for competence outstretches his current abilities. He’s now eight. That continues to be the most normal situation he could possibly be in.

I think that’s basically what I am doing.

My life is a careful balance of triage. I am always looking at what is most important and I need to ignore all the lower priority actions to cope with that issue. In my life at this moment my single most important task is breastfeeding my baby. I am her literal life support and that has to be my first priority all day every day. My second task is being good to my children. Being nice takes a lot of energy and thought and planning for me. I’m a really harsh person. I have to work very hard on blunting the blade of my personality; it’s a conscious decision.

When I stack too many plates…

I’ve also been the person packing my family of five’s possessions. I am forcing them to help me with culling because I don’t know what is important to them to keep. But I’m boxing and moving stuff because every single person in this family has a full agenda of work every day. Auxiliary projects become mine. My kids work and there’s a limit to how much is appropriate at their current ages. If I give them more work than is appropriate they might be able to accomplish it. More likely they would fail and internalize that they suck. I’m not going to put them in that position if I have any way to avoid it. I will absolutely damage myself to avoid putting them in that position. I am less important. Period.

But there are layers and complications to that too. My utter eagerness to throw myself into damaging situations is another problem to be managed. That has to be on the triage list. Not hurting myself.

I feel like I am failing to communicate (to myself as much as anyone else) why this appearance shit is coming up and is so intense. This is the very definition of a PTSD trigger and is probably why I went off the rails so very badly last weekend.

My appearance has been a problem for most of my life. My mother did not have time to take care of my appearance and she had no end of scorn for me because I didn’t figure it out on my own. Frankly the autism diagnosis makes me feel so much better about myself it isn’t funny. It’s pretty common for people like me to struggle with appearance stuff. Oh. I’m not just bad. I’m autistic and this is a normal thing for me to struggle with.

My mother spent a lot of time very angry with me because my appearance was a reflection on her and I looked like shit. I looked like no one cared about me. And when you look like no one cares about you people are mean to you because that’s a permission slip. That’s a blank check. Especially as a child. A child that has no adult cosseting and protecting them is a target. Shit rolls down hill and every one has a hard life. Children are vulnerable targets for excessive spleen.

Topping off with having people call the police on us in Virginia on the road trip because we looked like vagrants.

I have had negative consequences for my appearance over decades. It is not a minor issue. I will be judged by my appearance and that judgment will reflect on my family.

That is quite literally a sight of existential torture for me. Me being so bad at looking like a “decent woman” might cause my children to be hurt.

Ok.

If I can’t even fucking get myself together enough to look decent for a fucking lunch/dinner engagement with my friend on a fucking random Sunday at home when I have the easiest set of resources as my disposal… what is going to happen when we travel?!

Cue beating myself in the head until I bruise myself. I have so completely failed to accomplish adulting that I can’t look decent without extensive prior planning and inappropriate leaning on my children to do work. That’s not ok.

So I went to therapy yesterday. My therapist spend a lot of time looking like they were biting their tongue because they wanted to shout “WHY DO YOU KEEP MAKING THESE BAD DECISIONS?!?!?!?!”

Traveling is complicated. The last time I left the country was after Uncle Bob died and I about lost my mind.

Uhhh I hope it goes better this time.

Why do I need to do this so very badly? Because I do. Because I need to get out of this valley before I set it on fire. (Not really. I’m not an arsonist. I would not have any interest in hurting anyone. It’s metaphorical.) There are dynamics here that I don’t know how to change or walk away from and stay in one place and there are things in myself I want to change. I am not making the progress I want to make. I need to change my setting. I want to understand the wonderful people who come here better. I want to understand where they are coming from.

I want to understand more about this bubble we have lived in for so long. You can’t do that from inside the bubble. You can’t see the water you swim in.

My shrink said something very useful. They said, “You can’t use drugs. You do all the easy low-level suggestions for stress management that someone would come up with. Ok. You know, for most of my clients this is really hard because they don’t have a single person in the world they are connected to. I have to tell them to go find a tree. For you, I say you need to let your friends be your medicine.”

Maybe that’s what I want to have Sarah embroider on something where I can see it.

Let Your Friends Be Your Medicine.

I really do have the very best friends in the whole world. I am so lucky.

So after therapy yesterday I came home. I found a stash of medicated mints buried in the bottom of the diaper bag. I took a regular sized dose. Then my time off started.

I decided the best thing I could do for my family was go to the fucking mall. I went to Macy’s. I commandeered a nice lady. I walked up to her and said, “Are you very patient?” She chuckled and said she thinks so. I asked if I could tell her a story. She said that sounded fun.

She helped me. She helped me find clothes that are comfortable enough that they don’t hurt my poor aching body and I can crawl around and play with my children. She helped me find clothing that was age appropriate and work with my coloring. She vetoed most of the things I suggested for one reason or another. She brought me things in the dressing room that she thought would be good for me.

I left with three pairs of pants, two shirts, one skirt, and a dress. All of them fit the bill for my very convoluted list of requirements over the next few months. Combined with the nicer nursing tank tops I got when the baby came and the nice sandals I found recently…

I now look like a responsible grown up lady.

I wish it hadn’t been such a stupidly melodramatic process.

This is why I’m practicing the makeup stuff now. Even though sometimes it literally makes me cry and that’s not good for putting makeup on.

I need to worry about these things. I need to worry about it right now so that my children don’t suffer. In the triage of importance of my life these skills are somewhere around 4 or 5 on the priority list right now because they are hard, they take repetitive practice over time, and my children will be hurt if I don’t.

But they are hard because working on this is a direct challenge to my deep seated sense of self hatred and belief that I deserve nothing good in life.

So it’s tricky.

Because in order to give my children a better life… I can’t treat me that badly. I will be hurting them by proxy.

Ok.

I haven’t medicated today but I feel better. I feel ok. I feel like I can go eat. I have a lot of work to do today.

Today I’m cleaning the house for the party this weekend. The kids are working on the backyard. Tomorrow I’m going to help the kids in the backyard. I told them that if they get most of it done today so I only have a little bit of clean up work tomorrow then we can bake a cake on Thursday afternoon and spend Friday morning decorating it fancy. If the yard work takes all day on Thursday then we will bake a cake on Friday and it won’t get decorated fancy because it won’t have time to cool.

We’ll see what they get accomplished.