I want to stop feeling anxious. I want to be a good mother. I want to have sex. I want to feel untethered. I want my fucking contractor to get back to me with the estimate he said I would have 14 days ago. I want to find the middle path. I want to stop yelling so much. I want to sleep more. I want to exercise every day instead of most days. I want to stop feeling like I am a terrible person all the god damn time. I want to feel like I am doing the right thing with my life.

I don’t.

I am terribly insecure about this home schooling shit. My children aren’t really having the boiler plate “standard American” childhood because I am literally incapable of providing it. I want to be able to help my children be ok.

I want to know what ok means.

I want to see all of my people.

I want to hide in my house and not see anyone for a few months.

I want to do ALL THE THINGS for Christmas. I want to not do anything at all.

I want to feel like what I do is good enough. I don’t.

I want to stop feeling like the best thing I could do for the planet is die.

I want to understand why my baby had to scream before sleeping tonight.

I want to have something I can do for myself that feels like a positive thing that isn’t eating sugar.

I want to write about appearance stuff. And trauma. And I want to read more. I’m so tired. My brain hurts.

I want to feel like a person with brain capacity. I want to be done with work for this lifetime. I want a new career. I want a graduate degree. I want to be taken seriously.

I won’t ever be taken seriously. What a joke.

I want to understand what the future needs from me.

I want.

Today I need to just… back off. I can’t hound Eldest Child about math any more. She will catch up when she catches up. Is she going to Disneyland? No. Will she get to explore Malaysia? Errrrrr, maybe a little. Will she be caught up by Christmas? Yes.

This is hard because when I have to go do fun things without her because she hasn’t done her bit… I feel… pain. It’s physical pain. I don’t want to be away from her. I feel like I am doing something wrong and bad and terrible and I never deserve love again because I am enjoying not being with her.

I’ve got some serious enmeshment shit going on.

This is part of why I say it is healthier for me to not have one child. Holy shit the enmeshment would be a real problem.

Having three kids means I need to go have fun with the other two. It needs to be part of life that we are not a pod 100% of the time regardless of the work that needs to be done. We all have work to do. We all have shit that if we don’t finish… we don’t get to go have fun. That’s life.

But it’s hard. It feels like a big nasty punishment when it’s really just a natural consequence.

Allowing my children to experience natural consequences feels like I failed as a parent to encourage/guide/help them be where they need to be. It feels like all my fault. But it isn’t.

If I treat her like she is doing something wrong when she fails to propel me to happiness… oh that’s all kinds of fucked up from top to bottom. I can’t do that. It would be wrong.

I can’t hurt my baby just because I’m sad I don’t get to have fun with her. Hi, fucked up dynamic much? But I am sad. This is hard. I will get over it, but that’s life. Life doesn’t give you what you want. Life is about coping with what you get anyway. I mean, I’m bitching about having to spend a day in Disneyland without my kid.

Shut up already, you fucking hag.

Sigh.

But I don’t like doing anything without her. It sucks. Everything is better when she is there.

Ok. Not everything. But most things!

My body can’t tell what time zone I’m in. The photo shoot is done. Given that I slept two hours in the 24 hours before it happened I think it went really well. We had fun and giggled a lot. We do want to remember this phase of our family.

And now… I’m done with serious packing. I won’t be cleaning much more because they are going to come make a mess soon.

Eldest Child is about a week behind on math. This is exciting! She really has busted her butt to catch up. She’s doing great. I know I’ve sounded critical of her progress… I’m feeling like a turkey butt. I should have been more encouraging all along.

I am exhausted and weary and I feel numb. Today I get a massage and fold one load of laundry and pack for Disneyland on Monday. Then this weekend…. I do not work. Fuck work. As a family we are going to sit around. Ok, Eldest Child will do math. sigh but it’s coming along! I plan to sit next to her a lot. She has such a hard time focusing. Well… that’s not true. She can do really well but she’s seriously burned out right now. I do not blame her. After this I am glad that she is going to go back to about 3 hours a week of math. That’s going to feel like a vacation. Other subject will reappear! It’s going to be awesome! And I sincerely hope we don’t have an issue like this again. I won’t fall behind on checking.

The house is pretty much ready for us to go to Malaysia. That’s exciting. I think we have ~2 hours of last minute work (moving the mattresses and clothes to the garage) and the house is cleared for the remodel. Eeek.

When we get back from Malaysia… that’s when I’ll face the yard. That’s going to be a lot.

I wonder what the pace of our life will feel like without home ownership.

Yesterday we saw Noah’s uncle and grandmother for a visit. I… I felt a little stunned by the sheer quantity of bile that was spewed at speed. Hatred of fat people. Hatred of some ethnic groups while promoting rude stereotypes that are meant to be “positive” about other groups. Comments about trying to cause the death of family members because they deserve it.

Just… ugly.

After the bullshit with Noah’s mom and the uncle and the grandmother… we had a conversation with the kids about what they were hearing and being influenced by. We asked them if they are surprised that I’m not blowing up at people left and right. They said they had in fact been expecting me to react to the nastiness they heard and they were surprised…

We are here because of an impending death. I’m not going to start blowing up about social justice shit. But I am going to explain to my children in great detail, “You see why I don’t allow these people to have an impact on your developing mind. My family is worse. Do you now understand why we are alone as a nuclear family every holiday?”

They get it.

EC in particular talked about how sometimes she feels mad at us because we are alone at every holiday… but… being alone is better than A) pretending those things are ok to say or B) exploding at people over and over.

Option C) don’t visit bigots is the winner!

I don’t think I’ll come back for the next death visit Noah feels compelled to do. Depending on how soon it is… the kids might or might not come. Cause holy shit these people are nasty and vile and fuck you no you don’t get to tell my kids what to think or believe. No. No. No. No. No. No.

My kids deserve better than this bullshit. This hatred of people having bodies. This nasty venom about people being lazy and horrible just because of how they look.

The jokes about, “I give my brother in law a knife every year hoping he’ll use it on my sister and he hasn’t gotten the message yet.”

I was shocked into mute horrified silence. These aren’t my people. This is one of those situations where it “isn’t my place to be the problem”. So my kids don’t need to be here being “polite” and shutting up to listen to this disgusting language.

I am torn between wishing Noah would tell them off and understanding why he doesn’t. They wouldn’t change. This is why he just doesn’t come back much.

I am feeling a lot of appreciation for Noah in general. He came from this. They intended for him to turn out like them. And instead he works very hard to not be derogatory towards people. He does not joke about murdering people for fun. He doesn’t sprinkle racist stereotypes through his conversation. He doesn’t talk about people being less than him because he has been more successful in a certain way.

Noah was intended to be a complete piece of shit. Like his relatives. Instead he works hard on being a nice person who helps people. He gives as much as he can.

I suppose if I am looking for the silver lining, this trip is functioning a little bit like talking to Jenny does for me. Oh how far you have come. It is incredible what Noah has done with his brain and his personality and his verbal impulses. That’s a man who has worked to not be a fucker. It would have been so easy and automatic. So… instinctive. But he doesn’t want to be. He wants to be something different. He wants to be better than that. He wants to appreciate people and value them and build them up.

I am consistently impressed that when Noah is out in the world talking to random people and they mention that they are trying to learn programming stuff he never hesitates to give out his email address. “I’ve been working on x for y years. If you run into a problem and you feel stuck and frustrated, send me an email. I’d be happy to help.” He’s tutored a lot of people. He knows he was given an easy window into his profession and he tries to pay that forward.

There are reasons I wanted to marry him. He wants to pay forward the access to privilege. Holy tomato am I all over that.

It was interesting watching the venomous toads squat over their position in life with him sitting on the opposite side of the table representing a whole different set of choices and way of handling choices. It felt like watching the death cries of a dying way of life. Sorry low key white supremacists. The high key white supremacists (who you don’t agree with, partially because you know they are going to ruin your way of life) are out in the streets marching so you are not looking good in comparison. You used to be the moderates. Now you are sitting on the wrong side of the line of “good country people”.

The future is queer. The future is not white. The future is quite possibly going to be fat.

And that’s ok.

You can accept this future gracefully, with eagerness… or you can look like the evil poisonous toads you are.

Your choice.

I know that I will go swim in a different pond to avoid you.

But this is going to be constant. This is going to be everywhere. The flavor and manifestation will vary… but people suck. All over the world people suck. That’s not going to stop. How are we going to be like a willow and bend but not break?

That’s the lesson.