Monthly Archives: February 2019

Damn.

The money has hit our accounts. I have paid off all credit cards. We now have zero debt. All of the utilities associated with the house are done. We sold both cars. Insurance is set to cancel on the 4th.

I’m putting luggage tags on right now.

I’m almost through with the hard part. Whoa.

 

What are we looking for?

I feel like part of the reason I am leaving is because I want to stop feeling angry at my friends. It isn’t their fault that I wanted them to be more like family and that isn’t what they want or need. It makes sense that they already have families and they are not auditioning new crazy members.

I think it’s going to be really interesting to find out what it feels like to only deal with my family for a long time. I won’t be able to look to my friends.

I think that is how I have killed my ability to stay here. I needed my friends to be family and they aren’t up for that and I can’t cope with the reality. Will I do the same thing in a different place? I don’t think so. I won’t establish myself in communities there in the same way.

If I try hard to be reasonable with myself, I know that I would be welcome in a lot of different communities. If I showed up week after week, they would be happy to put me to work. I wouldn’t be expunged. I have not been driven out.

But it’s more complicated than that. An awful lot of the communities I left I did so because of health problems or trauma reasons and I can’t really figure out how to not be bitter about no one noticing or caring.

I have a fair number of friends who are more disabled than me. I make sure I do the work to carry the friendship because that’s fair. But fucking everyone thinks of me as more able bodied and resourced than them. I’m not.

Fully able bodied people expect me to drive 40 minutes to visit them in their completely child-unfriendly houses.

I am really struggling with my feelings around this. Because I don’t get to act entitled to people’s time or attention. They don’t want a child friendly house. But they want me to come visit and somehow keep my children from touching anything?

Seriously, if you ask me over and over how to make your house a better place for my kids and you never take a single suggestion and you berate my children for touching your stuff? Uhhh I need to stop coming over.

THEN PEOPLE GET MAD AT ME. THEY SAY I AM BEING MEAN AND SELFISH BECAUSE I DO NOT WANT DRIVE 40 MINUTES FOR MY CHILD TO STAND STILL IN A ROOM AND NOT TOUCH ANYTHING.

Get the fuck out of here. My kids are far more important to me than you are.

My kids are there. You are not. You expect me to give to you endlessly as you bitch about how I didn’t give you more.

My fucking children are more grateful than you bastards.

My children understand that the time and energy I spend on them has a cost and I have to pay it. My friends seem to think that I am a bottomless well of attention and energy for them. It’s really kind of odd.

It’s kind of funny how much people let me know that I exhaust them by driving really far to see them and showing up to do work in their house. Ok fine. I can stop. I won’t exhaust you anymore.

A buddy today told me I should change so I can have more friends.

No. No. No. NO. NOOOOOOO

If I made my personality less abrasive I wouldn’t have more good friends I’d have more people happy to use me.

If you knew I was cracking under too much stress and you made promises to be there for my kids… how dare you cancel every visit then tell me you think I’m doing a bad job. You made sure my calendar was limited to you. That was all the spoons and time I had for planning. Then you rarely showed up. So mostly I just stayed home and cried.

And I couldn’t talk about the year of this shittiness while it was happening OR I WOULD BE FUCKING DISLOYAL.

I feel like everything is all my fault. How dare I get so angry. How dare I act so frustrated. How dare I run out of the ability to take care of every one every minute of the day while getting nothing back…

You try taking care of people 24/7 for ten years and see if you can manage to never get frustrated.

I am glad that for most of the next 9 months I won’t feel like I need to reach out to people to help. Jenny’s life is well in hand. She doesn’t need me and she has very little free time. We have been talking about how busy she is in advance of me coming. This is wise. That way if I see her for 2 hours in a week a handful of times I won’t feel rejected. I know that is squeezing me in.

I struggle with the fact that other than these four people, no one’s life really has a Krissy shaped hole. It doesn’t matter when I am gone. I am not integral.

That makes me wish I were dead.

That makes me feel like a complete fucking failure at life. I truly wish I didn’t hold these relationships as the deciding factor in whether I have failed at life.

Look around, bitch, you’ve done other cool shit.

But it never feels like enough. I love you so much. But love is not enough. Fuck you John Lennon.

We leave in less than 30 hours

All the feelings. I am having all the feelings. I don’t remember if I logged here that the rheumatologist says I definitely have Ehlers Danlos Syndrome (after years of doctors telling me that there is no point in screening me) and I have arthritis. Osteoarthritis, not rheumatoid arthritis. Not that I’m super hip to the difference.

The house is so empty. The kitchen is empty. This is nothing like going on a trip. Our cupboards aren’t bereft of food… they are empty. The plates are gone. The cooking items are gone. Today we will do another thrift run on our way to drop off a car with a friend.

One of our cars goes away forever, today. The other one will technically remain in our possession for 15 more days because we need it between now and then but we are filling out paperwork today. We are just borrowing it for the next 15 days.

Tired. Can’t sleep. So many feelings. So overwhelmed. It is feeling terrifyingly real. We are going any minute here. I’m glad the kids can sleep. We are all anxious.

Holy tomato sauce on cheese toast… my kids are caught up on academics. I was starting to feel like that was an impossibility. But Eldest Child did a heroic push and she’s caught up. Now I need to catch up on grading. No problem.

Oh, we need to take the car seat out of the Prius and put it in storage. Eeeeeeep. Today is the day. We maybe should have/could have done that yesterday. I didn’t think of it. Oh well. I’m sure we would have wanted another run to storage today anyway so I can put paperwork in there for the house. We aren’t going to drag stuff pillar and post.

I’m going to do my best to have a media blackout for a while. I need to get off the internet. The internet hurts my mental health so much. It is hard to see a point in getting up in the morning and trying at life while reading the internet. Everything feels so hopeless. So I’m going to go talk to real people instead.

I wonder if Her Sweetness will use this car seat again while she is rear facing. I don’t think we would bother to come get it for August. We will try to borrow one for a month. It would be cheaper to buy a new one than to come get it. So we definitely won’t see this car seat again before she is about to turn 2 unless it takes a fair bit longer than that. We’ll see.

Where are we going to land? I don’t know. It is haunting me. Where can we be happy? I don’t know. I really don’t know. But it isn’t here. It’s not just me who is struggling here.

Let’s go see what’s out there. Oh goodness.

No computer

A couple of weeks ago when I had a late night and I was awake while everyone slept I went into the bathroom to talk to my phone. This is less convenient now that three members of my family are sleeping in the room that shares the wall with the bathroom. We do strongly prefer being close to one another. It’s a little bizarre how much we like being close to one another. I don’t remember seeing anything like that when I was a kid. I didn’t know other families who are as cuddly as we are. I’m still not sure I know people who spend as much time just touching each other as we do. It’s completely non-sexual. Which occasionally feels weird, but healthy.

Noah and I are struggling to figure out where our sex life fits in around the needs of our kids. We are definitely placing our kids needs as more important than our sex needs at this stage of our marriage. They need us. It’s interesting to me how the American custom is that kids should be away from their parents at night as soon as possible. My 10-year-old is very happy sleeping in a different room. She wants that space now. She is ready. My eight-year-old is not ready. He gets upset with being alone in a room all night. I don’t see a point in shunning him.

I have a different background than most, I guess. I was bed sharing with my mother when I was 17 because I didn’t want to be alone. Also because I’ve had back problems since my age was in the single digits and if I didn’t want to sleep with my mother the option was sleeping on the floor.

Sometimes it is surprising to me that my son rolls off his bed and sleeps on the floor on purpose. By the time I was his age my body was already broken and that hurt too much.

My daughter bought a tube top and a mid drift bearing shirt because she’s always hot. She is not seeking attention. It is hard not to be afraid for her. She doesn’t even understand the vulnerability that she has. She can’t really imagine being assaulted.

They surprise me in millions of ways.

Ack, nursing time.

Today I booked…

  • waxing
  • hotel in SF between cruise and Hawaii
  • car for beginning of Hawaii
  • car for end of Hawaii
  • emailed folks about the van hand off and transportation needs in SF
  • We want the Kuko line in Fukuoka. It will take ~22 minutes from the airport to our apartment. When we get to our stop, it’s a 5 minute walk. Awesome
  • I don’t think we’ll rent a car in Japan: https://yokanavi.com/en/transportation-facilities/
  • Holy crap! Japanese law says that babies don’t need to be in car seats while driving if you are a)in a taxi (logical) or b) nursing or changing a diaper!!! Whoa

 

I literally can’t look at us leaving Japan today. I can’t. My brain says it will melt. We are booked through April 22nd. Hopefully I can handle dealing with that step tomorrow because it would be super nice to have all of this done this week.

I’m feeling quite pleased with my progress. This is happening.

I still need to get to:

  • plane from Japan to Minneapolis for Noah
  • hotel in Minneapolis for Noah
  • plane from Japan to Scotland for me and kids
  • where are we staying first in Scotland? I assume Inverness but I should schedule a chat with Jenny
  • plane from Minneapolis to Scotland for Noah

ridiculous

My left shift key is broke. Sometimes some letter keys are sticking. I can’t download Firefox, Hangouts, Skype…. all of this is broken since Apple “fixed” my screen. Sigh. I didn’t want to pay $1300 for a new computer right now. It’s not convenient.

Oh my cheese on toast.

$1,000 expenses are convenient or inconvenient not possible or impossible. How in the fuck is this my life?

We are so ready to go. I know I am going back and forth listing things here and on Twitter. I’m trying to not let details slip through the cracks so I’m repeating stuff a lot.

Today we take care of switching our addresses with banks. We bank in three places right now. We have one account attached to the safe deposit box and that will have to stay active or we lose the right to the box. But they are a shitty bank to use for anything overseas so we will probably have all of our US auto payment stuff go through that bank and we will just send a set amount there every month.

The credit union where our five main accounts are we will be keeping the kid saving accounts there and moving everything on to banks we can use overseas more easily. But the kid savings might as well stay there for now. So we will only have two bank accounts with them after today, I think.

And then there is the fancy international bank account. I have mixed feelings about this one. I am not a fancy international person. I’m a slobby international person.

Taxes are coming along. I think I gave Noah the last of stuff from my share of record keeping. I hope. He is so nice to handle taxes. They make my stomach hurt.

That list of address changes I needed to do? Last three places bam bam bam today.

I think we’ve notified utilities. We have to tell garbage on our last day in the house, but whatever.

Kid classes have ended.

Noah has one more Japanese lesson.

We have one more dinner with a friend scheduled.

We are going to a party on Saturday! A neighbor is going to babysit the kids so that Noah can hit me before we give away our hitting toys at the party.

I have 6 more medical appointments. Noah has 2 massages scheduled before we go and leave our favorite people. We are both lucky.

Our wonderful M and B will be staying with us for two days next week so we can have a slow paced visit before we go. I’m looking forward to that. I don’t get to see them enough.

12 days. Plugging right along.

I am not sure we will be able to eat all of the food we have in the house in 12 days. Ha. We really love grocery shopping. It’s a hobby.

That is 36 meals for 5 people and 7 or 8 meals for an extra body…. maybe we’ll get through it all. *cross fingers*

Today I will put a bunch of stuff on the driveway because the rain is over.

We have flights booked to Japan. I was anxious about that step. Now we have planes to Hawaii and Japan booked and lodging in both Hawaii and Japan booked. I don’t have ground transportation yet, but that’s feeling so much less scary. Worst case scenario in Hawaii is we take the city bus that will take 1.5 hours to get to where we are staying. In Japan I am almost certain looking for public transit anyway and I have four weeks of sitting in Hawaii to figure it out.

This is just not much stress at this point. I will get it all done with time to spare. I am relaxing a little more. I’m nervous, but it’s not at a fever pitch.

I wish I was spending less time ranting in my head about what a horrible person I am for expressing my anger and disappointment that people didn’t give me what I wanted from them. I didn’t deserve it. I wasn’t entitled to it. I’m just a selfish asshole who will throw tantrums when I’m not given things I don’t deserve. Fuck me.

I tried not to throw a tantrum. I tried to walk away. But that parting fuck you over my shoulder was uncalled for.

Why do I hate myself for expressions of anger? I’m setting these boundaries because without setting them in this way I walk into you hurting me over and over and over again because I want you so much more than you want me.

I want you and I love you and I spent years pouring energy into you. I walk away with an empty bucket and a lot of pain. But I really don’t think I deserve to be angry about that. It’s just life. Shut up, buttercup. You didn’t do anything bad to me. You didn’t do anything wrong by not wanting the relationship I wanted.

I think that is a lot of what hurts so much. I’m the only one doing anything wrong. I want things I shouldn’t want and then I hurt myself in the process and I take it out on you.

I am such a shitty person. I’m going to go cry now.

Before 11 months is over….

She is standing for short periods by herself without holding anything. She consistently says “mama” for me and “dada” for Noah. Nigh-nigh is solidly for sleep. Nom nom is I’m hungry. She signs milk.

When Noah is holding her and I come close up she lurches towards me to have me hold her then she wants both of us to lean on Noah’s chest. It’s really sweet and cute and oh goodness I am so glad she is here.

She plays a lot. She’s super into her toys and she’s starting to kiss on her dolls.

She wants to practice walking up and down the hallway for long stretches of time.

She sleeps easily. Night weaning is going fairly well. She rarely fusses at night any more and it only takes a few minutes to convince her to go back to sleep.

She eats so much food. She eats and eats and eats until I feel like certainly she will pop. But then at other meals it is two bites and she’s done. She is learning her needs.

We are solidly on disposable diapers and her skin is now clear and healthy looking. She needs them.

She has her 1 year check up next week for more vaccinations.

I continue feeling like this family is really awesome for me.

Eldest Child continues to lurch towards finding balance. This is hard! Middle Child is struggling with feeling too big and too small for everything. Being in between is hard too.

Life is hard.

Nobody likes it when I cry all the time. It’s been a rough few weeks. But we keep moving. And we hug each other. We talk about our feelings and try to make space for people to be less than perfect.

 

I hope.

Phone calls I need to make this week.

If I give myself a week to make these phone calls I might get them all done today. If I planned them all for today I might get none of them done.

Good grief.

  • AAA
  • Wyndham
  • Capital One
  • Jenny

We need international driving licenses and for everything else to have the new address. We are almost done. We need to go visit our banks this week. Once the rain fully stops I am going to put stuff out on the driveway again. Looks like Tuesday afternoon.

I have a bunch of travel arrangements to make. I have us getting to Hawaii. I have an apartment for Hawaii and a different apartment in Japan. I don’t know how we are getting from Hawaii to Japan. I don’t know how we are getting from airports to places. I need to do some research. Eeep.

We are going to be in Hawaii for 4 weeks. I think we will only have a car for 1 week. And it’ll be half a week at the beginning and half a week at the end. There is a grocery store as far from the house as our local grocery store is from this house–basically, that’s no trouble.

Lots of time spent booking arrangements in my week. I need to book:

  • waxing before we go because I am vain
  • hotel for one night between cruise and Hawaii
  • transportation between cruise and Hawaii
  • car for beginning of Hawaii
  • car for end of Hawaii
  • plane to Japan
  • how are we getting from airport to house in Japan
  • travel in Japan? (look at trains, look at rental cars–with 5 bodies trains might be $$$$$)
  • plane from Japan to Minneapolis for Noah
  • hotel in Minneapolis for Noah
  • plane from Japan to Scotland for me and kids
  • where are we staying first in Scotland? I assume Inverness but I should schedule a chat with Jenny
  • plane from Minneapolis to Scotland for Noah

That’s probably plenty of planning. That gets me up through May. That’s a 3 month window. And we’ll be in Scotland May/June/July except for weekend trips. I will probably book those weekend trips from Hawaii.

Phew. That’s a thing or three.

14 days and counting

We leave this house in 14 days. That’s feeling… whoa. I have nothing scheduled for the next 5 days. I am trying to ramp down. Then next week is somewhat busy then we go.

Bye.

I don’t say fuck you because I hate you. Or because you are a terrible person. I say it because I am trying to cut this cord in myself. I want you so fucking bad and I can’t have you. Not how I want you. I tried for years. I can’t make it work.

This goes back to when my step father used to yell at me that if I couldn’t get someone to do something I just hadn’t tried hard enough.

I am trying to not see this as just a failure on my part. To some extent this is about you too, so fuck you. But not really. Oh god. I hate that I feel bad about hurting your feelings after mine have been hurting so much for so many years.

This week I am going to read. I am going to read all of the books that are sitting here in the “I should read this once then pass it on” pile.

Yes Pam, several are about Ida B. Wells.

I need to stop wanting y’all so damn much. Just move on.

14 days.

I feel like I’m going to stop breathing

If you tell me where this post is linked (and I get to go verify it) I will send you $20. Who in the hell is causing me to get so many damn hits on this post?

Holy. Shit. This is the month. 18 days. 13 days till my baby turns 1. We aren’t having a party. I am definitely depressed. I don’t feel able to reach out to anyone if my life depends on it. I am leaving. I never get to ask for anything again.

I get these people and the folks who voluntarily ask to be part of our life. I don’t have the right to keep begging people to be in my life.

I think back to Eldest Child’s huge first birthday ten years ago. I thought we were going to be part of a big community. Well, when I stopped doing all the driving those people dropped me. Ok.

I feel so incredibly hurt by all of the people in the Bay Area who drove past me to help other people but fuck me I should do everything alone.

I am leaving partially because if you asked me for help I would show up. Even though you treat me like shit and I know it. Because that’s who I am. Thus I am moving to get the fuck away from your using ass.

“Aunties”. Fuck it.

I am so bitter.

There are a lot of days I wish that having kids wouldn’t have worked out so I could be dead already. I am so tired of feeling abandoned and unimportant. When I ask you for help and you tell me no but you drive even farther to help someone else you remind me of my mother. Anyone but me deserves help.

Fuck me. Why am I still here? Why haven’t I died already.

Things like: when I used to try hard to be part of the home school group I would find out that all of the major decisions for when and where to schedule big events were made at private “just a couple of friends” off shoots of the main group so that my schedule was never taken into consideration. “Well this is what works for us. You can either come or not come.” *hair flip*

Yeah. I see you there. Why don’t you go do all of your own work from now on.

You have no idea how much satisfaction I get from having over a dozen people tell me that the group sucked after I left. No shit mother fucker. That’s because you all suck and I tried to rescue you from how shitty you are but it was too much work. Go to hell.

I am not willing to invest in the new group at all. It’s too late. Not even in terms of time. I am angry and bitter and I owe none of you a god damn kind word let alone labor.

I feel sick to my stomach thinking about how much damage I have done to my body helping people. I drove to fucking Arizona and caused pre-term labor problems doing manual labor for someone who didn’t really appreciate me.

Because I’m stupid.

Because I don’t value myself.

Because I treat people allowing me to work for them as the same thing as love.

I mean, she did kind of appreciate me. But not enough to talk to me on a vacation I’m paying for when her more interesting boyfriend is present. Not enough to keep her promises. Hell, not enough for her to bother remembering that she made promises! Fuck me.

I really don’t want to feel bitter like this. It really doesn’t help that a lot of this is so old.

It dates back to when all of my siblings were good enough to stay with our parents and I couldn’t. Because I was too much trouble. I needed too much help. So go stay with people who hate you and talk all day long about how much you are shit.

We will never go camping again because how dare I act like able bodied adults showing up and expecting a disabled adult to do everything for them is rude.

How dare I act like I am anything other than a menial serf here to do your labor for you. You are the good one. The one who grew up with a family and parents. You deserve good things. I should wait on you because that is the natural order of things.

Waste people don’t matter. They should serve the people who matter.

Fuck you. And fuck you. And fuck YOU with a chainsaw.

Fuck you and fuck you and fuck you. I am so mad. I am so bitter. I am so angry.

Fuck Marcie. Fuck Chris. Fuck Laura. Fuck Kira. Fuck Deborah. Fuck Alex. Fuck Desiree. Fuck Jen. Fuck fucking Tamy. Even though it hurts so bad I feel like my chest will implode: fuck Sarah.

You treated me badly and I did not deserve that. I can come up with excuses for all of you. Your feelings are so much more important than mine. I can justify you dropping me or ignoring me or lying to me or not keeping your promises or you thinking that everyone else is more important…

BUT FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU.

I get to be mad. I shouldn’t take it out on everyone else in my life but frankly talking about it helps me not do that. It helps me compartmentalize it.

I am angry with these people because they actually did things to hurt me. Maybe if I name them I will stop feeling like I am a monster who is blasting everyone in the world equally even though most people don’t deserve it.

I wanted some people more than others. It wasn’t returned. I feel like the problem came partially from me being stupid and allowing myself to like them so much. I shouldn’t have. They truly weren’t worth it.

That’s the trouble. These people make me feel like I am unworthy of being alive and none of them deserve that power. They aren’t worth me feeling this bad for this many years. I have cried for literal years over every person on that list of names. Because they didn’t love me like I loved them. Maybe the trouble is I pick selfish assholes. Maybe part of the trouble is I know that I have to get very angry with those people; I have to move; I have to create distance or I will be pathetic and crawl back and continue to beg these fuckers to love me.

And they aren’t worth it.