Monthly Archives: April 2019

Point out the good bits too.

1 Reply

I get really stuck on the negative. So here’s some of the positive stuff I’m noticing about my kids:

Middle Child has been working on himself in a variety of ways. Even though I can still find frustration with his volume and stomping, he has gone from screaming all the time to talking loudly. That’s absolutely amazing. He’s doing great in context of how far he has come over the past few years. I told him that I am no longer upset about him hitting a 9 out of 10 in terms of volume I’m trying to get him to go from a 6 to a 4. That’s a big accomplishment already.

He has been very good about managing the size of his body in relationship to other kids lately. We went to the park yesterday and he was super careful of all the tiny little children running around. He took turns and looked carefully before going down slides or throwing things. I could visibly see him putting effort into caring about the people around him. He has also been much more gentle with both of his sisters since we got to Japan. I can see him pulling himself back and refraining from roughness. I am really proud of him. He was really rough in Hawaii and he’s put a lot of effort into chilling out over the past two weeks.

He has been pressuring me about sugar far less. He is eating fruits and vegetables and plain yogurt without complaint. (He’s is having some itching issues. Plain yogurt is the best way to encourage your body to stop itching that I know.) He has been noticing how good he feels emotionally when he exercises and he has been asking to go on long walks. That’s a big deal!

He is also doing way better with academics since we got here. Having the expectation of doing some sort of reading or writing or talking about academic subjects for an hour a day instead of trying for 3-4 hours a day of doing specific assigned work has really helped him. He feels more successful so he is more willing to try. I think that a lot of his abject refusal to try for a while was because he felt like he was going to fall short, so why bother starting?

He’s even doing better with hygiene stuff. There is still room for improvement… but he’s doing a lot better with fewer reminders.

Eldest Child has been really doing super well on hygiene stuff. She has a lot more body stuff to take care of these days since puberty is inching into her life. Her dandruff has been intense since we got to the cold/dry weather. We found her some shampoo and she’s using it religiously. She has also had a massive acne breakout and she is doing multiple steps of skin care a day. She is still keeping her ear piercings very clean and I feel really glad to see her taking so much responsibility for her body. She’s doing great on teeth care and everything. This has been a real struggle for us in her lifetime and I feel like she has grown up a lot over the last couple of months in this department. She has a lot more to do and she feels a lot more motivated to do it for herself. It’s neat to see.

Her art work continues to really impress me. She has made progress with some of her digital drawing stuff as well as her continual progress on paper. She still prefers pencils to other mediums and that’s cool. Her flowers are really neat. She gets texture and shading stuff that I am not good at reproducing. I love watching her talent grow.

She has been taking responsibility for reaching out to her friends and good golly Miss Molly I am so excited to see that. She is emailing some folks. She is reaching out to try to set up Skype dates (these have only sorta worked so far, she’s figuring out how to schedule with kids) and she is trying to write letters. I am really impressed to see her try to grow like this. She is becoming much more adult.

She is pushing back on some of my behavior that is a problem for her. That’s a big forking deal. I am really proud of her for saying that I am hurting her and I need to stop. I want her to have these kinds of skills and abilities for life. I mean, yes of course it would be best if I never hurt her… but let’s be realistic. People are going to fuck up and hurt her. I am glad she is learning how to say “That isn’t ok and it needs to stop.” Important life skill training.

I continue to be shocked by how drawn to fruits and vegetables she is. She is also really grooving on the rice here. She has never been all that into meat but she is trying to eat more nuts and tofu to make up for it. She also asked us to get some miso, tofu, and seaweed. We are going to break out the burner later today and try to cook for her in her apartment. She’s excited to get to learn more about cooking in a new environment.

Her writing has come so far. I am absolutely stunned by how legible and well spelled her writing is these days. She has put a lot of effort into improving and I think that’s amazing. I don’t harp on her and I don’t force her to do spelling practice. She learned more about spelling because the kids in the chat rooms made fun of her. heh.

Both of the big kids are doing super well on regulating their sleep. That’s great.

Her Sweetness has hit another growth spurt. The 18 month clothing that fit well in Hawaii is starting to be high waters and super tight. I am going to be donating a whole bunch of it here and not replacing it till we get to Scotland. I am trying to see how I can bring this high chair with us because it is so dang handy and replacing it would be annoying. I think it will fit into our biggest suitcase if I get rid of a bunch of other stuff. Ok, I can do that. It weighs less than 7 lbs. The other things that MUST go in that bag is the giant pad of art paper and the laundry basket. So that bag may end up being less than 30 lbs because the stuff in it is so bulky. That would be kind of amusing.

Baby girl is signing more and she is trying to speak more. She is standing on her own a lot but she still isn’t quite ready to walk. I’m starting to think she won’t hit that milestone in Japan even though I kind of thought she might when we arrived. That’s dandy. She has clearly gained some weight and carrying her around is a struggle. She’s a good eater. Whoof.

Noah is being so kind. I think that the lack of cooking time/effort is feeling a little bit break like for him. We both spend some time food prepping and we spend a lot more time on set up and clean up but it’s still less time than he spent on food planning and prep in California. Way less cooking time than in Hawaii when he was trying to dance around using the minimally adequate kitchen. Here we are just buying prepared foods and raw fruit/veg and calling it a day.

Noah has a big presentation in less than a week and he hasn’t snapped at us once. Even though we are in his face 24 hours a day and he has to work with enormous distraction. He is plowing through his work and doing his best to be pleasant even though we can be quite frustrating. I continue to be overwhelmed by how much effort this man thinks we are worth. I could not have earned what he gives me and my children. He does it because he wants to. I am so glad I get to have him as a partner.

We have managed to have sex here and it was really nice. Sex has changed so much for us over the past 15 years. I feel grateful that he keeps trying to grow and change and figure out how to be good for me.

I am very blessed.

And golly that email from Pam this morning was like a ray of sunshine. Thank you for taking time out of your day to tell me what I do right. It is really hard for me to feel like those things happen. I am grateful that you tell me that you see it.

Being seen

Leave a reply

I woke up to a whole bunch of emails today. All of them make me feel a lot better. I hate how much contact with other people decides a lot of how I feel about myself. One of my neighbor said she started reading my blog. She said I don’t hold back. I tell it how it is. She says my words really get stuck in her head. I make her think. Wow, I hope that’s not a bad thing.

A different friend realized that my scheduling email had gotten stuck in their spam filter and we established contact so that we will be hanging out a little bit when I go up to the PNW.

One of my buddies on the far side of the country sent me his address because he’d love to get postcards in here for me. He wrote back to tell me about his life.

Several people have been emailing me in response to postcards. I get to hear about their joy. It feels really nice. I am glad they are finding joy. They really need it.

But most intensely was an email from Pam where she detailed all of the stuff she respects about me. She wrote about what circumstances I am in my best. It is nice to be reminded that I do have a best. I spend so much time feeling like I suck at everything. I don’t see the good parts about me very well. I see how much I fail.

There were a lot of good parts and good people to the bay. I do acknowledge that. But driving to see them was going to kill me.

Japan continues to be up-and-down for us as a family. If Eldest Child’s knee was doing better we would be having a much better time. Being housebound while she heals is really hard. For comparison, the two apartments that we are renting here in Fukuoka are about the size combined as our dining room and living room in Fremont. That’s all the space. And the space here is partitioned into four separate rooms. We are decidedly cramped.

Middle Child really needs to be taken out for long walks every day and we’re not being good about doing that. He is so much happier when he’s exercising. He is starting to really notice and that’s cool. I love seeing them develop awareness of their bodies. Eldest Child talks a lot about how eating more fruits and vegetables makes her feel better. Middle Child notices exercising increases his happiness level substantially. I didn’t notice that sort of thing as a kid and I feel so proud of them.

I continue to struggle with how much parenting requires me to put myself aside and focus on them. We are together so much that it means I don’t pay attention to me. It means I feel like I’m actively harming myself because I really don’t know or care how I’m even doing.

We didn’t do hypnosis before bed. So I had nightmares all night long. I had a few different ones last night. I could tell when one was ending and another was starting. That’s so annoying.

I miss pot. I really do need the help elevating my mood. I am miserable without it. I hate how much I blame myself for my depressed mood. “Just get over it already.”

I hate that I feel like Sarah telling me she wants to take a little break would have ended when she wanted to have access to financial resources again. I hate that I feel paranoid about money. I hate that I feel like people want me around so they can use me. It’s not always true. None of the people who have contacted me since I left want anything from me other than to spend a little bit of time with me. I know that. I mean, they may want me to help them find something on the Internet or talk to me about how to fix a problem in their life. But nobody’s asking me for money. Nobody’s asking me to come over and fix anything.

Compartmentalizing feelings about this many people is challenging.

I feel like my Discord group is becoming less useful to me. I feel like I’m spending a lot of time arguing about things that I don’t need to be arguing about. Things like, do you mothers have the right to get happy about people lecturing them about safety stuff. The non-breeder in the group had the point of you that mothers should just stop assuming that people have negative intentions and accept all advice as being kind hearted. But in my experience folks get rabid and nasty if you don’t follow their advice. And the advice from my first child to my last child took a 180. Should I have followed the safety advice in the first set of advice? Should I follow the completely opposite advice that I got the last time around? My pediatrician looked really sheepish when she was telling me the guidelines for my third kid. She said that science has found that all of the advice she gave me for my first two kids was really bad. And people wonder why I don’t instantaneously comply with new safety guidelines.

I don’t need to get into a cheerful, pleasant conversation about safety guidelines with everybody who wants to have them with me. Many of those people turn around and tell you how stupid you are if you don’t immediately comply. I just say fuck off at this point; I don’t wanna have this conversation. It would be a tremendous waste of my time if I were willing to comply with each of those conversations. She couldn’t see the parallel to street harassment. I see it quite clearly. She said that people are just trying to help. Well, maybe they are, but I’ve been doing this long enough that I understand that their advice is on a timer until it is debunked. I don’t need to spend a lot of time politely listening.

Yeah I am a bitch because I don’t carefully listen to each safety evangelical. Ok.

Why do I feel like these conversations devolve into shaming? Maybe because I’ve been doing this for over 11 years. People start lecturing you about safety the moment you know you’re pregnant and let anybody else know.

I haven’t had any other experience that parallels the level of forceful advice giving that parents receive. And I have a bunch of chronic health complaints where people like to give me stupid advice. Parenting is much more prone to prompt every idiot to tell you their opinion of how you are doing it wrong. I would get whiplash if I cared and tried to comply.

I very carefully pick who is allowed to give me advice about parenting. And unless I have come to you and specifically asked for your advice, you probably are not on the list.

Healthy anger, communication, boundaries

Leave a reply

I’m reading a book about CPTSD. The author says that it is important to be in touch with all of your feelings, but it’s not ok to display anger in unhealthy ways. Just reading that sentence makes me cry because I don’t think I understand what an “acceptable” way to display anger is. I mean, I know I can’t call names. I know I can’t scream and shout and break things. But mostly my experience is that when I try to set boundaries without flipping out… either someone else flips out to try and stop me from expressing what I’m expressing or they just ignore me.

Many months before Sarah and I broke up I told her in a face to face conversation that I thought it would be a good idea to walk back many of the promises she was making because she seemed to be having trouble keeping them. She assured me that she was going to keep them thank you for reminding her.

That didn’t increase how reliable she was at all. It didn’t increase the attention she paid to my kids. She did tell me that when I wrote about her failures it made her not want to try at all since I was publicly shaming her. So I stopped writing about her as much. That didn’t help either. I am fucked no matter how I try to fix it.

My needs suck. My needs make me hate myself and hate other people. Because if I have a need I can’t fix on my own it just won’t get met and I can go fuck myself.

A bunch of former neighbors keep emailing me. On one hand that’s really nice. On the other hand, they are emailing me because they want me to tell them how to fix problems in their life because I am no longer wandering the neighborhood being helpful. “Where do I buy this?” “How can I fix x problem with the DMV?” “That thing you made for me–how do I make it?”

I mean… it’s nice that they think I’m so competent? But I feel absolutely terrible. I’m in a new very constrained environment trying to figure out how to meet basic needs for my family. All food acquisition happens with me walking a fair distance. Eldest Child hasn’t been up for our normal walking because she bloody keeps falling down and hurting herself. (I think she is growing and her center of balance is off. She does this every so often. But I can’t just drive her around until this is fixed again like I could in California.)

I am struggling to meet my own needs. Why don’t I just take time out of my day to fix all y’alls problems too…

People on the internet keep telling me that I shouldn’t give to people if I have any expectation of getting anything back. I should only give when I can do so from a spirit of generosity not needing anything back from the person.

Then I should never have bought DVC. Then I shouldn’t ever respond to any of these emails. Then quite a few of my “friends” are people I should stop contacting ever again.

Because I do want things back from them. And that makes me bad.

Having unmet needs that I can’t fix for myself makes me bad.

I had a good chat with Eldest Child today about feelings and protecting each other. We talked about how sometimes I am too hard on her and she feels like she can’t tell me that I am hurting her. I said that is a major problem that we need to fix because it’s not ok for my child to be absorbing my pain. She said she doesn’t want to upset me. I told her that if I am hurting her then I need to be upset with myself and I need to change. She said she feels really bad upsetting me. I suggested writing me letters so she doesn’t need to see my reaction. She said she will try it.

I don’t need people to treat me like I never do anything wrong. But I am so bad at setting boundaries without being angry. I am just ignored.

It’s like with Noah and the sex stuff. I tried to talk about it for a long time. I couldn’t make him understand until I started acting out in hurtful ways. I don’t feel proud of myself. I feel like I am a shitty person who never deserves to be trusted or treated well again. But I needed it to stop and I will accept the consequences for doing what I had to do. That’s the deal.

I spent my third pregnancy sitting at home and crying because I wanted to kill myself. I had less ability to drive than usual so less therapy. I didn’t really see friends. I feel incredibly wounded by that experience after I spent so many years driving to help people. To clean up the hoarders houses because they couldn’t do it emotionally. To help people post-surgery. To bring food and companionship to new mothers or elderly folk.

But fuck me.

Yeah the bay area was “perfect”. Perfectly happy to use me up until I kill myself.

“Everyone would be much happier if people just stopped perceiving microaggressions.” Well that sounds about white.

Some people will be happier, that’s true.

I bought fucking DVC so I could have a way of financing spending time with Sarah. She wanted me to give her my points so she could have trips with her friends and family and not deal with my needs.

I looked into selling the points. It looks like they are almost 3x’s as expensive now as when I bought them. At least I will make back the money I spent on those trips. In the long run I will probably effectively make back all the money I ever spent on park admissions and food.

I don’t think I can come back to California to live and I don’t think I care enough to fly back to Disneyland. I feel like the whole place is poisoned for me.

She took money I gave her for groceries and bought a plane ticket to go see her sister. It’s not like it was a one time thing that she took resources from me so that she got to feel like she was the one taking care of her family.

I don’t even know if I feel bitter. Just sad. Rejected. Worthless.

How does Noah make me feel better about myself than other people do? He absolutely does not make promises unless he can keep them. He makes me feel like I am worth honesty. He’s quick to tell me that he can’t do something. He doesn’t expect me to give and give and give so he can turn around and pass that effort on and look cool because he has it to give.

I am tired of feeling sad and worthless. I am tired of needing to explode with anger so that I can get people to stop saying, “Well why don’t you give more to me.”

BECAUSE I AM FUCKING EMPTY. FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU. FUCK YOU.

Dad’s girlfriend has been super kind about our upcoming trip to Portland. I don’t have one bad thing to say about her. But I hate myself for feeling suspicious and tentative because this came after I turned down loaning him $25,000 and I told him that I didn’t ever expect to be welcome in his home again now that it is full.

He said that we could stay there in the guest room but he wouldn’t dismantle his dungeon. He would just throw a blanket over stuff.

Uhm.

I don’t know that the amount I shield my kids from kinky shit is necessary. It doesn’t matter if it is necessary or more than needed. I am going to keep doing it because this is how my fucked up brain knows that there will be no inappropriate sexual conversations with my children. They know about anatomy. They know about birth control. They know that some day when they are ready I will support them doing whatever makes them happy. They don’t ever need to know that I like to be whipped and called a whore.

Do I like it? Do I feel like it is what I deserve?

I can’t separate those things.

I had good dreams last night. I asked Noah to hypnotize me to sleep. This was the first morning in a while where I didn’t wake up crying and/or feeling sick.

I know I hurt my kids and it makes me feel like dogshit. I know I hurt my friends and it makes me feel like I should disappear so I never hurt them again. I have to set boundaries and I seem to be incapable of doing so and having healthy relationships. That means I should be alone. That’s how I should set the boundaries. That way I don’t hurt people. I don’t have the right to hurt people. That’s me being a selfish cunt.

Asking people to please, please, please not make promises they can’t keep… that’s not ok. That’s not enough. They promise because they want to be able to keep the promise. Then I’m the fucking asshole when I notice that they are effectively lying to me.

I’m the asshole. I’m the asshole. I’m the asshole.

But I’m an asshole who got the baby to sleep finally. So I got to type. Wheeeee

Don’t wanna.

Leave a reply

I don’t want to fanatically police behavior. If you know the rule (you get 1 hour of screen time) and you ask to go on a device that won’t shut off automatically… it’s not polite to knowingly stay on until I yell at you.

So fine. You can write lines. “When my one hour of screen time is up it is my responsibility to put the screen down.” (One kid was on a device that shut off automatically. There was zero ambiguity about the passage of time. They both knew. They both stayed on the device that they should have put down.)

When you lie about finishing all of your lines so that you can move on to what you want to be doing…

You can write twice as many lines the next day.

Cheers.

I won’t scream at you. I won’t hit you. But you can rehearse for yourself how you should be acting. This is *literally* what we have been talking about for a week. But you don’t care. Ok fine. Write lines.

And you don’t get screen time again in this country. You can gain access to the iPad again when I bloody well feel like it, not when you ask. It will be used for my convenience not yours. And not having screen access means you can’t read your library books.

Stop. Fucking. With. Me.

Compartmentalizing bullshit

Leave a reply

I had a realization yesterday about pieces of the anxiety going away: I don’t see white men anymore. I don’t have to be ready to fight at any given moment. When I say that my anxiety is less, that’s what I mean. Violent crime is really low here. As a white person, the police would be very eager to help me deal with any problem I had with a citizen as a matter of national pride. If I showed up visibly assaulted to a police station… they would take it seriously.

In the US they would tell me that they won’t ruin that nice boy’s life over me.

So that’s a huge component of my day to day anxiety. I am afraid of white men for very good reasons. Like with my shitty neighbor: I had to kick him over and over and bruise his ribs to get him to let go of my upper thigh. That’s just life in the US. That won’t happen to me here. I can’t imagine a Japanese man thinking he had the right to do that. Sure, they might try to look up my skirt. I hear about issues of gropings on trains, but walking down the street it isn’t going to happen and I’m avoiding trains.

But I am afraid of my friendships. I am afraid of messing them up more than I do by existing. I am afraid that if I advocate for myself that people won’t want to be in my life anymore. I am afraid that if someone asks me for an overwhelming kind of support I will hurt myself to give it because they are more important than me. I am afraid that it isn’t ok for me to ask for any support. So I am not asking for support.

I haven’t talked to anyone on a video chat in a couple of weeks because I would want to dump my emotional pain and I don’t have the right.

I need to just try to shove this shit in a hole and try to get back to “appearing happy” because that is all people want from me.

If I can’t spend a phone call asking questions about their life and supporting them I don’t have the right to have a phone call at all. Right now I don’t have anything to give so I am not calling anyone. I am having brief internet chats because it is slightly easier for me to shove my crap down and not bring it up as much… but I’m not even doing as well at that as I should be. I feel so much shame for every mention of feeling bad.

How dare I think my feelings are important. Just shut up. You are centering yourself again you stupid white bitch.

Eldest Child hurt her knee the day we arrived in Japan. She spent a few days walking on it and now she is waking up with it swollen. Yesterday it felt better by the afternoon so she wanted to walk to a restaurant. I shouldn’t have allowed it. I won’t allow it today. We are applying ice. She is taking ibuprofen. When she takes the ibuprofen she feels fine and she wants to play. She needs to bloody sit still for a day or three. Clearly nothing is broken. Clearly she doesn’t have a torn tendon or anything. She just won’t let it rest and walking to a restaurant means a good 2 mile walk roundtrip at minimum. Today I will be carrying all of our food home for everybody. I have carried most of it home for the past few days.

Noah is doing less of the food prep here. He has a serious need to spread out and I can cope with neatly preparing things on a tiny counter better than he can. So I’m doing it. It’s not my favorite but it’s important in this space. So I’m doing a lot of fetching and prepping food many times a day on top of my normal workload. He’s doing more baby care while I do the prep but that means she is wandering around his feet while he’s on the computer. (He has a presentation in 9 days that is kinda the entire point of his job and is why he gets paid the big bucks. He needs to be working a lot and I get that. He’s not being lazy nor rude.)

The big kids are frustrating in the extreme because I have to beg, cajole, and push them through even doing the dishes. They truly want to do nothing for anyone. They don’t want to do basic hygiene unless I stand over them glaring. They don’t want to wash dishes (we have a plate, utensils, a bowl, and a cup per person along with a knife and cutting board used per meal–it’s way less than they used to cope with at home) or sweep or do anything unless I am aggressive and kind of mean. They want to play, demand sugar, and say that I should be entertaining them more. As my work load has increased.

I am struggling to keep my temper. I am not yelling or screaming mostly because it would be so abominably shameful to do here. Wheeeeeee.

I feel really bad about myself. I feel like a failure on almost every level. I feel stupid. I feel worthless. I feel like a tool that is nearing its breaking point so I should be thrown away and replaced.

I don’t feel valuable or loved. Noah is trying, but I feel near constant guilt that I’m not pouncing him for sex the minute the baby goes to sleep because don’t I owe him that too? I am really scared I am going to get to Scotland and I will have to avoid Jenny’s family entirely or risk being anything other than perfectly nice so that I deserve them hating me. I can’t lose Jenny right now. Not right on the heels of losing Sarah. So maybe I can’t risk contact with her or her family while I am such a fucking stupid cunt.

I have to cry on the toilet because there is literally no other place for me to be.

I am trying to be light and perky and giving because I know that is what is expected of me.

But I am empty.

Anxiety is funny

Leave a reply

I am having anxiety about writing. I feel anxious about getting my kids to be polite to me.

But my ambient paranoia about existing in the world is lower. It is freeing knowing that the people in this country truly don’t give a shit about me.

Bad dreams and paranoia

Leave a reply

Me and the big kids are having a lot of nightmares. Last night for me was about a “Christian Mission” housing orphans and sex workers. The organizers deliberately kept it bare of anything but beds (with no covers for the mattresses) and it was dirty and run down and giant like a maze. There were no corridors. You had to walk through rooms to get to rooms. I was looking for my mother in there and I kept walking through sex workers having to deal with violent clients. The owners were secretly rich. They got government funding to run this shithole and they didn’t see why they should have to share “their” reward.

Eldest Child has been having a lot of nightmares about Paul Hollywood chasing her with bread products. She has brought this up most mornings for weeks. Middle Child has had a continuing dream about all people under 40 being forced to live in one building complex where they are forced to work. (You are let out at 40 because you have no more value.) There is a long list of rules you have to follow and if you break any you are put in jail where you will do everyone else’s laundry by hand.

We are all anxious as fuck.

I am struggling with feeling like I am bad for writing about my feelings. Surely I am only doing so because I want to control people and I am bad. I am trying to force people to act in a certain way; I am being controlling and evil and…

I have a hard time with the way that mental health diagnosis stuff is weaponized. I can’t count how many lay people have told me that I must have Borderline because they don’t like how I am acting. Actually bitch, more than 30 clinicians have come to the conclusion that I definitely don’t so why don’t you go fuck yourself with a rusty spork.

I used to be friends with a woman. When she didn’t like my behavior she would start telling me that I was acting manic and I needed to get that under control. When I politely and calmly asked her to not use diagnosing language for me because she is not someone I am paying to have a medical opinion about me she completely fucking exploded and started screaming at the top of her lungs that she is a terrible person WHO SHOULD JUST DIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIE. I spent a bunch of time trying to calm her down and assuring her that I don’t think she is a terrible person who does nothing right, I just have a problem with this one behavior. It was really awful. How come I have to become your therapist telling you that you are ok because you did something that wasn’t fucking ok?

I am terrified of forcing people to appease me. So I spend a lot of time appeasing others. I don’t want to be appeased. I would rather move away and stop talking to anyone rather than force them to jump through hoops to appease me.

I am also struggling with a dynamic with my kids that has been going on for years. I have many examples going back a long time. I do this thing where I deliberately focus on the kids for a day each in a week then on a different day I say “We did x person’s thing 3 days ago and y person’s thing 2 days ago and z person’s thing yesterday today I want us to do ______.” Every time my kids start badgering me and/or tantruming about how they want _______. Sometimes it is something they want to do (that won’t be fun for me at all–like supervising them in a play area) but often it is demanding that I supply them with sugar. “I want ice cream” repeated for hours.

It makes me feel really really bad. I pay a lot of attention to you. You get your way a lot. Why don’t I get to say I want to spend 3 hours doing this other thing?

Noah always tells me that I can go do the thing by myself and leave him with the kids so that the kids don’t have a chance to do it to me. Then I find a corner to crawl into and I cry.

Why don’t I just be alone. I go through all this effort for all these people and when I want to do something I think is fun… why don’t I just be alone.

I don’t want all day every day to be my fun stuff. I don’t ask for anything even vaguely approaching that.

One of my buddies really wants me to call her. She has texted me a few times asking me to. But she wants a free therapist (she has never seen a real therapist). She wants advice on parenting and dealing with her parents and dealing with her legal troubles and dealing with the government. She spends about 5 minutes asking me how my kids are doing then she launches into all the stuff she wants help with. She doesn’t know anything about me. I don’t ever get to talk about how I am doing or what is going on for me. She literally knows nothing about me other than I always seem to have answers to her questions. I haven’t called her. I feel guilty. She begged me to please do so soon, definitely before I leave Japan. Something is probably going on for her and she wants me to tell her how to fix it.

I can’t fix my problems. Why do you want me spending my energy on fixing yours?

I am struggling a lot with feeling invalid. If i have both negative and positive feelings about someone clearly I am vacillating between idealizing and tearing someone down. Uhhhh, no? I am having both sets of feelings at the same time? I am not alternating? Oh. Well I have strong negative and positive feelings about people sometimes. THEN YOU HAVE BORDERLINE. Wait, what?

I feel like a lot of people weaponize mental health discussions to invalidate people having feelings as a reaction to legitimate negative treatment. I am pretty sure Sarah felt like she was supporting me as much as I supported her. If I disagree with that assessment it must be because I have Borderline.

I feel like I have to get enraged before I believe it is ok to defend my boundaries, then I am a bad person because I got so angry. But if I try to defend my boundaries in more mild ways I am walked on. I have no acceptable way to explain what I want or need. Anything I do to try and manifest that something is a problem for me is either ignored or used as a reason to prove I am bad.

I had to be willing to toss my relationship with Sarah overboard before I could say “The way you ask me to devote all of my spare time to you but then you rarely show up because your other friends are more interesting/important isn’t ok”. I am not allowed to object to being treated shoddily until I am willing to say “Fuck you. I am done.”

Then I have Borderline because I end relationships!

So what you are saying is that if I don’t let people treat me like I am disposable I have a personality disorder?

Ok.

I am tired of feeling like my emotions aren’t valid because they aren’t what other people want them to be. I am tired of having people (often strangers, but sometimes those who are closest to me–like Sarah) use weaponized language about my mental health. Either I act like they are perfect and never complain about their behavior or I have a personality disorder or a mental illness I have not been diagnosed with. I have spent tens of thousands of dollars trying to figure out what is actually wrong with me because so many people have been confident telling me there is a lot wrong with me.

Yeah. There is. But I have a pretty complete picture of what that is now. And fuck you for thinking that your stupid, ill informed, ignorant, hateful opinion needs to be added to my mental picture of myself. You are a selfish asshole. How’s that for a diagnostic reference for you?

I am tired of feeling sad. I am tired of feeling less important than other people. Noah tries all he can to mitigate that for me but it is so big.

A talented Black woman I learn from said recently that she won’t engage with white women because white women are violent (verbally but this shit counts) in their pursuit of having the status of white men and they are happy to step on men/women of color in the process. I have not stopped talking to my friends who are not white because of that statement, but it makes me question whether I have the right to ever approach another POC for friendship because I am inherently violent and dangerous.

I don’t want to hurt people. But I absolutely have. I have significant power to do more damage.

The only way I know I can stop hurting people is to die. Which is not saying “Be my friend or I will kill myself.” I am saying that people are hurt in so many ways by so many things that the only way to FOR SURE never cross a boundary is to not be alive. Human beings fuck up. I fuck up. I cross boundaries and say things I shouldn’t and I hurt people. I am not entitled to that right. I shouldn’t be hurting people.

So maybe I shouldn’t be allowed to talk about my feelings at all because I am the problem.

We will be ok.

Leave a reply

Everyone is expressing worry about the future. Each member of my family is expressing different kinds of fear and and anxiety. Where will we end up? What kind of job will Noah get? How will our lives be different?

I think this is why my anxiety is going down. Do you know what I have complete and utter faith in? My ability to adapt to a new environment. I’m good at that. I can do that. No problem.

Will we live on less money? Almost certainly. Will that be a problem? Well we will have moments of feeling irritated, but mostly it will be fine.

Noah is really worried. I’m just not in a way that might be stupidity but I don’t think so. I will be with the people who make me the happiest in the whole world. We will figure it out.

I won’t be able to be profligate with money anymore. That will be ok. This is a new set of habits in my life. I have done it because I can and it really doesn’t matter. When it mattered I didn’t run up debt.

We are halfway to Noah’s cushy retirement goal. The US does look like it’s about to melt down, but if it doesn’t that means we are probably 10 years away from where we want to be financially if we don’t add any more money. We are capitalist pigs. Our money will grow. And if we only have as much money as the top 60% of people in the world…. uhhh we will cope. Maybe I’ll have to get a job to fill in the gaps. *faint* Oh no…. qué horror!

Maybe the big kids will have to babysit to earn money for their extras. We won’t die.

Trying to find a groove.

Leave a reply

After my freak out yesterday morning we had a nice day. And this morning I got up early and prepared breakfast before the kids came over so that I didn’t get bitchy about them making a mess while they prepared their own breakfasts. It seemed S_M_R_T. We cleaned up our beds from the floor before they got here. So when they arrived we started with Good Morning Yoga and then while the tea steeped we meditated.

Then we ate a breakfast consisting of bell peppers, carrots, pineapple, grapes, apple, orange, tomato, buns, rice with mushrooms, and some sweet bready stuff. 2/5 also had kiwi. That was a fun breakfast. I won’t bitch at the kids later to eat fruit/veg. Everyone had 3-4 servings of raw produce and that’s great. It’s hard to get produce here. They just don’t seem to eat a lot of veg. We got salads from a convenience store yesterday because we truly require veg at a level the folks here don’t seem to need.

We are talking a lot about emotional regulation and being in control of our bodies because the entire atmosphere of this country requires a level of regulation we normally don’t attain. It’s dramatic.

I am walking a lot, more than everyone else but everyone is walking more than we did in California. I think Noah is walking more than in Hawaii but I don’t think the kids are. The kids and I usually exercise more than him because he works for a lot of hours a day. I’m hitting 6/7/9 miles a day.

I WAS A FUCKING GENIUS TO INSIST WE WORK UP TO THIS.

EC keeps playing and being silly and injuring her joints. Yeah. I think this is going to be a lifelong problem combined with puberty/growing making this a vulnerable time. I am happy that I had us screened for EDS before we go. I have a language for looking for ways to help us build appropriate strength for our bodies given our abilities and limitations. *pat prior self on the back*

I took their flips away and told them they don’t get them back until we are somewhere that we need to go swimming. It’s not ok to try to walk 6+ miles in flip flops. They fall and hurt themselves more than they don’t. Wear. Shoes. Oh. My. Cheesetoast.

Hi. You have walking shoes for a reason. Also: socks help prevent blisters so that you can stop complaining about how much your damn feet hurt.

We had a conversation about Confucianism last night at dinner. We talked about respect and listening and honoring the experience that your elders have. We asked them if we have raised them to show respect for us and be obedient. They said no. I asked how well that is going for them. They said mixed.

It was an interesting conversation.

We don’t require listening or obedience. That’s complicated.

I asked them if they feel that their normal blasé attitude is serving them well in adapting to the very different attitudes and behaviors they see here. They said not so much. I asked if maybe we want to slow down and pay more attention to listening.

They didn’t look at me. Ha.

They did listen when I said it wasn’t a good idea to take off running for the park we saw after dinner last night. By the time we got back to the apartment EC thanked me because her knees were hurting quite badly and it would have been worse if they had run a bunch.

I’m not always wrong.

I think she should have a couple of days of walking less and resting. I brought her in some Ibuprofen at bedtime, after we had each been in bed for a while because I forgot to give it to her before she went to her apartment for the night. The way her face softened and relaxed and “Oh you love me and take care of me”…. I fucking live for that shit. She said thank you. The words were far less important than seeing her entire body go soft with feeling loved. That was my favorite moment of the day. Yes I see you. Yes I want to take care of you. Yes I love you.

MC has been sleeping hard since we got here. Most of the time he resists sleep and we all pay for it because he needs more sleep than most of it and he has FOMO so he undersleeps and is grumpy a bunch. He’s trying to work on his moodiness and his self control though. So he’s trying to go to sleep earlier. I am impressed with how hard he is trying.

We had a very harsh chat about how him hurting his sisters has to fucking stop. He isn’t a baby anymore. It’s not ok for him to pinch, hit, punch, and kick his sisters. It’s just not acceptable on any level. Having a baby in the house is incredibly beneficial for him in some ways. He can see how things are different for him and Her Sweetness and it is starting to make sense to him in a way that he just never grocked with the Bonus Kids. Those kids weren’t enough younger than him for him to really feel like the standards deserved to be different.

I feel a little bit bad for shaming the shit out of him…. but it’s not ok for him to keep hurting the baby back when the baby hurts him. Babies will hit and kick you because they have no language and no self control. You can’t be at their level.

We are all learning so much and I am really grateful we get to spend the time together talking about what the lessons mean and what we want to get out of these experiences. We have time to talk about what we wish would happen and then debrief on what actually happened so that we can amend our behavior in the future.

I feel so grateful for the time we spend together even though there are hard moments.

I am still feeling less anxiety here than normal. The tranquility in this country is phenomenal. It’s interesting that EC is having anxiety spikes like whoa. She’s really struggling. MC is kind of oblivious to the opprobrium so he’s having a great time.

Also: I have taken a few doses of Imodium and now my bowels are less cranky. *phew*

We are trying so hard. We are trying to be nice to each other. We are trying to show patience. We are trying to learn how to find food in a place that does not prioritize our dietary needs. We are trying to learn how to take care of ourselves with different items available for support. We are trying to learn academic skills. We are trying to figure out how to read signs in a language that has no recognizable to us letters.

I am actually astounded by how well we are doing. We are eating well and having fun.

*pat self on back*

Pam linked an article about procrastination being more related to avoiding negative emotions in the current moment because feelings are hard and most people feel like their Future Self is more like a stranger and most people aren’t as kind to strangers as they are to themselves. I laughed and laughed and laughed. That’s why it is so easy for me to be nice to Future Me because I have a much easier time being nice to strangers than to myself. I am still giggling days later about how funny I find that.

Future Me is less of a fuck up and deserves better treatment than Current Me. That has been true for most of my life. “If you can’t look back on yourself 18 months ago and say wow I really sucked you aren’t trying hard enough” and all.

I back slide sometimes. And the first year of having a baby is fucking brutal every single time it happens. But the trend really is upwards towards greater health and stability and happiness for me.

It’s not what I expected for myself.

I did most of my PT exercises this morning before the kids came in. I will finish them before the shops open and I can go buy toilet paper. We have forgotten 2 trips in a row. Grrrrr.

I did about 1/3 of them yesterday. I am trying to get back to having a routine. But jiminy this shit is hard. I took my Chinese herbal medication stuff this morning. I am supposed to take it 3x’s/day and I am lucky if I remember once. I am trying though. I took my vitamins.

I am trying to take care of me and the people I love.

I am so glad that I don’t know a single person in this country. I get to focus on myself and my family and I don’t need to worry about what I should be doing for anyone else. I also don’t feel like an evil colonizer. I’m just a traveler coming through. It feels different. I don’t think I have ever been in a country that was not either white-dominant or colonized by white people before. This is… fascinatingly different. I am enjoying it.

The fruit is larger, prettier, and so clean but it tastes less intense. I think it is interesting that they don’t burn food almost at all. The potatoes are all still very white when they are done cooking. I am not used to that. The flavor profile is very subtle and I am not used to that. I haven’t added salt to anything.

We are eating more sweet bread than is strictly ideal. Balance is tricky.

(Not the internal organ kind of sweet bread.)

We are all dry as fuck. I’m rubbing lotion into everyone in my family because our cuticles are cracking and bleeding. I’m trying to get the big kids to stop picking their dang noses because they are bleeding all over stuff. UGH. The air here is super fucking dry. If you scrape the inside of your nose you will rip a hole in yourself. I know that it is “impolite” to blow your nose here. Go in a damn bathroom and do it anyway. We are not adjusted to this. We need to take care of ourselves. If the appropriate place is in a bathroom GO IN THERE AND GET IT DONE.

The bleeding all over things is inconvenient because when we wash the blood out of the sheet it takes over 24 hours to dry in our tiny little bathroom with the fan working hard. This is not ideal.

I may take it to the laundromat later and dry the sucker.

Her Sweetness is standing independently but still not taking steps. I am impressed she shifted back to her normal nap schedule immediately. We adjust time zones within 48 hours. It’s wild. The stroller is breaking and that freaks me out. Goodness she is so heavy.

Japan: the good, the bad, the frustrating

3 Replies

The first two days we were here I felt such a reduction in anxiety it was startling and odd. My family commented on how very calm I was. The trees help. The intense politeness and helpfulness really impact me. It’s beautiful here. Japan was never on my list of places to visit and now I feel like visiting here again would be ok. We are really enjoying the food (even though I have violent diarrhea).

The bad is that this morning I woke up and freaked out at the kids for being my kids; they are messy like whoa and this is a place that has basically no tolerance for that. When we eat they spill food everywhere and I’m having panic attacks as I watch them drip orange juice all over the place while they peel fruit. When EC dropped food on the rug (after I asked them 15 times NOT TO EAT ON THE RUG) I just about flipped my shit. These are not our possessions. You don’t get to ruin them.

I have been incredibly patient with how destructive my kids are. I haven’t punished them. I haven’t shamed them. I don’t treat them poorly for being clumsy and rough with stuff. The house in Hawaii was not well maintained so if we made a mess you couldn’t tell the difference from when we arrived anyway. Here it is different.

We are only eating one meal a day in the place we are renting because I think I would freak the fuck out if we tried seriously cooking all meals here. And we can get incredibly tasty well rounded meals for 4 people for about $15-$20. Why cook in a tiny space when that is the alternative? It’s not as expensive as we usually spend on groceries…. (So that’s good.)

When we went out yesterday and had to walk across the city we did our normal greet everyone thing. Holy tomato sauce was it different. Probably two dozen or so people acknowledged us with a smile, nod, or return greeting. One notable guy stopped in the mall (we needed warm baby clothing) and said a very excited “Hello!” I think he was thrilled to speak English and I get it, man. Most people treated us like we were ghosts. They didn’t acknowledge that we exist. That was hard on Eldest Child in particular. She felt very upset by being ignored. She’s not used to that. And then there were the 15-20ish people who were hostile or mocking. That was hard for her. For me it felt like a blast to the past when I was visibly white trash moving all over the place. I have had a lot of people sneer at me. This wasn’t more severe than I’ve had in the past. It wasn’t as bad for me as when we were in Virginia visiting friends on the road trip and neighbors called the police on us for being vagrants. Awesome. At least here they just give me a dirty look and move on with their day.

I broke down and bought ibuprofen because my head has been hurting so badly. Back pain, hand pain, arm pain, hip pain, knee pain, leg pain, foot pain…. I can ignore. I am a masterful dissociator. When my head hurts so badly that I can’t think or see properly… I don’t do ok. I feel vicious and mean and unable to cope. So I got some pain meds. Ahhhh blissful relief from headache pain with a normal dose. That’s why I don’t use pain meds almost ever. I need them to work when it is an emergency. I do wish my neck would relax a bit more. That’s not helping my head.

I need a massage and I’m not sure when I will be able to make that happen.

I completely reorganized our room today to make it easier to deal with the bedding and stuff. I think it will be easier going forward. *cross fingers*

I also had a long chat with the kids (hissed with venom because yelling here would be so embarassing) about why the food needs to be contained in the teeny tiny claustrophobic kitchen. It is not easy to eat here. But this is what we have for now.

Maybe if I put the camp towels down on the floor over the rug while we eat? Maybe in multiple layers?

That’s probably worth investigating.

I need to do laundry. That’s the afternoon task.

I figured out that if we put our bed mats on the floor… the heated rug makes quite a toasty bed! Well… it’s warm enough that Her Sweetness sleeping in socks, a long sleeved onesie, flannel jammies, a blanket over wrap, under a blanket next to me is only chilly to the touch instead of feeling like an icicle. I am sleeping fully dressed in multiple layers. The big kids are sleeping in a full set of day clothes and their jackets under a comforter. We are forking freezing in the 40F weather. I lost my long johns and one of my long sleeved shirts and I am so pissed at myself. I went through every bag looking. There is no chance of replacing them in this country where my 10 year old is bigger than most adults. Thank goodness for my flannel lined jeans.

Her Sweetness is in that stage where she can’t be kept off of electronics so we got her a little Fisher Price phone to play with. It will teach her Japanese, which feels fun.

There’s a lot to appreciate here. I am enjoying it a lot. But this could never be home.

In Tokyo, on phone

Leave a reply

Well, adventures are adventurous. Our flight left late from Honolulu and there was a major head wind so we missed our connection. The airline acted way more upset than us. They put us up in hotel rooms, with a free shuttle and dinner. Not terrible.

But we lost track of the diaper bag and that is hard on a few levels. Now we don’t have enough diapers for today and we lost a packet of wipes but I don’t care about that part. Two of our favorite baby books (First Sushi and Hello, Jalapeño along with Her Sweetness’ cuddle toy were in there. All of our bibs (we barely remember to use them) 1/4 of the jammies we have, a cute summer outfit, extra trash bags, butt ointment, my little first aid kit, a lightweight sweater, and pens. We still have 50+ pens so whatever.

Mostly it cuts like a knife because it was from Sarah. I am going to slowly lose the things from her (because that’s life) and it feels like extra stabbing wounds. A lot of how she showed me she loved me was by giving me stuff when she no longer needed it. My mom was a gifts = love person so Sarah’s tendency’s felt so much like trying to help me even though she didn’t have more time to give me.

So I will sit here in the dark and have a good cry and then I need to get the fuck over it. Nothing essential to life was lost. It’s an inconvenience not a tragedy. I don’t know if I will ever stop missing her like a bleeding open wound. I hope distance and time help.

Konichiwa and Arrigato are my two big words here. Doesn’t matter much how I sound them out and spell them in English. Ha. I think I am saying them close enough. And Hai. (It doesn’t sound like hi.)

Every time I leave the country I start speaking Spanish and that feels like a subconscious hint. Whyyyyy am I going to Asia and not South America? Tech conferences.

I barely slept. I should have tried the baby cot. The beds are narrow enough that my subconscious was worried about Her Sweetness flopping off so I kept an arm over her, much to her irritation. She nursed or fussed almost all of the hours I was in the bed. When I got up she finally went to sleep. Figures.

But I showered and my hair is braided and I am dressed. Yay flannel lined jeans.

In the long run I am not going to blame Sarah for the breakup. My inappropriate expectations were poison. Did she play a part? Sure. But if I had accepted her, flakiness and all I could have just appreciated a few minutes a year. Oh well. She wanted to be more than that without really having it to give. Life is full of disappointment.

It is ok to feel sad. But I need to get up and keep moving. Just keep swimming.

We want to be on the shuttle in one hour and 40 minutes. How early do I want to wake folks up?

I did buy 4 diapers at the store downstairs. Let me look up 9 kg in pounds… 19.8 lbs! Ok these diapers are fine. They are pull-ups labeled size 4; in the US we buy size 3 so I ignorantly thought these might be too big. I am excited to be wrong. Yay hotel store! I guess it works out that my kids are huge. Ha.

I opened the curtains. Oh wow the trees. We are on the edge of one of the biggest cities in the world and it feels super rural. That’s amazing. I will let the sun wake up my kids. Now I get to nurse more.

Instead of being upset about the inconvenience of losing the diaper bag I need to be grateful I had a spare diaper in another pack to handle the major poopy diaper last night before I went to the store. I am prepared for many events. That’s good.

Other great point: we showed up with enough yen to manage our needs for a couple of days. That’s brilliant. Well done, Noah, on bringing this much home last time.

Watching the sun rise here is breath taking.

I think we will all sleep hard tonight and pretty much wake up adjusted to the time zone. I am continually surprised by how adaptable my children are.

One of my friends sent me an info graphic on rejection sensitivity. It was kind of her. But way to call me out! Ha. Yeah… maybe that applies…