I know very well that Bailey didn’t come up with the quote about friends being around for a reason or a season or a lifetime, but she told me in a way that really influenced my life and my thinking and so for the rest of my time in my head that will be the author of that line. If I was pretty sure it came from a woman of color I would probably try harder to accurately attribute the line but I’m an asshole and I don’t think it did so I don’t care to be more specific.

Don’t we all have our own sense of priorities on these things? Who is important to acknowledge and why. You decide for you and I decide for me. It’s hard to tell who will be important in what ways. I am quick to cite people I don’t want erased from the greater story.

Aren’t we all creating a story? The plot differs, the setting is wildly different from place to place, the characters vary but we are all in medias res.

Who shapes your story? Why are they important to you? How did you pick them as the influencers you want upon your life? Did you ever consider whether or not you can deny them the power to influence you? Can you deny someone the right to influence you? Do you want to? If you do the opposite of what someone says is that still being influenced by them? What if you were doing a thing before they gave you advice and you kept doing the thing no matter what they said? Does that count?

I have no answers, only questions.

Question everything.

Especially your mother. She is not G-d. Even though sometimes it feels like the creator of your being, your former host must be the same thing as a G-d.

I feel like the level of emotional distress I feel in the US is directly tied to my feelings about my mother. It’s just different when I am farther from her. I want her, I love her, I miss her.

I will keep on missing her.

It is interesting trying to start coaxing my kids towards behavior that will be more appropriate for school. I have been calling them on a lot of little shit lately and they are kind of stunned. I have never paid so much attention to their small annoying habits in their lives and they are clearly gobsmacked. This is going to be an interesting transition for all of us. I really wonder if either kid is going to say they want to home school again. I honestly don’t know if we should. I think they need to learn what being Scottish means and I am literally incapable of teaching them.

Holy tomato sauce. Becoming Scottish means not expecting to see rows of tents living on the side of the freeway. We are moving to a first world nation. No we aren’t. We are moving from a declining civilization to one that is thriving and caring for its citizens. I fear that the American Dream is dead; long live the American Nightmare. That period of time when white supremacists would rather set fire to everything than share one iota of the beauty created often by POC.

I wonder when someone will use dynamite to sever a nose from Mount Rushmore to make a symbolic point about what this country is doing to itself.

So yeah. I am thinking a lot about the casual rudeness we embody as we move into this new culture. We are collectively trying to develop our Super Egos and that’s kind of wild. It is no measure of good health to be well adjusted to a sick situation. I have no adapted that well to the US. How will I adapt to Scotland?

“One in ten women in Scotland has experienced rape & one in five women in Scotland has had someone try to make them have sex against their will.”

Uhh, I think I will adapt ok. I think things will feel a lot safer. Even if sexual crimes are practically the only crime still increasing in Scotland.

I really should take a damn sleeping pill and go to sleep. Erf. I was half asleep all day but gosh I just feel so so so so awake. I am stretching my legs. 6.5 miles today. It was a good day.

I have been leaning on vices and coping methods really heavily for months. I need to stop. When I leave the country I need to not buy alcohol for a long time. Maybe six months. Maybe longer. I am drinking in a way I don’t want to continue financing. Pot is off the table. We need to take a break from sugar. I need to not do *mumble mumble* anymore.

I think I want Noah to make less money because when he can fund everything we need and vices… I have vices. When it is vices or food… I just don’t have vices. I mean, low key mellow non-self abusive ones.

That’s not true. I substituted free much more abusive methods. Hm.

Well I can’t be self abusive ever again. My visa depends on it. Talk about motivation. I declare myself cured. Guess I’d better get real into running. We live on a one track road that leads off into a running path. I am going to find out how long it is. I want my biggest hobby to be walking all over memorizing the city. I am going to walk around until people start nodding at me because they recognize me.

Which means not looking at my phone. It means being prepared to smile at pretty much any time. It means having a whole set of pre-prepared scripts that are as socially acceptable as I can manage.

1. Weather
2. How great Inverness is.
3. How awesome rain is.
4. Questions about gardening.
5. (After multiple conversations) Requests for information I should know about living here.
6. Travel observations.
7. Talking about children in an upbeat and unrelentingly positive way.
8. Cooking.
9. Questions about their hobbies.
10. Books.

I think that is what I’ve got. I hope it’ll get me started.

I figured out how to thread the needle of respecting the boundaries I feel are important while still seeing a Portland friend. This stuff is so complicated. I feel proud of myself for how I handled it. I learned a lot from the parenting forum. When an offer was made that I was not comfortable with I said, “We will look at our schedule and get back to you.” As a family we talked in privacy about what we could counter offer with that might be well received. We figured out a plan. Our plan was accepted. Yay we get to see each other.

But there’s a lot of tension and pain all around. This is why I feel so bad about having judgments. I don’t want to hurt someone else just because I don’t want my children exposed to their life. I feel like it is saying that I am better somehow and that’s not it. I’m not better. I’m a different flavor of asshole; a hypocrite about slightly different things; I fail just as often.

But I would rather fail myself than my children. I pick them over and over and not everyone prioritizes their life around making choices I want to expose my children to. That’s ok. That doesn’t mean I’m better.

My kids ask me why people do various behaviors I don’t model and I usually say something like, “Well people are trying to cope with the things they are having to experience. They have been taught some set of behaviors by their family and school and community. They have their natural impulses. They have the badly constructed bridges between those two things. Sometimes a bad choice is the best choice you have available. A choice may be bad for one person and not bad for another person. Sometimes there are health/financial/life consequences for needing to use a coping method. Life is hard.”

My *mumble mumble* usage does not do good things for my body’s overall vitamin absorption rate. It is good that I don’t have a choice about leaving it on this continent. The amount of sugar I have been eating has increased the inflammation in my body. The fatty food we eat contributed to Noah and I both developing fatty liver.

Choices have consequences. I am not better.

I kind of feel like I don’t need to bother trying to cut people off at this point? I don’t need to worry about future influence because, frankly, I don’t have plans to bring my kids back to this continent and that limits the influence of everyone here. I am going extremely low contact with… everyone.

That’s not true. I have a growing list of people who are scheduling video chats. And I have some awesome friends who type at me all day long sometimes. And I am going to increase my consistent in-person contact with Jenny for the first time in ten years. I am going to learn from her. I will get to enjoy who she has grown into being.

So yeah. Generalities are rarely correct. I’m not moving away from everyone. I’m moving into a more curated level of exposure to people I love.

And the US has many lovely places to live where people are very happy.

More than one thing can be true.