I get the impression everyone is having sleep disturbances lately. I had a really sad, overwhelming dream about Harry Potter having a very different ending with Draco martyring himself to save everyone. It was intense.

I feel like I could sleep for a solid four days before I caught up on my sleep deficit.

More things have broken in the house over the weekend. And orders for parts have been cancelled so it is going to take much longer to get the house back to a state of not-under-construction. Not being able to clean up and put things away is making me feel crazy. I picked a real lemon of a house. Once we get EVERY FUCKING THING IN THE HOUSE fixed it will be great. But we bought a house at the very top of our price range thinking that we would be able to get away with not having more house spending for a while. Instead we have spent over a year of expected living expenses on fixing things and no sign of a slow down. My anxiety is creeping up massively. We are starting to talk about when Noah will have to get a job again because his runway for getting product-selling up and going is going to come to an end. That feels absolutely nightmarish right now.

Something that I have noticed about many of my friendships from the past. The ones that I am continuing and that feel like they are going ok are with people who understand that when they send me an email it might take two or three months for me to respond. Sometimes six months.

I think my anxiety has generally decreased because I have lost that constant feeling of not-doing-enough for my friendships. In California I knew so many people that I always felt like I was letting a tremendous number of people down by not doing more to keep up the relationship. I “should” call people more. I should have every day of the month booked to sending a certain number of chats/emails to cycle through the hundreds of people I know. I should host events many times a year so that I get enough face time with allllllllllll the people.

Then I moved here and literally the only “should” person is Jenny. Historically speaking we have not done all that well seeing one another often. We are both prickly. We have never had that much in common. We have done best seeing one another a dozen or so times a year and not talking every week.

Then I moved here and she had a massive backlog of being lonely. And I am absolutely used to feeling like I am supposed to put a ton of energy into maintaining relationships and trying to contact people so I transferred a lot to her. We talked a lot about weekly or several times a month in person contact with online chatting being basically daily.

That’s… a lot.

Would things have blown up in the same way if we had slowed our roll substantially when it came to contact? Would we feel like we have to talk about touchy subjects so much if we weren’t using one another for daily support?

It is really rough for me that Jenny wanted me to shove my kids away so that I could instead spend my time with her. Do I need breaks from my kids? Absolutely. Do I need to force my older children into school for 30 hours a week and figure out how to get my toddler into preschool early so I can have a part time job amount of time by myself that I then fill with social visits with her?

That sounds… awful.

Not because Jenny is awful. That’s not my point. Do I get annoyed with my kids? Yes. I just shouted at them to stop fighting over my PT equipment.

There are so many layers of complexity to space from my kids for me. Finding a healthy balance there is not the same for me as it is for other people. I mean, that sounds ridiculous. Everyone has to find that balance; I’m not special. But the things that play into it are different for me. My mom sending me away when I was a kid was super traumatizing and I am not even close to over it. I decided I wanted to homeschool my kids at seventeen so giving that up because I’m tired or want a break is a different thing for me than it would be for someone else. It’s a failure to live up to what I dreamed. I want to home school my kids until they are ready to move off into the world at their own speed.

EC feels fully ready to hit the ground running in August and she knows there will be no more take backs. She is ready to graduate from home school. She did not think that finishing primary school in a public school was right for her. I am trusting her.

MC does not want to go back to primary school. She wants to find activities and make friends that way. I trust her.

YC does a lot of singing about wanting to go to school because her signing program does a lot of singing about how great school is. But I don’t think she is actually aware of any of what it means and I don’t think she would be happy with being separated from the family for 16-30 hours a week anytime soon.

I do not have a job. I am lucky. I choose to be available for this. I do not have to earn a pay check. That means the calculus is different for our family than it would be for someone else’s family. Not that my choice is right. Not that other people are doing something wrong if they make a different choice. If I had to work (for a million good reasons including if I just plain fucking wanted to) then I would figure something else out and I would help my kids learn how to adapt.

We also have such a strong genetic history of severe trauma in the bloodline that this is not the same conversation for us as it is for other families. That matters.

I didn’t move here so that I could give up the commitment I made to my kids and replace it with hanging out with Jenny. I feel like I am being pressured in that direction. I don’t know that she intends to put that kind of pressure on me–that’s outside my ability to know. But I feel it. And I have responded very negatively to it.

In the past month I have spent as much time talking to people as I did in a week in California. And it’s only that high because of forums.

I do need a break from people, from expectations, from having to do a lot to maintain friendships. I feel like I am hurting Jenny by needing that and it’s really complicated.

This doesn’t feel simple to me. I know that I have cut a lot of people off. I have done so to such a degree that it feels… almost callously simple. It is never simple. I don’t want to end my relationship entirely. I also don’t know how to carry the weight of it.

I feel like I am doing wrong no matter what I do.