Yesterday I… just kinda did nothing. I loaded the dishwasher once and took the kids to class and fed them dinner. Otherwise I just sat around and allowed everyone to enjoy my presence. This happened because yesterday when I woke up my arms hurt so bad I was afraid that doing more work was going to result in permanent damage. I’m at that point. Feck.

My shrink called me because she wanted to tell me that my psych is the humanistic one she has ever worked with. When I started responding like she intended a conversation she said, “I didn’t call to get into this.”

Then why the fuck did you call me? To tell me I shouldn’t be upset so stop it?

Oh reeeeeally?

Can’t wait for next fucking Tuesday.

I will be saying, “If you are calling me intending to give me a monologue that I am supposed to silently listen to… send me an email. Don’t call me and expect me to be quiet and just listen. Nope. You aren’t paying for my time.”

Yeah, I’m kinda an entitled cunt sometimes about expecting my therapist to listen to what I say. And when she tries to cut me off to “answer a question” before I’m done speaking I am just about savage. “Do not interrupt me. I am not finished speaking.” Sometimes she looks like a chagrined little kid.

I get interrupted all day every fucking day. When I am fucking paying you to listen do not fucking interrupt me.

People frustrate me with this whole interrupting thing. In my house I can’t get super pissy because all of us do it to fairly similarly rude levels and that’s just how the cookie crumbles. But when I’m paying you to listen to me? Don’t fuck with my air time.

I’m paying very good money for this time. Because I genuinely need it.

I was good about mostly staying off of Twitter. I read what is going on with my closest friends and I asked something that my daughter wanted me to ask and otherwise I didn’t read. If my daughter hadn’t asked me to post something to ask for feedback from folks I wouldn’t have been on as much as I was.

Yesterday we had a playdate with a family Noah met through the pagan meetup. I was… honestly not real cheerful about this. I was anxious about meeting new people and I took it out on Noah by bitching a lot about him inviting over strangers during my supposed last week of this heavy work. It went really well.

I’m not going to get into how the whole day went or details about the family, but this is a kid who has been emotionally wounded by people being uptight about questions. They cried and asked me if I was going to be angry with them for asking very normal questions. No, kiddo. This is a safe place to ask any of those questions. I’m not going to be upset. Let me tell you what you have to do to upset me. It’s pretty specific. There are these few places in the house that are locked. If you get a lock pick and open one of those locks… I’m going to be absolutely furious. Short of that… dude, you are a strange kid who is trying to adapt to a new environment. How can what you do be so bad? You’re fine.

I’m back to having a ‘yes’ house. Do you know how much that means to me? A yes house means that my bedroom is off limits and these two locked cabinets are off limits and if you open any other drawers I don’t care. If you go in any other part of the house, I don’t care. If you play with something that isn’t “For Kids” but it happens to be down low enough that you can reach? I don’t care.

It’s fine. I’ve set things up so that I almost never have to say no. It’s really lovely and inviting and it makes me really happy to be in my space. I hate telling little kids no all the time. It feels so bad. I feel terrible. I feel like I’m hurting the kid by squashing their curiosity. Kids need to explore. Kids need to be curious. Kids need to ask if they can do things. Kids need to be allowed to try and fail and break things. It needs to be ok.

I’m so grateful that I have my house back. The only books I don’t want you easily accessing are hidden by furniture that’s kinda heavy to move.

You can explore. It’s fine. My sex toys are locked up. I don’t think you are going to see them unless you seriously violate my boundaries and then I’m going to be pissed. That’s a line. They are behind a lock. Don’t fuck with that. I’m maintaining your right to innocence. Don’t mess that up.

I tell my kids, “The things that are behind these locks are things you may not want to know about once you are an adult. If you look now you can never unknow what you know. I wouldn’t look any year soon if I were you. You can’t get that vision out of your head and you may not want it there… ever.”

It’s totally Pandora’s box. hahahaha

But unlike Pandora I tell my kids, “When you are 18 if you are sure you want to see… I’ll show you most of it. But not until then and then you have to have those pictures in your head forever.”

So far they say that they are content to trust my judgement. I think it really helps that I show them anything else. They know I don’t say this stuff about much, only when I need to.

Holy tomato. I got almost ten hours of sleep. Yeah, Lamictal was not my drug. Six hours of sleep with four wake ups? That’s not ok. Ten hours with two bathroom wake ups isn’t that bad. And the second wakeup was after ten hours. So really only one middle of the night wake up. That’s absolutely glorious.

My shrink & psych are happy to reference studies when they feel that I will be persuaded to do as they say. When I respond, “Oh yes, let’s discuss the studies. I can cite them chapter and verse and explain why they aren’t very relevant to me personally.” Then I’m told, “Why are you even talking about studies? If you want to make the case for your personal experience you shouldn’t be arguing with studies.” My head is going to explode. If I don’t read the studies they are wielded like a bat against me. “Studies show that marijuana impacts fertility.” “Let’s get into that! Studies show that there is often a three month cessation of ovulation in ovary-carrying-folks when they first start using marijuana. Studies then show that ovulation spontaneously restarts and no one knows why.” “Oh, why are you arguing studies?”

BECAUSE I STARTED SMOKING ALMOST EIGHT YEARS AGO AND HERE YOU ARE QUOTING A STUDY THAT SAYS THERE MIGHT BE A PROBLEM IN THE FIRST THREE MONTHS OF USE AND YOU ARE TRYING TO SCARE ME.

That’s not a particularly useful/relevant reason for me to avoid marijuana while trying to conceive when you compare it with a brand new drug that will cause my body to flush folic acid like it’s excess vitamin C when that is the basic building block of an embryo’s brain.

Come on now. You really think you can get away with saying, “There are drawbacks to both if we get into the studies” and have me not challenge you with exactly what those studies say?! Who the fuck do you think you are talking to? Don’t tell me that I have to do what you say because of studies then tell me I shouldn’t argue studies because it doesn’t help my case. That’s absolute bullshit and I will be yelling at my shrink about it in six days.

It is fucking relevant for me to read these studies? Why? Because my god damn psych will cheerfully give me drugs and not tell me that I need to increase folate.

So fuck you fuck you fuck you.

The funny thing is: my symptom/side effect list on this drug is identical to the list of problems you get when your body is low in folic acid. How… unsurprising. I was probably manifesting the flushing experience.

God I hate my body.

Looking at the symptom list for being low in folic acid and knowing that I recently kinda “flunked” a gene test about folic acid (I can’t hold on to it–it’s genetics!) it makes me wonder how often in my life my behavior problems have been linked to being low in folic acid. I certainly haven’t eaten foods that are rich in FA for most of my life.

Sometimes I’m very curious how my emotional/health problems are linked with my mostly life long shitty eating habits combined with rare physical activity or exposure to the sun.

I’m reading a book that talks about ACE scores. I have a 30x’s greater chance of getting a whole bunch of health problems than other people do. Just because of what happened in my early childhood. Your ACE score can never be undone or mitigated. I think I’m also 30x’s more likely to die by suicide. I keep telling myself that the brain is malleable.

That kid yesterday was at a point where they were not able to hold in their tears because they are afraid of being rejected for their humanity. Goodness I get it kid. I’ve been crying like that for most of my life. You are ok here. Ask your questions. When I don’t know the answer I will look it up or ask my friends. Because my friends will be glad you want to know. My friends are professional educators and they are so happy when kids like you ask questions that stump me.

I don’t get stumped that often. When I do the people who teach me are happy to hear from me. It’s ok. When you ask a question that is hard you are challenging me to grow. Thank you. I appreciate that you think I am capable.

I understand why so many adults are angry about children asking questions. The adults don’t know the answer and they were conditioned by school to think that if you don’t know the answer you are stupid. That’s a deeply triggering experience for most people. Luckily I grew up thinking there was no bottom to the well of my stupidity so I’m not threatened by not already knowing something. It’s an opportunity to learn more.

It was validating to meet some more neighbors in the last week. Within half an hour of talking they were exclaiming about how I’m such a good teacher. They asked me gardening questions. “I don’t know what to put here.” “I’d put something like ____ or ____ or ____.” “Why?” “Oh because of root competition. So you need to….” I’ve got a long explanation ready. You don’t even have to put a nickel in the slot.

I live for the experience of helping people understand the wondrous variety in this world. Something is only weird because you aren’t used to it yet–try it a few times. Soon it will feel normal.

In the terrible Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves movie Morgan Freeman’s character is a Muslim and he says, “Allah loves wondrous variety” and that line has stayed with me through my whole life. It massively colored my impression of what Islam is and how the world works. Just one stupid line from a movie. Allah loves wondrous variety. That means there is wondrous variety and I need to be ready to accept it all. Because it is supposed to be here. Even if I don’t believe in an omnipresent monotheistic god… I still believe in the pit of my stomach that all of this is here because Allah loves wondrous variety.

When people consent to learning something from me, that’s a gift. When I can help you understand the variety of this world and that it is good you are allowing me to be part of something much bigger and better than myself. Thank you.

I want to help spread joy and understanding so much.

There aren’t many questions you can ask me that will upset me. Yes, it’s ok to ask me questions about my background when my kids make allusions to former problems. No, I’m not going to act like it is a big sacred secret and you are bad for being curious. You don’t know me and you want to understand.

Sometimes when I think about how I feel about book characters who have complicated lives I realize… oh. That’s why people are like, “Holy shit you are strong.” Oh.

Yeah, my parents were mean to me. If you have specific questions about that I will answer them seriously but I’m not going to elaborate just because. You don’t need those pictures in your head unless you specifically ask because knowing answers a need within you.

I’ve changed a lot. Sometimes I can see how. I don’t have diarrhea of the mouth any more. I can have a lot of boundaries around these disclosures now that I wasn’t capable of having in the past. Now I understand what it means that I’m traumatizing people by existing and talking about my shit. I think that is true and not true, still. I’m better able to see which people will be traumatized and I don’t tell them.

I love you and I don’t want to be the reason you are hurting. Do I know you well? No. I don’t have to. You can be a stranger walking by on the street. I love you and I don’t want to be the reason you are hurting.

Why can I believe that I am capable of loving every person who walks by (because I feel these rushes of emotion when I focus on peoples faces) but I get so angry at the UU minister who says that the community is based on shared unconditional love? Why don’t I assume that he means the same kind of love I feel for strangers? STOP BRINGING REALITY INTO THIS RELATIONSHIP.

I’m going to have to sit with my feels for a while about that.

Do you know what I am never ever ever ever going to do if I feel suicidal? Go to the ER. Never. What I will do instead is get on my phone or computer and contact as many people as I need to contact and I will ask them to sit on me. I will ask my friends and my community to create a safe space for me where I can’t ruin the good thing we have going here in our relationship. I’ve done it before and I’m not so full of myself that I think I’m too good to fall down like that again. It could happen.

I don’t genuinely hit the emergency point very often. It is rare that I have to ask for babysitters. But I’ve done it and my friends came through. I wasn’t alone for a week until it was safe.

I could make that happen again.

I think of my teacher, Sobonfu, and how she said there is no such thing as a personal problem. Every problem is a problem for the community. My community doesn’t really want me to go have another traumatizing in-patient-psych-experience. I’m really damaged by the ones I’ve already had. My community wants me to work on healing. As a result, they show up when I say, “I need this support right now.” Partially because I’m good at being explicit about exactly what support I need, but also because I am one of the luckiest bitches alive. I love on people and they love on me back. That doesn’t always happen. Some people pour out love and get nothing back.

I see you. I know you love me. I am so very lucky.

Thank you. I am so grateful you are alive.