I’m doing too much. It’s as simple as that. Homeschooling is a job. I have not been giving myself the mental credit for how much work I’m doing with it. I act like it is the background noise… like needing to water the plants. It’s not really a job job the way that planting or pruning is…

Only it really is.

I am mentally and on paper tracking math, history, science, language arts, foreign languages (we all do some study), art, and a whole bunch of other constellation topics like health and nutrition, and fitness.

I don’t give myself much credit. I feel like “Every mom thinks about their kids all the time. I’m not special.” But most parents are not forking homeschooling. I act like I should be able to handle my kids with the same amount of energy as my friends who have full time jobs and who put their kids in school/after school care.

But that’s not what I’m doing and I really need to stop feeling so ashamed that I don’t handle everything like the full time out of the home parents.

It’s ok for me to feel utterly exhausted by the amount of work I do for my children. I’m teaching and parenting without many breaks. I get some breaks, it’s true… but not a lot. I get approximately a teachers prep period amount of break per day. And my job is from when I wake up until I pass out.

I’m tired.

I miss the babysitter. Sigh. She’s really not replaceable. She was so perfect for our family. Although I will admit that I’m feeling pretty grateful to not be paying for her right now. She got pretty expensive towards the end.

She left in May. So I have been… pretty intensely with the kids since then. Except for Alaska.

Last night EC told me that when I was in Alaska “It felt like… it felt like something missing.” I missed you too, baby.

We talked to EC about enmeshment and what it means.  We mentioned that we are unusually enmeshed for folks of our demographic. EC beamed and said she likes it that way. I like it that way too. We are trying to figure out having room for individuality with our enmeshment. It’s a process.

***************************** (Above written in the morning before the day got busy. Resuming at the very end of the day after therapy.)

Today was a good somatic therapy session. We did energy work, of course, but we did a lot of talking about boundaries and connection.

I think I have been in therapy for pretty much my whole life because this is one of the only ways I know for sure that it’s ok for me to have connection without sex. Outside of the rock solid boundaries of therapy… that’s always been harder for me. It’s not that I don’t connect with people without sex (like, I’ve never banged Jenny and that’s 24 years and counting) ever ever ever. But it’s a lot harder for me and it’s so hard for me to trust it.

We spent a while talking about my frantic questioning of people to try and understand the “rules” of different relationships and how I often feel punished for being bad because people don’t appreciate that I need things spelled out in such fantastic detail because I genuinely can’t guess what people want very well. My shrink went on to a long digression about how that’s very common for Aspie/Autistic people. We need things spelled out so much that we anger people and it’s very common for Autistic people to be abused for being so annoying.

Oh shit. Now I’m going to sound like that dude I divorced for having inappropriate boundaries with my children. “I’m so peeeerrrrrrrrrrrrsecuted because of my Autism.”

Shit I hope not.

The thing is, I recognize that I’m a super high intensity needy as fuck person. I irritate people. That doesn’t make me a victim. It means that I irritate people like a sheet of fine grain sand paper. Whether it is my fault or not… it’s pretty natural that people react to being rubbed with sand paper.

Am I “bad” because I don’t understand the “rulez” other people live by?

Well Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ WHICH RULES am I supposed to follow? Do you know how many fucking different sets of rules I’ve been exposed to?!?!?!?!?!?