Sometimes when I am having a hard time at “life” I end up very angry with Noah. It’s not particularly fair to him. It’s actually a lot of the reason I originally wanted Sarah to move in. I thought she could help fill the aching hole I have because Noah is gone all the time. It didn’t work. She wouldn’t come out of her room. I was still alone all the time only I had another person to clean up after. I couldn’t do it.
I know I “should” have a better control over my temper but I don’t. I can (barely) keep it off the kids. As a result when an adult walks in the door they become the lightning rod for all the emotions I was not allowed to express at the kids. Sarah really didn’t appreciate being the person on whom I dumped my anger. I don’t blame her. I don’t blame Sarah for hiding from my frequent anger eruptions. She has every right to do that. She had every right in the whole world to not want to be my punching bag. Truly. I am not upset with her for avoiding me. I just couldn’t live with it. I couldn’t handle living with another person I had to be really nice to. I am too selfish. I am too much of a bitch. It leaves Noah by himself as the person I can get angry at.
It’s not really fun being the one person I can safely get angry at. Noah deals with. Noah understands that I really don’t have many outlets. He is the adult in my life I can talk to about the hard things. That means he gets all the hard things. Including when I am angry with him and blame him for not supporting me enough.
Before we got married I was quite cruel to Noah about how “lazy” he was. It took several years of him ramping up work stuff more and more before I understood that all the staring at a glowing box he does is “work”. And it directly leads to money that supports me. I have tried hard to get rid of my attitude but it’s hard. I was taught, specifically and deliberately, that mental work doesn’t “count” and doing a lot of it without doing physical work makes you a piece of shit. You are a lazy piece of shit. You are shiftless. You are nothing. I didn’t grow up with a family who values academia to say the least.
It’s been a gradual process as I try to discover how to live with someone who lives and works in his head. Tom wasn’t like Noah. Tom also had the hard streak of “must work with hands in order to not look ‘lazy'” and he would do things like build furniture on the weekend. It felt like, sure he does namby pamby brain work during the week but he is still a man. He can fix my computer, my car, and when I say, “I’m tired of having an electric oven. I would like gas” he did all the work to convert the kitchen for me. He just did it. Like that. No big deal. Err, Noah doesn’t do that.
If Noah does a house chore he always leaves parts for me. If he had to use tools they are left out until I put them away. I can wait for fucking weeks and look at the big shop vac he left out after cleaning the hot tub and it won’t go anywhere until I put it away. (Thank you for cleaning the hot tub. That is a huge, shitty job and I didn’t want to do it. I’m really appreciative.)
In many of the worlds I have lived in, Noah would be a worthless piece of shit. But he really isn’t. He isn’t. He isn’t. He isn’t. He works very hard. He does a lot of chores. He spends as much time with the kids as he can. He pays as much attention to me as he possibly can. He works at things that are very difficult to him from when he wakes up until he passes out. I know that. I can see it.
But I get angry with him for not instinctively filling all the roles I kind of assign him in my head. I get mad that supporting our family creeps slowly into filling more and more and more hours. I get mad because I want more support. I thought I would have support. All those people at my baby shower and Noah promised me I would have more support. People are liars.
You aren’t supposed to say that though. I have gotten support. I have a lot of people I can call out of the blue for help. They will be happy to help if I specifically ask and chase them down. But frankly, most of them don’t pursue relationships with my kids so I have let it fall away. I can’t chase people down and beg them to have a relationship with my kids. Most people don’t really give a shit. I have to let it go. I have to not try to force it and create it. Then my kids will turn into me. They will have to get used to trying to form relationships only to observe that once they stop doing all the work and travel… they just don’t see people any more. It’s not worth it. It’s really not.
It’s not worth it *to me* to try and form community. I’m so tired of being lied to. I don’t trust people. I hate people. And Noah has to live with me. And I feel so bad. I’m sorry I don’t trust Noah. I’m sorry I bite his head off. I’m sorry that he has to bear the brunt of what a fucking asshole I am. I really feel like that is probably a bad deal for him. I’m not sure he should do it. But the alternatives are really bad for me so I try not to encourage them too much.
Whether I try hard at it or not I drive people away. When I try to get close to them it just means that I am opening myself up to more hurt. I’m not sure how much more I can bear.
I feel terrible when I yell at Noah. For days I feel this hanging cloud over me. He’s going to get sick of me being an asshole too. He is going to leave, just like everyone else. He has been kind of avoiding me lately. Out alone time is full of me being a bitch. I don’t blame him. I wish I could avoid a bitch like me too.
It’s scheduling stuff. That’s all.
It’s not helping that as the days go by I hate running more and more. I don’t want to do it. It’s physically uncomfortable (not painful, but I am clearly straining my body). I’m god damn exhausted All.The.Fucking.Time. It doesn’t really feel like relaxing alone time. The only time I have to relax and be quiet is when I am smoking pot. I may never stop at this rate. I’m developing a Pavlovian response that I am only allowed to sit down, I am only allowed to write, I am only allowed to read the fucking internet when I am smoking. That’s when I sit down. That is the closest I have to rest. And I type furiously in a bad posture the whole time and my arms hate me. I think I should look into arm braces.
Noah isn’t doing anything terrible to me. He really isn’t. He’s not being selfish. He’s not being excessive about the time he needs, not really. It’s not his fault that I am so alone. It’s really not. I can’t expect him to be everything to me. He can’t be. It’s not fair. Some year I am going to have to realize that not everyone in the world is alone, but I always will be. I need to stop resenting it. I need to stop feeling angry with Noah for abandoning me–he’s not. It’s not his fault that I have driven everyone else away. I can’t expect him to make up for everyone else.
I go back and forth between believing I live a life of utter pointlessness–I feel like a complete waste of oxygen–and believing I must have lived through my childhood for a reason. Please, please, please let there be some kind of plan. Please, let me be useful. Please, let there be something I can do that is worth doing. That is worth going through hell for. What I am doing isn’t. What I am doing means that going through hell should kill you. There is no reason to survive for more of this.
In choosing to not die today I feel like what I am doing is dooming Noah. I will hurt him over and over. Yes, I wake up in the morning and sob and cry for hours because I believe Noah would be better off if he didn’t live with a disgusting bully like me. He says I’m not that bad. Yeah, my tone of voice isn’t great but I’m not that bad. I don’t believe him. Because he will change his mind one of these days. Everyone does. I’m not worth putting up with. I really want to die today. I don’t want to fucking run. I want to die. I don’t want to do today.
But I have to run nine miles. And one of the home schooling moms invited us to walk to our local park today and meet her at 10. (Her son is kind of obsessed with Shanna and vice versa.) I try not to speak very much around her. She seems nice. I don’t want to drive her away. So I’m very quiet. The only way for me to earn a grudging entry into the group, I feel, is for me to be as silent as possible. The only thing me speaking does is earn me a swift kick in the backside. I can’t do that to my kids. So I’ll shut up. Just shut up, Kristine. Shut up. Shut up. Shut up. No one wants to hear your stupid, fucking mouth. You stupid, mean, little bitch.