Shanna keeps asking me when we are going to see people. She is specific. “When will I see ____ again?”

I don’t know.

“When will I go to ______’s house again?”

I don’t know.

“When will I get to play with ______?”

I don’t know.

I don’t want to tell her what I tell myself. “People take care of their priorities in the order they determine. They only get to the unimportant things if they have spoons left. They just don’t get to me much.”

“They would come over if I wasn’t so overwhelming and terrible. I am really sorry I am driving your friends away.”

“I don’t know what I did wrong this time. But I’m sure I did something. I’m sorry you have to stand next to me.”

I just say I don’t know.

I’m trying to convince myself that I wouldn’t feel so needy and clingy and sad about rejection from other people if my family of origin had worked out better. I’m trying to convince myself that if I am dependable enough for Shanna and Calli that everything will be ok.

We get so many cancellations at the last minute that I don’t tell them about plans with anyone until I get a day-of confirmation or until they are knocking. I don’t believe that people will show up when or if they say they will.

I have a lot of internal conflict around passing on my disbelief in humanity. Yet I feel like doing anything else would be pretty stupid.

People show up when they want to. How do you get them to want to? I have no idea. I do a lot wrong on that score.

The only person who still speaks to me who has been in my life for twenty years lives in another country. We kinda sorta talk on Twitter.

Many people have been in my life for more than ten years. I see most of them for less than ten hours in the average year.

I don’t know how to do relationships that are on a shorter rotation very well. I try to have them and I burn people out. Then they don’t talk to me any more. Now my kids are standing next to me and they have to deal with the fall out. I’m so sorry.

I keep trying because when you stop trying you die. The person who is on the tightest rotation right now is starting to have a bit more conflict. I don’t know how much longer this will last. Yeah, I think when it stops it will be my fault.

If I hurt all these grown ups so much they don’t want to be near me any more what am I going to do to my kids?

I don’t know. But I have to be very careful how I eke out my energy. I can’t trust that anyone else will help. They might. They might not. I have to get through either way.

I’m aware that by this point my sense of “commitment” is totally fucked up. I don’t know how much contact is reasonable to expect from any one. I try to just take what I can get and say thank you.

But when I miss people and I sit in my house and feel guilty for making them not want to come over any more I don’t know what to do. I want to self harm. I know I hurt other people and it is only just that I hurt myself far more than I have hurt other people. Maybe then I will become more mindful and stop hurting people.

I do my best to not cry in front of the kids. I don’t have any wounds for them to see. I don’t have a good enough reason to cry. I would have to be hit or cut or… something.

“Are you crying? Here. Let me give you a reason to cry.”

I think that was one of the most common refrains from my childhood. I’m trying so hard to not pass it on. When my kids cry because their feelings are hurt I don’t tell them to shut up and I don’t offer to hit them.

Sometimes it feels weird. Like if I could “get over myself” and go out and pursue some hobby that I could manage to find people who would be happy to stand near me. But they would feel that way because they wanted to be where they were and they tolerated my presence. So I don’t really have hobbies any more. Dealing with people is too hard.

That’s not so. I have delved into solitary projects. I like my house more by the year. By the time I am old my house will be the thing I have spent the most time working on in my life.

The more I feel like I have to carefully not say the things I am thinking (because I sure as fuck don’t blather on about my bitterness to my kids) the less I am able to take any support at all. I can’t even begin to reveal the extent of the support I need. Because I don’t need it. I’ll be fucking fine without it. By which I mean I won’t die. I won’t give those fuckwads the satisfaction of dying first.

I would rather like to outlive my mother and my sister. Even if I never see them again.

There is need and then there is need.

A while back a friend told me that his therapist told him that I am like a crazy Vietnam vet hiding at home with my guns and ammo. I take things as dangerous that aren’t dangerous.

But when I spend over an hour explaining (with written diagrams!!!!) how overwhelmed I am by work and what I really need is for you to show up an hour before dinner and help cook and instead you show up half an hour after we are supposed to start eating and then you whine about helping…

I’m not sure that all of my problems are that I am just a crazy vet. I think my problem is that when I explain in clear language with diagrams how and where I would like support and you have forgotten by the next week I understand how unimportant I am.

I would rather be unimportant and alone in a room. At least then I don’t have to fucking worry about your hurt widdle feelings.

The thing is, I don’t perfectly show up to support anyone else either. It’s not like I expect anyone to be perfect. I really don’t.

But I have a hard time when people ask me to do something and then I show up having done it and they say, “Oh. I was just joking.” So I just wasted… how many hours?

I understand why other people blow me off. They blow off what I say because they think I am blowing them off in the same way. Maybe I am. I can’t see from that perspective.

Mostly I try to carefully not commit to doing anything. I try very hard to consciously not commit. I don’t want anyone to depend on me and feel disappointed. I know I can’t meet your needs. Let me just say that up front.

Unless I can show up and fill a specific need. Then I will explain in detail what I will do and how I will do it and that is the limit of my obligation.

Sometimes I understand that what I want, people who like me enough to invite themselves into my life, isn’t a reasonable thing to want. What I want is the process of enculturation that I see happening to my daughters with regards to Noah’s family.

None of the relatives are pissy that I don’t send thank you notes most of the time. They just continue to send stuff to the kids. They are fairly clearly not here for me. I mean, they include my name and they seem to have mostly positive thoughts at this point. They are chasing down my kids wanting to have a relationship.

It’s really hard to live with. Because the closest I have had to that is Noah. I feel very lucky to have Noah, don’t get me wrong.

I have been chasing Jenny for decades. I started my livejournal account ten years ago because I was spying on her. I didn’t want her to forget me while she was off at a good school meeting people who were smarter and richer and better than me.

I’m on Twitter mostly because of her. It’s the social platform she uses the most heavily.

But my kids won’t grow up with her. I’ve spent twenty years chasing her love and… well… I have her love, but she had to go do her grown up things. And they took her across the world. She is having a really good life and in no way shape or form do I want her to change the course of her fate to come pay attention to me.

But I don’t know when or if I will see her again.

I go back and forth between “absence makes the heart grow fonder” and “out of sight out of mind”. The longer I am away from people I love the more I believe that I am out of their sight and out of their mind.

I actually massively appreciate that Jenny ran off to marry someone so spectacularly suited to her. If she had ran off for a bad match I would feel all personally rejected and shit. Naw, I’ve met this guy. I understand why she wants him so much. Uhm, not that he’s my type. heh. But she needed someone temperamentally suitable to *her* not me. They are so perfect together it is kind of weird.

Everyone picks a different poison. Everyone has to compromise about something.

When will we see _____ again? I don’t know. I’m not very good at predicting the future. I know they are busy. I “know” it isn’t about me. But I still want to beat my head on concrete in penance for being so bad that they need this much time to rest in between visits.

I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.

All I say to my kids is, “I don’t know. They are really busy right now.”