I have some really bad habits. To start with: I like working out what I will do by talking to other people. Then in the process I discover my boundaries/priorities because I get explosively angry at the nice people who I am talking to when they suggest something that isn’t what I want to do. I hope I didn’t bite anyone’s head off yesterday. I tried to end conversations when I felt myself wanting to scream. Thank you so much for talking to me.

I wish I could figure out what I think without feeling the need to scream. I didn’t scream. Not once. But there were many hours of crying and feeling upset.

I cancelled the grief ritual registration. I’m trying to build community with the home school group and I don’t go out with them much. The group in general spends a lot more time with one another than my kids spend with them. If I weren’t going with the group I wouldn’t bother to go to Cirque right now anyway. I wouldn’t have bothered paying for tickets. And it was bought in a group package so I don’t think it would be easy to exchange.

I agreed to the Cirque trip months before I thought of the grief ritual for this year. Apparently I don’t like the idea of flaking on my original plans just because a better offer showed up.

I keep flaking on the nice lady who is point on the group trip. Canceling would be a lot like flipping her off and saying her effort wasn’t important because I found something better to do. People do that to me a lot. I don’t want to turn around and hand that down.

I’m sad about missing the grief ritual for a variety of reasons. I don’t have a whole lot of catharsis in my life. A nice lady said, “Do you even have grief left?” and I didn’t yell. *pat self on back* Yes. I have a lot of grief. I feel like I’m drowning in it.

I used to process by doing bdsm until I could scream/cry it out. A long time ago. Then play spaces changed and these days it isn’t ok to play in public the way I used to. These days you have to be careful to “not scare the newbies” so really brutal/loud beatings are considered inappropriate. I’ve had a lot of Dungeon Monitors (I kind of hate DMs) interrupt my scenes to tell me to be quiet. I just won’t try for heavy scenes in public any more. And I don’t have a sound proof house and I know all my neighbors.

I used to get kind of impatient with people who said they couldn’t scream in their home because they didn’t want to bother the neighbors. Ha. Things change.

I miss Castlebar. No one cared how much you screamed because we were in an industrial neighborhood at night near a freeway. No one could hear it or care. It was great. Ok, only having three walls so you froze all winter kind of sucked… but I still miss it. I liked it better than the fancier spaces where you have to be quiet to play. I’m not quiet.

Many people suggested exchanging the Cirque tickets and just going at a different time as a family. It’s not a bad suggestion. But it’s kind of like if your family was all going to Disney World and I said, “Well you don’t need to be there with them. Just go a different time.”

Of course you could, but then you would be missing the family trip.

I want to go see S and O and A as they experience Cirque. I’m trying to be a grown up who is consistently in their lives. My kids are growing up with them. I’m trying to find experiences my kids get to share with other kids. Mostly they are just stuck doing things with me when I can handle doing them. They don’t get to do a lot with other kids. They don’t have five days a week where they are with other kids.

I really do appreciate that people helped me figure out my priority list. It isn’t anyone’s fault that I do that by getting angry about suggestions that won’t work for me. I’m sorry.

I don’t think I actually yelled at anyone. I just had surges of emotion. I think I squashed them. I think I was appropriate. I am never sure though. I’m always afraid that my nice friends will talk to me then I’ll be a cunt then they won’t be my nice friends any more.

I lose a lot of sleep worrying about this. I’m sorry I get so angry over things I shouldn’t get mad about.

In other news I continue to not use much of my apathy enhancing drug. Holy shit does that mean that every emotional reaction feels like it is turned up to 11. I’m doing well at not screaming at the kids. I’m barely even yelling. I seem to be getting a point almost every day and I try to comfort myself with the idea that I’m barely raising my voice and I tend to cut it off mid-sentence… I still get a point for the AHHHP. The check mark thing on the wall is helping me. I feel humiliated when I have to give myself a point so it is getting easier to remember.

I can’t just “not yell” but I can avoid shame. It’s weird.

I really appreciate that people talked to me through my annoying hand wringing and crying. I’m sorry that my process works this way. I wish I were “calm and rational” but I’m not always.

What is more important to me–catharsis with mostly strangers, or bonding with kids I want to know through their childhoods?

Not a decision anyone else can make for me. People don’t understand what it means to me that I didn’t get to do the group activities as a kid. I did things alone. I never had a group because I moved all the time. Even when I did things ostensibly as part of a group I didn’t know anyone so people wouldn’t talk to me. They wanted to hang out with their friends. I want my kids to get to be friends with S and O and A. It’s a big fucking deal to me. I feel incredible guilt that I only get off my lazy ass and join the group for one activity a week.

I just can’t handle the driving most of the time. The home school group goes pretty far afield and just about all of their activities are a minimum of a 30 minute drive each way for us. I can’t do that every day. I freak out and have no spoons left for getting anything else done.

I have strongly internalized that home schoolers don’t stay home. They are out in the world. But our world is largely bound by the limits of our ability to walk. My kids are buff. I need them to be able to do heavy manual labor in less than seven years. I don’t think that the standard American kid raised in a car can turn around and just do that without a lot of pain and awful.

My kids will always be pulled out of the group a lot. Next year we will be gone for 4-6 months. I haven’t decided yet. The bare minimum will be 4 months but there is so much I want to see (so many people) that it may stretch out. That’s a long time to just be gone from their friends.

I need to provide them with time with kids. I just have to. That is more important to me than me getting a weekend of catharsis. It is inconvenient that there isn’t a convenient other ritual coming up. (There is one in Sacramento in a few months. On Shanna’s birthday. Sigh.)

I don’t think I can explain what being in a supportive environment while I cry feels like. I have spent my entire life knowing that it isn’t actually “ok” that I cry all the time. It is shameful and annoying and I need to shut the fuck up because I bother people.

I know.

My problems are my personal problems and they don’t belong to anyone else. I know. That’s an awful lot of why it feels like I need to just die when I feel overwhelmed. It isn’t ok to let my issues spill out and contaminate other people.

So going and meeting a woman who believes deep in her belly “all problems are problems for the community” is… intense.

The thing is, this kind lady isn’t available to be anything to me at any point after the ritual. She can tell me how it is in her village in Africa for people who grew up there. She’s busy and travels a lot and doesn’t live near me and she has no bandwidth to spare for random ritual attendees.

So my problems are still mine. Even though some people don’t have to bear their problems alone forever.

I struggle so much with bitterness.

The whole “Bank of Mom and Dad” isn’t really about the money. It is about having people who are deeply committed to helping you and supporting you through your life. They are invested in you being ok.

I don’t have that. I didn’t ever have grandparents. My aunts/uncles mostly abandoned me when my parents divorced because I went with my mother and no one liked her. My mom grew up in my position in her family. The unwanted child everyone hated. I don’t think she was the product of rape but no one ever liked her. I feel so sad for my mom. Then she grows up and her kids hate her too.

I fear that I’m on that road.

I have friends who have genuinely lost their mothers. How dare I feel so bad about choosing to cut off ties.

I had to. There is no other way to ensure that my kids don’t grow up in the same cycles I did. From when my niece was very young my mother told her that things were “all her fault”. So by 17 my niece was working at In-N-Out and supporting her sibling and mother out of guilt. She felt overwhelming pain at the idea of Auntie having to work in her 70’s because she (my niece) was the reason my Auntie spent her retirement money and now she (Auntie) doesn’t have any left.

What bullshit. Auntie had to work because Uncle Bob was a sonofabitch who spent money like it grew on trees to deal with his bitterness at having his wife’s family around. That is not my niece’s fault.

It’s just not and my kids will not grow up in that kind of fucking environment where kids are programmed to think that being born was a terrible burden on everyone around them and they should spend their life apologizing.

Just no.

I am experienced enough to know that people who think they can maintain their connection with family and “shield” their kids from the worst of it usually end up finding out twenty years later about horrible abuse that happened just behind the corner of a room. I know too many cases where children were raped in the few minutes it took to go get a toy from a room.

My children will not be spending their lives around recidivist rapists. I don’t fucking think so.

So I get to live with this grief. Doing the right thing doesn’t usually mean doing the easiest or the most comfortable thing. It means doing the right thing.

I chose to bring little people into this world. It is my responsibility to keep them safe during their childhood. I don’t think many people know better than me how fast things can happen when you are near evil people.

I have two wanted children. They are loved and a blessing. That is all they will fucking hear in their childhoods.

And they won’t have to miss out on doing things with their friends because their mom is selfish. They’ve been hearing about Cirque for months. Telling them they don’t get to do it with their friends would make me a selfish asshole.

I’d like to believe I am better than that. Maybe I’m lying to myself but I’ll keep trying anyway.

My friends gave me the advice they gave me largely because they believe I have the right to be the main character in my life. They believe I have the right to place my needs as the most important.

And I get mad at them for that. What does that say about me?

I’m not really “mad” at them. But my body does angrily reject the notion that I should be the only important person in my story. I don’t think I am more important than my kids. I don’t think that my preferences matter more than theirs. I don’t think I get to just selfishly usurp their life all the time. I do too much of that as is.

I’m not sure I’m right. I’m not sure there was a ‘right’ decision here. Ultimately I kind of decided “I’m going with the commitment I made first.” That may be faulty logic.

Thank you for talking to me. I wish I were less of an asshole.