Oh man. Some TOTALLY MEAN PERSON put a cutesy pictoral thing about Harry Potter on Pinterest. It involved saying “what you got” from a variety of characters. I say a TOTALLY MEAN PERSON because I don’t like the bit about how a mothers love is the greatest force on earth.

Fuck you. Now I’m going to cry for hours because my mommy didn’t and doesn’t love me.

I sit here and cry and remember that the only time during my childhood that someone protected me was when I called 911 and said, “I don’t know how to report my dad for molesting me. I need help.” Thank you San Bernardino Sheriffs for not being as shitty as the Santa Clara County Sheriffs.

I feel guilty for still being upset. No, I feel ashamed. I haven’t actually broken any rules so it isn’t guilt. I feel like I inconvenience people by having these feelings.

When I don’t sleep because I am up crying my day suffers. Poor kids. But today is unusual. Today the kids get lots of babysitter time so I can work on the book. Maybe that won’t be so bad.

I think I had sex with so many people because I was trying to find out if I could make anyone love me that way. It didn’t work very well.

Yesterday I was thinking a lot about my Owner. I was thinking about how we said we “would be friends” but that mostly consists of me needing to be a “good girl” and not care that he plays the same script in every relationship. His relationships are about his needs and his needs haven’t changed since he was fifteen. He’s got pictures of a whole series of women in exactly the same equipment with the same facial expressions.

It took a long time for me to be able to look at the picture archive without crying because I wasn’t special at all. I worked on that for years. I tried to convince myself that I *was* special to him.

Ha.

I was just stupid enough to be the Slut Of The Day for four years.

Right now I want to find a way to invalidate any real feelings any one has ever actually had for me. I want to find a way to “prove” to myself how worthless I am.

What I want to do is open my arm from elbow to wrist. I love you too, mommy.

I don’t know how to get past my mom. It’s not about my Owner. Even though he was the best Daddy I ever had and he dropped me when I no longer wanted him to hurt me.

Given the limitations I put on what Noah can do to me… it’s hard to wrap my brain around the idea that he will stay for what I offer. No one else has really wanted me.

Yes, I know my kids want me. It’s different. I appreciate them. I love them. I want them. I don’t plan to kill myself and abandon them. Sometimes it is really hard to turn around and hand them a bunch of love I’ve never received. I feel petty and small and like I’m tired of having to learn how to love my children from books because I have no personal experience of being a loved child. I don’t even know what that would mean.

It is hard to make something you’ve never seen. What is a “happy family”?

I’m in one now. Mostly. I’m the most sad person in my family these days. Everyone else seems to be doing ok.

I feel like I’m pretending the happiness I feel. Even though I felt happy yesterday and it didn’t feel like pretending then. In this moment it feels like I’m just lying to myself about there ever being better moments.

Deep breaths. This moment will pass.

The stakes seem so very high with my kids. If I fuck up the only person who will love me is Noah. (Yes, I have friends. It’s different. If you have a family you cannot understand what it means to *not have a family*.) It doesn’t feel like I have whatever “thing” makes other people intrinsically lovable. I’m just missing that bit. I have to earn relationships in a way other people don’t.

There are lots of kinds of privilege.

My family sided with child rapists over me. Some year I will stop feeling like that is a reflection of my worth. Apparently that year isn’t 2014.

As distraction, surfing youtube for half an hour… are there any people on tv who aren’t white and so thin I worry? Yes, some people are naturally that thin and it is normal and totally healthy for their bodies. It’s a very small segment of the population. I’m glad I miss most tv. Even if I do occasionally watch clips on youtube out of curiosity. Three minutes is all I want to see of any of these shows. And holy shit do I not have the warm fuzzy glow of memory for high school that other people apparently have. Wow.

I’m starting to feel the medication I took when I woke up. Thank goodness for medication. It was nice to calmly explain to my therapist why I started flipping out when she said “need to go on meds”. I’m on a medication. I cannot express the difference that cannabis makes in my life. The ability to be distracted from my grief is a gift. It is a chemical shift in my brain. Saying that it “doesn’t count” is very invalidating to my experience of life.

It is very hard that it doesn’t really matter how many other people in the world tell me I have worth, as long as my mommy doesn’t love me…

Some days I wonder if I am capable of feeling like I am loved or lovable. I stay. I go through the motions of acting like a mom who is worthy of being loved. But I don’t feel like I am.

Fake it till you make it. My kids won’t be crying for hours in thirty years because they wish that I loved them. They have already made it through milestones. Calli has lived in the house she was born in for longer than I have lived anywhere other than here.

This is the only home I’ve ever had. And my daughter was born in the kitchen. The daughter that I conceived on purpose because I wanted someone to pour love into. I know there is balance.

I know that I have it better than a lot of people. I know that many people go through their adult lives and are never loved as much as Noah loves me. Lots of people who want to be able to raise children the way I am raising my kids can’t.

Privilege is a funny thing.

It is always easy to undervalue what you have and focus on what you don’t have. I want a mommy who loves me. I’ve never had one. My mommy didn’t want me from the day I was conceived. My mommy never knew how to take care of me.

If my mom had tried to have an unassisted childbirth with me, her problems would have been solved. I was born with the cord around my neck. It was the intervention of bossy doctors screaming at my mother that prevented her from choking me to death as she tried to go through her standard ridiculously fast labor. I was the last kid. Just get it over with already. My mom was a lot better at having babies than me. I wonder if it was the childhood of sitting on horses.

Deep breaths. Youtube started annoying me. I should probably start rereading the Diana Gabaldon series. I get the latest book in a couple of weeks when I get to go to a reading by the author. I’m pretty excited.

I have a lot of good things in my life. I have a lot to look forward to. I appreciate what I have. I really do. I don’t think I’m oblivious to how lucky I am. But I have a nasty headache from crying. (I’ll drink more water.) I’m tired. I feel like shit.

Luckily I have five hours today to work on the book I wish I had been able to read when I was twelve. I’ll hopefully make it so someone else doesn’t have to make quite as many mistakes as I made. They can go make better mistakes. More useful ones.