To be clear, I don’t think Noah deserves the ambient rage I sometimes want to direct at him. Even if he is sometimes infuriating (he is) he doesn’t do anything awful. He’s not horrible. He’s just…standing in a complex place.

I worry very much about my ability to maintain control over myself. I fly into rages. I am violent. I am really pretty awful. I have managed to successfully keep that mostly away from my kids and Noah. But I fuck up sometimes. My self-recriminations and regret don’t mean shit.

I’m scared that at some point the only way to ensure that I don’t fuck up in ways I can’t get back is to leave. Which is a fuck up of its own that I can’t take back.

It is hard when I feel like I don’t deserve to be here. I don’t deserve the civility or the kindness or the love.

In other news, the youngun’ from the neighborhood I recently recruited has an ambitious friend. He asked to come onboard for training and further work. We had a lovely twenty minute conversation about negotiation and initiation and money. For the first few visits I’m going to pay the one person rate. During this period the tweens (cause they are both 12–they aren’t even teenagers yet) will be looking around the house for shit they can do. Then we will write up a price list.

I told them that I have learned that I am an entitled bitch when it comes to paying people for their time. If I’m paying you… I need my life to be easier. If my life isn’t easier I’m not willing to pay for it. If my life gets way easier I’m willing to pay and pay and pay.

We talked about how, “If I have to keep coming up with stuff for you to do so you can earn money…. does that make my life easier? Sorta. Maybe. Not that much. You won’t get that much money for that.”

I told them both that they need to save up and take CPR and maybe 1st responder classes. I told them that doing so will jack up their hourly rate a lot. They both perked up at that. “Really?” “Yup.”

I told them that if they want to sit on the couch quietly and watch my kids play I will pay them a maximum of $5/hour. I am paying you to stimulate my children. Yes it is work. Very hard work. That’s why I’m willing to pay you to do it sometimes.

I’m hoping to develop a wider shallower net of support. If each kid can handle doing 3-5 hours/week then between multiple kids I can figure something out.

All you can do is keep trying.

My kids asked a friend if they can adopt her as an auntie last night. She asked what that entailed. I laughed. The role currently has an extremely broad application. It means “adult I will see again during my childhood”. Not necessarily often. Sometimes mostly you will see them over Skype. But these are the people who love you and think about you.

My kids have a much gentler application of “chosen family” than I do. I’m very glad for them. I’m glad they feel so much love. I wish that I had similar feelings. It isn’t the fault of any of my friends that I don’t.

Pam told me that I expect a lot of my BFFs. Yup. I really do. I’m not very fair towards whoever is currently filling that role in my head. Apparently I take the “forever” part very loosely. As life has changed I’ve had different people be closest. I hope that doesn’t devalue the relationships I have.

I expect a lot of the people I pull in closest. My expectations are not really attainable. They aren’t really healthy. I know. I want someone who wants to be my mother and my sister all in one. And I don’t really know anyone who actually has the spoons for that. So I mourn and mourn and mourn. And it isn’t anyones fault. Not mine. Not any of the poor women I get mad at for failing to meet what I need.

They can’t. And it isn’t reasonable or fair to ask it of them. I’m a fucking asshole for acting like anyone owes me that.

To be fair. I don’t think anyone owes me anything. I said this is what I need. It hurts and it sucks and it isn’t fair to anyone. It sucks that I have this huge hole in my heart where my mother and sister should be. It sucks that I am not good at containing the grief and it spills out onto wanting more than I can have from other people.

Part of what makes this so hard is: the people I pick for BFFs are people who want to be able to help me feel whole. They throw everything they have at me. And I walk away crying because it isn’t enough. And everyone feels like shit. It isn’t fair to anyone involved. It is so fucking hard. It feels like if I could just stop being an asshole then everything would be fine.

I don’t know how to turn off this need. It feels like poison.

I told Noah this morning that he is wrong about blame. He thinks it is wasting a lot of space in my brain. I think that blame is very helpful to me. When I feel overwhelming rage towards Noah the fact that I rationally know and fully believe that he is not to blame for my emotions is the reason that I can have the level of control that I have. If I stopped considering whether or not he is to blame I would lose the frame for keeping him out of the blast radius. He kind of nodded.

Being crazy sucks. Having emotions this strong sucks. Learning to control your body after a lifetime of being very violent sucks.

The down side to the blame is if I ever run into my sister and she starts something I may beat her unconscious because there is a lot of rage over a lot of years and I have siphoned it off of other people onto her into a way that isn’t so fair.

There are downsides to everything. I kind of wish she would move far away: Kentucky might be ok. (We have a cousin there. She could join family.)

It doesn’t really matter how much I despise myself for having the emotional process I have, that doesn’t change it or make it better. Accepting that I have it and learning to work around the current system is the only effective way to move towards change I have ever found.

For every issue I have with Noah I’m aware that I can spend multiple weeks with him nearly 24/7 and we only have mild intellectual arguments. That’s not really how it works with other people. Noah is willing to work around my temperamental behavior in a way that strikes me as potentially problematic.

He tells me when I’m going too far. He has gotten me to stop hitting people. He has probably evoked most of the most-positive changes in my behavior this lifetime. He has boundaries and he defends them.

But he’s willing to sit down and learn about all of my weird little quirks. He’s willing to try things and discard them and then try them again when I ask. He works so hard to make sure I like being with him.

It is hard staying when I feel so unworthy. I deserve a dirty, non-working drug addict who will beat me. But not when I say “pretty please”. That would be sick.

Wandering off for quiet time before it is gone.