Part of the reason I am not posting more is because my computer isn’t working properly.  I now live with a Sys Admin and it has been confirmed that I have a hardware issue and I need to take it in to be fixed.  So when I get an idea that I want to explore in writing I sit here getting more and more frustrated and angry and I forget the idea and then I am angry when I go back into the house because I feel stifled and silenced by fate.  I’ve started to notice that my sentences are getting a bit long.  Interesting.  Ok.  What was that idea again… (I’m now on Noah’s computer.)

The thing about running away is, it doesn’t actually get you out of your life.  The problem is that you take your life with you.  You just change where you are standing.  The only “out” available in life is death.  And I believe that when I had my children I gave up my right to choose death as an option for a minimum of 20 years and probably ever.  I went through that with a non-custodial parent.  There is no way I could slash their souls.  I can not ever be that selfish.  Especially in the next few years, I am the whole center of their universe right now.  I won’t abandon them.

I won’t abandon them.  That phrase keeps me trapped.  That phrase keeps me feeling like I am not allowed to have hobbies or separate interests.  That phrase keeps me from doing things I want to do.  I don’t feel like there is a way to meet my needs as well as their needs.  This is changing, slowly.  Having a nursling is hard.  I haven’t been away from Calli for more than about four hours.  No… I’ve probably pushed six hours a couple of times.  But not more than five times.  In her life.  She will be a year old in 16 days (!).  That’s a lot of fucking contact.  That doesn’t leave a lot of time to do the things I like to do.

The problem is, the things I like to do all involve intense socializing.  And running.  Running needs to start any day now in order to give me time to train for the marathon in a way that is reasonable for my body.  I have a plan in place for how I want to approach that.  I should talk to Sarah today about how to get that on the schedule.  Maybe that is what I should be doing during quiet time?  The point being, I don’t have any hobbies I am interested in pursuing at home by myself.  That means large blocks of time out socializing in some way.  That really is the approach I have to filling those needs in myself.  I want a community.

It’s getting better with Sarah here.  The kind of “therapy talk” that bothers some of my friends is totally ok in my house all the time now.  If we have an interaction and I start having a weird irrational reaction I talk about it.  I don’t blame.  I say, “Ok I think it is an irrational reaction, but right after you said that I started feeling really scared.  I feel like you saying that means… and I need to ask you to clarify a bit more about that statement.”  I’m allowed to do it all day long and no one thinks I’m weird.  No one tells me that I should stop processing and start living.  No one tells me that what I am doing and therefore that part of me is wrong.  I’m scared because Sarah is inviting people over to socialize.  People coming over is pressure to conform to social rules in my space that I don’t agree with.  I’m never sure how much pressure is only from me and how much actually exists in other peoples minds.

I miss me.  I miss being confident and strong.  I miss feeling like a force to be reckoned with.  Someone from MDC described me that way on the trolls site and it absolutely made my year.  My presentation of self is fucking working.  That is who and what I want to be.  I don’t feel like that right now.  I feel weak.  I feel thin.  I feel like my skin is very thin and I don’t know how to keep other people out and me in.  I constantly feel this free floating miasma to conform to being more like the people around me.  This feels ok in my house because here I have one identity that is firmly separate.  Mom is not thin.  I do not conform to my children.  And that means I feel ok in that role and I don’t know how to even think like the other parts of me any more.

Does that make sense?  This is the part that feels like being slightly “multiple”.  Right now I do not feel like an integrated person.  My memories of things I did at other times in my life largely depends on how close I am to the emotional state I was in when I had the experiences.  If I am not feeling joy I cannot remember joy.  It is like joy has never existed.  If I do not feel lust I feel like I have never wanted sex and all of my partners have actually been rapists because I never truly wanted it.  But that’s a lie.  I know it is a lie.  That is a part of me attacking another part of me and trying to destroy it.  I seem to feel like if I am the mom then the part of me that is sexual needs to die.  It’s not really surprising that I feel that way.  My mother gave up sex and dating when I was 10 because she believed she had a bad picker (I agree) and she wasn’t going to keep fucking up her kids with bad men.  That was a good decision.  My sister has gone through a string of men so bad I don’t think I could make up stories that would be worse than reality.  The last one was decent though.  She dumped him for nagging her about cleaning.  Excellent choices.

It makes sense that I have this association between sex and unfit parenting.  Wanting sex means taking focus away from your children and if you take your focus away from your children then you are neglecting them.  I have a hard time with my constant internal pressure to pay more attention to my children.  Honestly at this point I have the (I hope more) rational belief that paying attention to my children 24/7 is not actually good for any of us and we all need space to grow.  I have work to do to support our family’s life.  I have to do the dishes.  I have to clean.  No really, these things are mandatory parts of life and the children need to learn to accomodate the fact that the whole bleeping world does not revolve around them.  Most families wait on that lesson and let school teach their children that lesson.  I don’t have that light at the end of the tunnel.  There is no school coming.

What does that mean about the patterns of our days?  As a stay at home, future home schooling parent I have to integrate my identities in my life while not having outside help to monitor them for most of the day.  That kind of sucks.  But I really have no interest in the more common approach so I have to make this work.  I believe there should be a 100% separation of church and state.  I also believe there should be a brick wall between the sex lives of parents and their children.  My sex life in particular is simply not fodder for my children’s imaginations.  Ew.  But I don’t want them to grow up thinking we are celibate either.  There is a happy medium in here somewhere that will allow us all to be healthy.

Right now I feel like I need to find a way to start interacting with people more.  Baby steps.  I am socially awkward and uncomfortable and I have a lot of work to do in the house.  It’s hard to pry myself out.  Even when I am with someone I have known for almost a decade I feel like they secretly don’t like me.  It is an act of will to act like I think we are friends instead of acting like they secretly think I am a loser.  It’s awesome.  And stressful.  Mostly I’m not up for the stress.  Slowly it is improving though.

I’m trying to be all the parts of me that I like without judging some of them as bad.  No matter what there will be people who disapprove of me being queer or kinky or nonmonogamous.  These are unconventional life paths.  They are part of my path.  How can I figure out how to be a queer, kinky, nonmonogamous parent without fucking up my kids.  Hm.