It is 1:26. I woke up at 12 and haven’t been able to slow my thinking down since. First: have to pee. Then pain stuff. My back hurts still. This period has been awful. My arms were hurting. I was up and down to get water, Ibuprofen, my braces… after an hour and a half of racing thoughts on top of mounting physical whines… fuck it.

What am I so worried about?

I want. That means I’m going to ask people for things that they may not want. Oh I don’t like myself very much for that. I feel really bad for the fact that I spend a lot of time putting people on the spot and causing really awkward and uncomfortable feelings. People are going to have to say no to me.

Hundreds of people have already said no to me in the past. I have no reason to suspect the future is going to change that dynamic much. Asking people I already know is only so much more successful because… complicated.

I don’t god damn know how to read signals. Outside of a few glaring examples I’m usually not real clear who is interested in me for what.

This is a rather distinct problem as I treat other people wanting things from me as permission to be that thing.

Which is kinda ridiculous and lame at this stage of the game.

I’m completely freaking out about how some of my uhhh more conservative friends are going to feel about this uhm U-bend turn in behavior lately. I haven’t done any of this while they’ve known me. It was all in the distant, more theoretical past.

Hi. I iz weird. I hope you still like me.

I’m scared.

When I was tossing in turning in bed I started thinking about the things I want to ask for and I felt so ashamed I wanted to go in the bathroom and start cutting just because then I won’t go out and ask anyone for anything because I’ll be too ashamed and…

No.

No.

No.

I’m not going to cut myself down to size anymore. No. No. No.

On Twitter, a woman I follow (Feminista Jones–just so it’s been said) posted a link to a woman who wrote about accepting compliments on dating sites with “I know” and how that leads to a lot of abuse.

Like a fucking moron I spent a while reading the comments. A shocking number of people believe that if you don’t perform humility appropriately you deserve any amount of abuse people want to throw at you.

You know what? I don’t think I’m pretty. I don’t think I’m beautiful. I think I’m kinda a funny looking motherfucker. But for the fucking rest of my life I vow that if someone tells me that I’m pretty/beautiful/whatever I’m going to say, “I know.”

I won’t say thank you unless I asked for the compliment before it was delivered.

Why?

Because I’m a rude motherfucker.

Because I want to know this about myself without it being about you or your opinion. Because if you are the kind of person who believes I deserve abuse if I have positive self regard I want to know that as fast as humanly possible so I can get the fuck away from your disgusting self.

Shiny change of topic. I’m hunting so I went bra shopping. Mostly… I just don’t wear them cause I don’t give a shit and Noah doesn’t either. This was something I argued about with the friend who took me shopping.

The contention was: if I dress up for Noah in fancy lingerie/makeup he will be inspired to greater than normal heights over my sweats/t-shirt ensembles.

To this I say… you really don’t know Noah. It doesn’t matter what I have on. It really doesn’t. It matters how much I strut/push/seem interested.

Ok, now it is true that I turn on more in the dressing up process so usually I strut more (thus hunting meaning I go bra shopping) and that’s fun. But no really Noah doesn’t care. If I wear uncomfortable shoes and put a whole bunch of effort into my appearance… our sex life stays static. There isn’t really a spike. I’ve checked.

After ten years you don’t think I check that shit!?

Ahem.

Heh.

That’s the hilarious thing about keeping records of your sex life. I haz the data.

Ok, we do both like dressing up sometimes for a role play scene. But it has been years. Sad face.

I won’t play where my kids can hear and we haven’t had overnight babysitting much in years.

Other source of anxiety: how is this impacting the kids? I don’t think this is impacting my time with them that much because it is coming out of personal time. I’m just getting less alone time.

I can’t get to the point of no personal time but I’m not close to that.

Given how much work I’m pulling off, I think hunting is actually helping me with the kids. I’m being pretty damn patient. I’m not yelling much. I haven’t screamed recently. I’m being clear with expectations and boundaries. We are having good conversations. I’m not being good at record keeping, but Eldest Child is actually making a lot of progress on school-y stuff lately by choice.

I’m feeling realllllllllllly bad about asking people for things they then have to turn down.

But I’m a lot more scared to stop asking. This process feeds me. It makes me have more to give my kids. I am so empty. Noah fills me as much as he can (ok the sex puns here are just so bad) but he needs so much work from me…

It’s been a long ten years.

I’m happy to be where I am. I’m happy with how I spent the last ten years. I can honestly say I would not have been physically capable of doing much more work.

I am so grateful I get to work with and in front of my kids.

That’s another anxiety brain monkey: god home schooling is selfish. It’s not just selfish because I’m keeping my kids from having other opportunities and I’m limiting them to what I can offer (although that’s there). It is that I am not helping to make the system less abusive for other kids. Why aren’t I organizing the PTA to refuse homework in elementary school?

Because I’m selfish. Because that would be a hard horrible uphill losing battle and I’ve lost so many battles to this system already.

I’m selfish because I was highly trained by a public education system and instead of being the fucktastically effective teacher I am for hundreds or thousands of children I am picking two.

I borrow kids whenever their parents will let me.

I want to have impact on more kids than just mine. But I need to see to mine first. Because I’m selfish.

I had them. I made them. I made them on purpose out of pure selfishness. Because I wanted to meet them. Because I wanted to know if something that came out of me would be as intrinsically bad and horrible as I thought or if maybe I could make something good.

So far so good.

What a horrible science experiment life is.

On a regular basis people tell me they admire me because when I had children everything changed. I upended every part of my life to have a new center. I don’t think that is the “correct” way to live life. I think that is what I had to do to try and create a less broken system given where I was coming from. I made them because i wanted to have no choice but to be something different. I’m a mom now. I’m not just a mom. I’m their teacher too. The buck stops here if there is a problem. It is my fault. I can’t blame a care provider or class mate or other authority figure.

If there is a problem… it is me. I have to change me in order to change how I am modeling behaving in order to fix behavioral problems in my kids. If there is a problem I have to learn how to differently express the boundaries until the kids can understand.

One of the things that made me so effective as a teacher was the fact that I consider it the teachers failure if a student doesn’t learn something. I remember one test one time where an entire unit just… failed. Something like 80% of the kids in all periods failed this exam.

I wept and apologized. I told every period that I let them down and I am so sorry I wasted their time with such bad teaching. I am very sorry that we will have to repeat this information and still get through everything else and that is all my fault. I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry.

Guess what? They fucking learned it after that. Not because I forced it or drilled anything. Because I found more creative ways to teach.

Teaching is about inspiring people to want to remember something you need them to know. It isn’t something that can be demanded. You can’t force people to learn. You can get people to rote memorize things… you can’t force them to learn.

Learning is about leaps and connections and being able to apply things in a cross curriculum fashion. Not being able to do a math worksheet in a given period of time. I believe in cross curriculum education.

I was told that kids need a math class to learn all the ways to solve math problems.

Pshaw. You clearly don’t have any idea how much math we use. We talk about many many many ways to solve problems. Because there is no one way to solve all problems. Given that I spent my childhood being told I was bad at math because I was at grade level (compared to my reading scores, which were off the charts high) I’m shocked at how being a maths-person is just part of the identity of this house.

We talk geometry, algebra, and make references to more complicated maths just as a matter of course. “How would you figure this out?” We talk about how to solve problems and we do arithmetic for fun. (Which is how you fucking know it isn’t at my initiation because I don’t think arithmetic is fucking fun.)

We are talking about combining fractions more and more. I gotta say… it freaks me out how easily these kids pick up concepts. I struggled with some of these into college.

It must be from Noah.

Home schooling is selfish because my kids are going to be so fucktastically weird. They will never be able to conform very well. They are going to be weird, weird fucking weird.

I like them so much.

We are all selfish in different ways. Is it ok? Is it ok to keep asking for things I’m not going to get? Asking for kinds of relationships and interactions that other people don’t want?

Getting rejected sucks. I get told “no” and “I don’t want to” a lot. That’s the downside of asking.

I HAVE NO PITY FOR PEOPLE WHO COMPLAIN THAT THEY CAN’T DATE BUT WHO NEVER EVER ASK ANYONE OUT. DO YOU KNOW HOW MUCH REJECTION I DEAL WITH TO GET TO BEING THIS SLUTTY?!?!?!!?!!!

Yes, it is easier for a girl to get laid. I don’t just want to get laid. I want a very specific, in high demand skill set.

Noah may think I’m all that and a bag of chips but I’ve been in this market long enough to know that I can only be so demanding with some people. He’s going to keep being shocked by how often I’m turned down and I’m going to keep nodding and saying, “Yup. That’s how it goes.”

And when people do say yes they usually say yes to what they want to say yes to which isn’t quite the same thing as what I wanted and them’s the breaks.

Can I sleep now? Should I hide eggs first? Probably. Go get phone for flashlight…