I’m asking Noah over and over: why more kids? He says he didn’t know how good we would be at parenting (fair, that was hard to evaluate with a 28 month old and a 6 week old and that’s when he got snipped) and he didn’t know that we would adapt and have so much fun. He says he waited until I got to the point of saying that I will accept a lot of medical management so I don’t die.

I’m definitely ok with signing up for whatever support I need so I don’t die. I know this will be complicated.

Why do I want more? I never didn’t. I have cried through every period I’ve had in about the last five years since I started bleeding again. I always wanted more kids. Why? Biology is a bitch. I like breeding. I like my kids. I hate being pregnant–I’m a miserable pregnant person. But at the end I get this baby. I can put up with nine months of anything.

Baby.

And my babies have turned into little people I like and respect who behave in ways I’m frankly quite proud of. My kids aren’t perfect. They are assholes just like their parents. But they are trying. They care about how their behavior impacts people and when they hurt someone they apologize and try to make it right. I respect them. They try so hard to be good people.

The struggle is real.

I’m going to have one bowl this morning. That’s uhm, barely using any pot for me. The Bonus Kids are here and hopefully this will be enough for me to get through breakfast without fuss and I need to start managing my mood more sober. Fuck. Shit. UGH.

It’ll be great. All four of these kids make my socks roll up and down with joy.

I uhh start off most days with 6-10 bowls. So 1 is a huge taper. Like whoa.

In my opinion if I could get my usage down to less than 5 bowls in 24 hours… that’s a level I won’t hate myself for during pregnancy. Less/none would be best. But… I use a lot. I don’t want to think about how much because my tolerance level is so ridiculous. It took me a lot of years of gradually increasing to get where I am. I haven’t had a month off since we went to Europe. Ha.

I didn’t sleep for the first 8 days of that trip. I need to not experience that again.

Noah’s vasectomy reversal is 6 weeks and 2 days away. We leave for the trip in 3 weeks and 2 days. So we can start trying for a baby in 10 weeks.

Holy crap.

This is Noah’s 35th birthday present to me. Surgery.

So I can have a baby. Baby. Baby. He keeps saying things that are freaking me out. He doesn’t think we’ll stop after one more. I HAVE SAID THREE FROM DAY ONE. NOW HE’S TALKING FOUR OR FIVE.

We would have to move. Probably out of the bay area because we won’t be able to afford a bigger house here. I mean, we could if we gave up the kind of travel we do. That’s hella expensive. But I don’t want to. Hell, it’s going to be even more expensive with more bodies. We are jumping from one to two hotel rooms in a lot of places. Eeek.

This is how I will have a family. I do not have sisters or brothers or aunts or uncles or parents or cousins who want to know me. I get to have children. With Noah. That’s the only family I am ever going to have.

Yeah. I’m ok with more. This is going so well.

My kids radiate joy and love. That has been their whole life. Yes, I’d sign up for more of this. We are so much more patient and loving than I expected.

I think that for me, parenting and teaching are all mixed up. This is the relationship in which I am allowed to be my best self. I am allowed to give the things I have that are the most valuable and worthy. I don’t have to slice down my offerings to be what someone else wants to hear in their brief 15 minutes of listening to me in this whole lifetime. I suck like that.

My children get to see what I do habitually, what habits I actually prioritize, how I behave all the time so they know the difference between doing well and failing.

They get a pretty uncensored picture. I mean, I don’t tell them all my feelings or thoughts but my children have witnessed the vast majority of my behavior for years. They know where I’m a hypocrite (I’m such a fucking whiner) and where I walk my talk.

Mostly I do walk my talk. I am consistent even if I can’t do it in the ways other people want from me. That’s ok. I may not be the person who can get the kids to the library story time like clockwork every week for years but I am the person who will show up to help, whenever necessary and I’ll do whatever is necessary.

I am not good at being a community member. I’m a top notch foul weather friend.

I am not the kind of person most people want to spend lots of time with. I’m abrasive and challenging and stubborn and controlling. But god damn I’m great in a crisis.

I have to believe it takes all kinds. There is a need for lots of kinds of people. I have to believe there is a place for me.

Someone has to be willing to talk to the incest cohort. I was reading through more studies recently. WHY DO MOST OF THESE “STUDIES” MAX OUT AT 50 PARTICIPANTS. I’d put money on these populations being homogenous. UGH. THIS IS NOT USEFUL INFORMATION. GOD DAMNIT.

There are millions of people who have experienced incest. You couldn’t find them? Shit. I’ve met more people in my lifetime who have talked to me about their incest experiences than these god damn researchers can find.

I think you need to be able to smell them. And I can. It’s remarkable how often I sidle up to a complete stranger and start talking and in under two hours they’ve told me that they were raped by a family member too.

We are everywhere. If you can’t find us… you aren’t looking.

That’s the only piece of sad I have about more babies now. That’s setting back my research by 10-15 years.

I guess I will have to stay alive longer if I want to really do this. I want to compile information on the incest cohort. I’m trying to find language for this that works for me.

Tribe is out. Victim is out. Survivor is out. Sufferer is out.

Why?

Because all four of those words will alienate a lot of the people I want to talk to for complicated reasons. I need to find language that will generalize and be ok.

How do I talk about incest without implying from the get go that someone is always hurt? It… isn’t true. Some of us have been hurt quite badly *raise hand* but a large number…… weren’t hurt. Either because they were perpetrators (and god damn I want to talk to them) or because… they didn’t feel hurt. That happens. It’s normal and ok for someone to have that set of responses.

I need to not alienate those people if I want to understand incest. They are a big part of the picture. They are what my father wanted from his incestuous acts. I don’t think he truly wanted to kill the souls of his children. I think he was looking for connection in the fucked up way he knew how.

I want to talk to people who manage to connect that way and have positive results. I want to hear all the details they are willing to share. I sincerely hope that when it happens I get to be a balm to their souls because they haven’t ever been able to be honest with anyone else about it.

Truth is freeing.

Tell the truth and shame the devil.

I write as much as I can about what I think because for good or bad… I am. I exist. I am here. I am complicated and good and bad and… that’s life. That’s what being a person means. No one is all good. No one is all bad. We are all trying, in our stunted ways, to reach for the light.

Most people who deal with the kinds of racing thoughts and mixed feelings and experiences I have don’t ever find a voice. They live with this cacophony trapped inside their brain.

I am so sorry. It is much easier when you can pull a thread out of the melody and release it into the world… somehow.

I may not feel connection exactly from sharing my words but I definitely feel like I am solidifying who I am. I feel like I am making sense of a terrible enigma. I am figuring out why I am doing what I’m doing. Sometimes it is biological compulsion. Sometimes there is even less sense than that.

People suck.

Done with the one bowl. I’ve been writing for an hour. Get off the computer. (Hey, I took breaks! I went slow! Yeah… your hands suck. Stop it.)