50,129. I wrote for 90 minutes today and now I need to stop before my wrists explode into flames.
I’m sure I will add more in the future. But I’m walking away from the higher word count goal for right now. There’s a lot more I want to flesh out in some of these chapters but I am declaring NaNo done for the year and I’m going to take another break.
Maybe it will be another multi-year break like the second break. Blurgh.
Whoa. Holy saucebuckets. The new upgrade of WordPress looks weird.
Today we sat down and divided up the weekend so that everyone gets to have one on one date time with each other. I get two hours to work on the book. I might finish NaNo this weekend, I’m close. Today I get to write the chapter on friendships. I may never publish this book if I want to keep my friends.
I hit 44,000 (and some) words then I haven’t written in two days. I feel overwhelmed and sad. When am I going to hit the point of feeling like “See! I am awesome! I have done all of the things! It’s amazing that I’ve done so well!”
I don’t know.
I feel sad and small and insufficient. I don’t think I should because I’m rather sufficient. Is there any advantage to being amazing or awesome? Sufficient is how I get through. Just barely good enough, that’s me.
The next chapter I write has to be about the screaming. It has to be an abject apology to my children. An admission that it has absolutely never been their fault when I lose control and I am so terribly sorry. I didn’t know how to create better boundaries so that I would have enough space for me so that I would have a more adequate amount to give to you. That was a huge failure on my part and it is entirely my fault. It is never ever ever ever your fault when I scream.
I love you and I am sorry I have failed you. I have.
This is going to be a rough chapter. I’m not writing it for you the readers of the blog; I write it because someday when my children struggle with feeling like the bad parts were all their fault I want them to be able to read it again. No, my darlings. It was not your fault. It was mine. I am deficient and that is a horrible burden you have had to bear.
It was never because I didn’t love you. It was always because I ran out of cope and that is a terrible, horrible truth.
Today Youngest Child demanded outside time as we waited for yet another package to be delivered so we went out in the yard. I took advantage of this time and got about 1/3 of the grass cut. I am a hippy so of course I have a push mower instead of an electric or gas one. I am having fun with it but I’m not sure the lawn looks “neat”. It would not pass muster if one were intent on a uniform lawn. To be fair I think this is either my very first or my second time ever cutting grass and the previous time might have been more than twenty years ago. Learning curves are real. I will improve, but it will take some time.
I am trying to figure out what I am going to do with the yard as I look outside the window. On one hand, I want to put up large trellises to block view and on the other hand, I worry about making the yard feel more closed off. I think that before I am allowed to plant anything I want to get some string and try to limit the walkways through the grass to start playing with how much grass I want to leave for running on. I want to be able to plant food in the yard. I sort of want to put planter boxes covering the driveway area, we don’t want a car after all, but I think I might regret that. I don’t know yet. It will take me a while. I don’t have to decide today. Or even in the next year.
I’m trying to put boundaries in place so I don’t fuck things up in the same way I have in the past. In the process I might just fuck things up in a whole new way.
Life is thrilling.
Ten days till I go in for my next doctor appointment. She probably won’t be the one to cut more out of me, but it’s still important.
Our boat stuff won’t arrive for another month. I am feeling pretty upset. Our Christmas decorations aren’t going to arrive until a week before Christmas. I may leave stuff up until February.
I’m drinking too much. By which I mean I’m having a drink a day. Well, somehow I need to find the self control and never buy another bottle of whisky. Because alcohol contributes to nine kinds of cancer and I have to be here for people.
All the mother fucking feelings. Oh well. Shut up.
A few people have asked me what is the point in writing the book given that it increases my stress level and it makes me feel bad about myself in the writing process. Rehashing ones mistakes rarely improves ones self esteem.
Last night my daughter told me that she worries about whether she will be able to find a job when she is older. I said, “Hang on.” I read through the chapter on my work history. Her eyes bugged out. She said, “You’ve done all that! Really?!” Yes. I have.
I may not always have the ability to tell my children about who I am. Frankly, I am extraordinary despite the fact that I am “only a housewife”. It is good for my kids to know it.
Do I feel bad as I rehash my mistakes? Yes. But by the time I am done I will understand myself better. I will understand the arc of my life better. I’m actually at a remarkably good point for examining the past few decades. I am at the dawn of a whole new era.
Yes. It is worth doing.
In this process I look not at what happened to me so much as what I did. I place myself in my story as a character of great changeability and potential and worth.
Yes. It is worth doing.
44,748 words in so far.
I will definitely finish the 50K words for NaNoWriMo, but my hands hurt a lot. I am not going to die of cancer in the next year. I don’t need to finish the whole book this month. I don’t think trying to do that is good for my mental or physical health right now.
I’m struggling with vulnerability and emotional stability. When I lived in California I struggled with this. These are things I don’t handle well. I am having a hard time with the lack of pot, the knowledge that I really should stop drinking entirely (linked to 9 kinds of cancer), and I’m on duty around the clock with a lot of stress.
The house is a money pit. Once we get everything fixed (it feels like fucking everything) hopefully it will get easier, but it’s really stressful. Getting things here is super stressful. I’ve been waiting ALL FUCKING DAY for the delivery of baby gates to help with boundaries for multiple days but the company just isn’t getting around to me and they tell me I have to be available from 7:30am-9pm just in case they feel like getting to me that day.
If I write about my kids and what is going on with them there is potential judgment there that is a bigger problem than just shutting the fuck up and not getting support.
Boundaries are hard. Where do boundaries need to be placed to preserve relationships and where will boundaries mess up a relationship? I don’t know.
I don’t have a lot of adult contact in my life. There are a bunch of reasons for this and I’m not complaining about it–I’m just noticing that it’s part of the constellation of stress and anxious. I don’t feel very safe reaching out and that’s complicated. I am not blaming anyone else. I am not reaching out. I am not reaching out for eleventybillion reasons. I suspect that a bunch of my friends would be happy to talk to me more, but I feel like a needy burden and that means I need to just shut the fuck up and wait it out until I can listen and be a supportive friend again. I don’t feel ok in any way with needing support.
I found out yesterday that there is a family from Sacramento in our school; they moved here at Easter. We talked about live shooter drills and how much of a problem they were for her kids. She understands why I home schooled there. She said that in her experience there really is zero support or understanding for it here. All home schooling here is termed “interrupted learning”.
I’m feeling a lot of hostility towards the idea that home schooling means that kids are inevitably damaged. As if the fucking kids who go to school are all alright.
The longer period of darkness means my family is sleeping a lot more. That’s good. There is this well of existential exhaustion we are all trying to cope with. It’s good but it means there are fewer hours in the day for us to do our work and that causes anxiety too.
I’m going to start shooting for more like 1,000-1,500 words/day for the rest of the month. I won’t finish the book, but I will rest my hands more. I am so tired and I hurt and I feel bad about myself.
Writing the book is incredibly hard emotionally. It feels like a trip down Krissy-is-a-fuck-up-lane. I have fucked up a lot of relationships. I make a lot of bad decisions. I don’t feel good about myself almost at all. It is really hard to stay present with “I should be making choices that extend my longevity” when it feels like the world would be so much better if I were dead. I’m not feeling suicidal, but it’s hard to think about “I should cut back on meat, dairy, eggs, sugar, eliminate alcohol, watch my exercise very carefully, get frequent full body scans for cancer, cut back on stress (hahahahahaha), etc” all so I can… live longer and spend more time as a shitty person who fucks up all the god damn time.
And Noah is off for nine days. He’s visiting with his besties (this is a great thing!) and going to a conference (this… is important too). I know he needs to go. I support him going. Being alone with the kids is going to feel like a lot. Taking delivery of the boat stuff alone is going to feel like a lot.
Installing the baby gates alone (if I can ever get them delivered) is going to feel like a lot.
Today it is hard to feel hope.
In brighter, money-pit news, the lovely joiner dude who is helping us with stuff looked at my drawings for the book shelves and thinks they look fun to build. He was a little worried at first about cost “I wouldn’t even know how to estimate how long this will take and I’m nervous about the cost of materials.” I said, “Well let me tell you how I did my bathroom. (show pictures–watch eyes bug out) I bought all of the materials and I paid for hours every week. The construction company started out saying ‘It’ll take three months tops!’ I laughed and said it would take a minimum of six months. It took seven months. I paid wages every single week like clockwork. This is my project. I know it is huge and complicated and not something that can be estimated. I will pay for the time it takes. I would prefer if I can count on something like one or two days a week of dedicated labor (you have other clients to take care of on other days, I get that) and it takes how many weeks it takes.”
He said that sounds really neat and he’s looking forward to all the research he will have to do to put this together. He won’t start till the new year, which is great because I’d rather not have the mess during Christmas. We are talking about types of wood, both whether to use treated wood (lumber in the US, timber here), where to use untreated raw wood for aesthetic purposes, hard woods vs soft woods… this is going to be a really fun project.
But exhausting. Whyyyyyyyyy must I do this.
I don’t have forever. If I want to have time to enjoy things, get it done. I am not Pam. I won’t live till I am 100.
Marijuana induced apathy. That would be great.
I asked in my online support group about “How are you” and why my child was told that she was rude when she said “terrible”. I was told it is just a substitute for “hello” and being negative in response is indeed rude. People don’t mean it, they are just going through social niceties and answering as if it is a real question is rude and will make people uncomfortable.
I hate the world. That makes me incredibly sad. That feels alienating and awful and it makes me feel like I should stop talking at all. Yes, I’m over reacting. But I’m in a new place with new mores and I just had people from three countries tell me that I am totally inappropriate if I take something as a real question that I have always answered honestly.
I feel horrible. I feel sick to my stomach. I feel like I should not try to make friends. I feel like I should maintain my video chats with people who actually want to talk to me and stop talking to anyone else and I feel so bad for my poor children who are going to have to learn how to navigate this minefield of lies and lack of caring.
If I ask how are you, I want to know the answer. That’s why I really knew my car mechanic and the lady at the dry cleaners and most of my neighbors and and and and.
But I’m wrong. And my behavior is rude, inappropriate, and alienating.
I cried myself to sleep and I am probably going to spend more time crying about this. I feel sick.
As usual I am doing everything wrong.
If you write about yourself you open yourself up for people interpreting your words however they want. Throwing them back at you however they want.
It’s a lot safer not to think about your behavior. It’s a lot safer not to write about your screw ups. Then you get to pretend you are awesome and you are always right.
It is hard being willing to admit that you fuck up, and not just “Yes of course everyone makes mistakes get over it” but “Oh dear me yes I screw up and let me list all of the ways and then go on to list everything I am trying to do to stop screwing up like that so I can instead make new mistakes.”
Vulnerability is a bitch.
People can love you and still be cruel to you. People judge each other left, right, and center. But what kinds of judgments are equivalent and what kinds are really awful?
What do you let into your life? When do you decide to change patterns? What is enough of a motivation? I don’t know.
I am so tired. I feel really sad and scared. I am not going to blog about all of why. I don’t feel safe enough to do so. I don’t want to face the consequences because I am a fucking chicken shit. So instead I ruminate and make no progress. Walking on eggshells, indeed.
25,040 words and counting.
Final diagnosis of the original biopsy:
Malignant melanoma, superficial spreading type, invasive to level II and a measured thickness of 0.5mm arising in association with a compound nevus, margins free but close.
Final comment:
This lesion is indeed a fully evolved malignant melanoma, superficial spreading type, invasive multifocally to 0.5mm. The radical growth phase is composed of prominent melanoma cells both spindle and epithelioid. They are present in very large nests and show focal pagetold spread. There is evidence of a pre-existing nevus at the site. There is no evidence of regression, ulceration or mitoses. Re-excision is recommended with a 1.0cm margin. SOX-10 and HMB45 support the above interpretation.
Positive and negative controls for all immunohistochemical stains and/or special stains prepared by the outside laboratory were reviewed, and they are considered appropriate.
From the NHS website:
Around 7 out of 10 (70%) of all melanomas in the UK are superficial spreading melanomas.
They’re more common in people with pale skin and freckles, and much less common in darker skinned people.
They initially tend to grow outwards rather than downwards, so do not pose a problem.
But if they grow downwards into the deeper layers of skin, they can spread to other parts of the body.
From Melanoma International:
Here is an explanation of terms that may appear in your pathology report:
- Type: description of the particular variety of melanoma you have—superficial spreading melanoma, lentigo maligna melanoma, nodular melanoma, and so on. The superficial spreading type is the most common.
- Growth phase: designation that shows whether the melanoma has reached the step where it can grow as a lump below the epidermis. In the radial growth phase, as we have seen, it is unlikely that the cancer has begun to metastasize. With the vertical growth phase, there is at least some chance that the disease has spread elsewhere in the body.
- Mitotic count or mitosis: measure of how many melanoma cells are dividing below the epidermis. Only in the vertical growth phase do cells divide in the dermis. The higher the mitotic count, the more likely the tumor is to have spread.
- Tumor-infiltrating lymphocytes: immune system cells (lymphocytes) whose presence in the vertical growth phase are a positive sign. Presumably, lymphocytes show that the immune system has recognized the tumor and is attacking it.
- Greatest thickness: the Breslow thickness. A measurement of a millimeter or less is considered thin—and means a favorable prognosis.
- Site: location of the melanoma. Patients with a vertical growth phase melanoma located on an extremity have a relatively more favorable prognosis than those on the trunk or head and neck (a subtlety is that a rare subtype of melanoma that, unless the lesion appears on the palms, on the soles of the feet, or under the nails acts like trunk lesions).
- Sex: gender of the melanoma patient. For unexplained reasons, women have a better prognosis than men.
- Regression: An attribute that may be either absent or present in the radial growth phase (which is adjacent to the vertical growth phase). Regression is evidence of destruction (probably by immune factors) of some of the melanoma cells in the radial growth phase. Immunologically mediated regression of this sort is a weakly negative factor.
- Level of Invasion: the Clark level. Mine was a level IV tumor—that is, the melanoma had penetrated to just above the fatty layer of the skin.
- Precursor Lesion: Evidence of a pre-existing ordinary, dysplastic, or congenital mole from which the melanoma might have developed. My melanoma came from a dysplastic nevus. Although dysplastic nevi are the most common precursors, common moles and congenital moles may also be culprits. For many melanomas no evidence of a precursor shows up.
So what I’m getting is that I definitely need to have a larger chunk of skin removed, but it probably didn’t get very deep or spread to other areas.
Thank you, Noah for telling me I had to check this out.
We now have two sweet, cuddly, purring machines running around the apartment kitchen. They have absolutely pigged out on food. They are absolutely delightful. Yay for joy.
10,647.
I kind of feel like I want to write more. I also feel like my arms forking hurt and I should rest.
Sidenote: Greenleaf is GOOD.
I tell my kids that if you say something intending it to be a joke and nobody laughs… it probably wasn’t a joke and instead you said an asshole thing. We all do it sometimes.
I tell my kids that if you assign people roles like “bully” or “victim” then you probably aren’t looking at the whole picture: people are more complex than that.
I tell my kids that if you blame other people for your problems then you are deciding you don’t want to fix things.
I tell my kids that if you eat shitty food you will be in a shitty mood.
I tell my kids that if you yuck someone else’s yum they may end up not liking you and they won’t want to spend time with you. You don’t have to like everything that someone else likes, you do have to not be an asshole about it.
I’m to about 8% of my NaNoWriMo goal the day before the event starts. I’m not good at waiting. And my personal goal is more like 100,000 words, not 50,000. This book is not going to be small. These are the lessons and the stories I want my kids to hear from me if I die. That’s a lot of words.
All four showers in the house are jacked up and need repair. That’s pissing me off. The boiler system needs to be replaced. Most of the sinks are draining slow and need to be snaked. So basically, all the plumbing is shit.
Slowly fixing all the electrical shit that’s fucked up.
I’m pretty annoyed about just how much needs to be fixed. And how expensive it is.
Don’t know the results of the biopsy on the melanoma. Results are being snail mailed from the US.
We are working on our diet to be more centered on general cancer prevention though. That’s going to matter if I want to be here for decades.
Working on the book already. Why bother waiting for November? I’m not shooting for 50,000 anyway. I think this will be over 100,000. I have a lot to say to the kids. It hurts.
Well, when I was about 21 I had cancer cells removed from my cervix. Thank you HPV. I caught it fast. I treated it fast. It hasn’t mattered.
But now that I have a second form of cancer… it matters. It is showing a pattern. A predisposition. And I’m very young for skin cancer. It’s a really bad sign that I’m getting it before 40 because even if this round is caught early and treated in a proactive manner… I’m very likely to get it again. It is more likely to spread to being other kinds of cancer in my body.
I am having big feelings about the fact that the man who gave me HPV (he knew he had it and he didn’t disclose it until after I came home sobbing about what a horrible person I was for having this disease and I’m so sorry I exposed you to this, I don’t know which one of my partners gave me this…) also used to enjoy giving me sunburns on my back because it was funny. He liked knowing I was in a kind of pain I couldn’t get away from.
So much for “risk aware consensual kink”. That relationship did a lot to harm my body permanently.
Oh, he’s also the partner who broke my arm.
I HAVE SPENT SO MANY YEARS TALKING ABOUT HOW GREAT HE WAS. Maybe just being better than my rapist/serial pedophile father isn’t a high enough bar.
I am probably going to drop the blog entirely for a month or so. I need to write the next book and I am going to take advantage of NaNoWriMo again. Today my kids burst into tears because they realized they know so little about me. I need to tell all the stories from the next 20 years. It’s going to be another hard book to write but for very different reasons. And it’s going to be hell on my arms. I am going to drop the blog, not go on the forums, ignore my support group, avoid Slack, and all idle web browsing. I will be allowed to check email once a day but I will only respond to emergency stuff.
My personal goal is at least 4,000 words per day. This story is long and fucking complex. I will need every ounce of typing ability I have to tell it in a month.
Just in case I die. These are the stories I need my children to know. I hope they can learn from my mistakes and go on to make new mistakes.
I can’t sleep. Future will eat me.
It’s not a very aggressive form of cancer. Malignant melanoma. But I’m basically freaking out. I had cancer before, when I was 19. Then it was from HPV and on my cervix. It was burned off. This time it will be carved out with a knife and I get to pray I don’t have to undergo radiation.
I’m scared and sad. I don’t want more pain.
I’ve told myself for many years that if I get cancer… I get to just let go and stop trying. I get to die. It’s my right.
But I look at my little 20 month old baby and my 9 year old and my 11 year old… they are not ready for me to go. If it’s worse than expected… I have to fight. I have to fight with everything I am. And I’m told I am a whole lot of extra.
I promise that if I am fighting cancer I will hire house cleaners. Stop bugging me.
Tonight I miss my mother so much I feel like I could collapse under it. I’m crying on and off.
My baby is downstairs crying too. She wants me. I am being selfish. I need to look into my brain and at my feelings right now.
If I have to have radiation, we must wean. That would be hard on so many levels. She loves nursing so much. But she’d prefer to have me whole and alive than to nurse for a few extra months. I know.
It is hard knowing that I can’t give up because I have to keep supporting my kids. I mean, Noah would miss me and that would be terrible. I went to the doctor in the first place because Noah asked me to. Noah told me that I should keep hanging on because after all… he bought me my dream house… I haven’t even put art in it…
I CAN’T DIE WITHOUT KNOWING WHAT THE FUCK LUCREZIA IS DOING AND AT THIS RATE THE GOD DAMN FOGLIOS ARE GOING TO TAKE ANOTHER 20 YEARS TO WRAP UP THIS STORY LINE. (Girl Genius comic book reference.)
But Noah. I have to stay for Noah. He’s even treating his eczema so it can be more fun to rub on him. That’s a lot of effort on his part.
He is trying so hard to be pretty for me. I like the way his hair is growing out. I like how he is trimming his beard. He is working hard on exercise so he can be healthy and strong.
I’m just… really scared of more pain. I feel like I am a coward, a whiner, a pathetic person who just needs to suck it up. Everyone suffers, Buttercup.
Just… fuuuck. I could have used a break for a few years form bad things.
We are having a plumber and an electrician come in a lot because a bunch of stuff is broken. Today the electrician came and as he looked around he said “Ah. I can see by the sticker who did the last work here. I’m not surprised you are having problems.”
Lovely.
When I say I worry about too frequent contact there are a couple of folks I am thinking about.
There’s this really nice lady in my life. She used to be my next door neighbor. She’s going through a traumatic divorce (her ex is a real shit weasel) and she’s now dealing with his bullshit from India. So when we talk we spend a lot of time with her asking me questions about the legal system. In the past I have had to explain a lot of stuff about the DMV. She’s not super big on answering her own questions with internet searches because she doesn’t even know where to begin. (Frankly, now that I am searching from outside the US I see how much harder it is from a distance. My ignorance is vast.)
It’s not that I get nothing from the friendship. I get a lot. I like her quite a bit and she teaches me about things and I really like being a helper.
But she keeps asking if we can talk every day because she could really use the support. I… call every three months. That’s what I can handle. I feel like a shit weasel because she needs more support and she wants to get it from me but… I would flip out if I tried to talk to her for over an hour every day. I just can’t. It’s a lot of thinking and work on my end to solve her problems for her and she only occasionally does anything to follow the advice she spends a lot of time asking me for. That’s hard. It drains me. I feel exhausted by the end and then I am a less good mother. That’s not fair to my kids every day.
Another friend is an oldie-but-goodie. He was my boss from 16-19 and we’ve stayed in touch over the years. He’s often told me that I’m one of the few people on the planet who is allowed to tell him what he should do because I’m the only one who a)knows him well enough and b)gives good enough advice. He is currently living with his folks because he is retired and his parents require hospice care. He doesn’t know how much longer this will go on because their bodies are failing fast.
He’s super depressed. He’s isolated. He has had a whole career focused on culture and the arts and he is absolutely despondent to be back in this one horse small Texas town. There’s barely a movie theater and absolutely no real theatre. There isn’t a good bookstore or library and frankly he doesn’t have the money to buy stuff online. He’s not doing well. I talk to him every couple of weeks for a few minutes at a time. If he wanted longer chats… I couldn’t do it so often. He wants to talk for half an hour or less, but he needs contact. He needs to feel like he was not forgotten. He needs to process how hard and sad and traumatizing the work he is doing is for him and there is no such thing as a support group or available therapists where he is.
I love these people. My old boss with great intensity–he was an important mentor to me at a crucial time in my life. He taught me everything I know about carpentry, electrical work, rigging, and painting. I love this man. I don’t mind offering him support.
But I only have so much to give.
As a dear man has said to me, I’m more of a foul weather friend. It is hard for me to be present for the best times of peoples lives. I am someone that people depend on when everything is going wrong. That’s not all bad, but it is hard. It means I feel less like setting boundaries is a good thing because my friends are hurting. I know I can help alleviate pain.
Because of posts I make on public forum I have a whole bunch of folks who are sending me private messages essentially asking for therapy.
This is complicated! I’m good at it. I do help people feel better. I tend to have a few month cycles where a given person messages almost every day then they move through their crisis and I don’t hear from them much anymore.
I often feel like these dynamics are my fault. I feel like I create a crisis if none exists. I feel like people not wanting to share good times with me is my fault. When Sarah wanted me to be there for her good time (at my expense so she could focus on other people) I kind of made that not go well. I didn’t want to just help her have a good time while I saw her for a few minutes a day. Not given how hard it was for me.
I will put that much effort into helping people through trauma without expecting anything back but I can’t put that much effort into helping someone else have a good time without me. I just fucking can’t.
I feel… broken. I feel selfish. I feel cruel and mean. I don’t know if I actually am or not. I don’t expect people going through trauma to focus on me. I deeply resent when someone wants me to be furniture in the room while they have a good time without me.
I don’t know how to perceive this in myself beyond my default that I am wrong and of course these people I love are better/more right than me.
My old boss could go six months at a time without talking to me when his life was going well. I was never invited to the parties or events. I could have invited myself to some of them… if I found out about them in advance, which was rare.
I don’t know if I have the right to feel used.
I don’t know what to do about always putting myself in these kinds of positions. I am trying to have more boundaries around it all.
Why do people only want to talk to me when their lives are going to shit?
I suspect it is because I emote for people. I also expect people to be working on shit all the time. Most people, when things are going well, don’t want to change at all. They want to hold their breath and stand very still and hope things continue. I can’t do that. To me change is as inevitable as breathing and if you try to crystalize in the “good part” of your life you will cause yourself great pain in the future when you need to know things you don’t already know. You have to keep changing and growing or learning or you are going to create a problem at some point coming up.
What don’t you already know? Hurry up and learn it. Or you will experience pain because of that lack.
My kids and I have been watching documentaries all during their school break. We have a lot to talk about. Netflix has some great ones out at this point! We don’t watch casual, fun things. We try to learn more about what we need to do in the future. How are humans creating problems and what do we need to do about them? What can we do about them?
Don’t stand in one place assuming everything is fine or the ship will sink while you are on the dance floor.
Incidentally my kids want break to be over so bad. They want to go back to school. Ha. They want kiiiiiiiiiiiids.
People don’t often reach out to me to say “Things are going great for me! I’m happy!” I feel like this is because I am such an asshole and I might rain on their parade. I am quite an Eeyore. I feel like this is appropriate. And it makes me feel rather sad about myself. I don’t know exactly what I need to change in myself to be someone that people want to talk to about good things too.
Ugh. I’m up early catching up on the only vlog I follow. I’m making tea to go with it. Time to stop typing.
PS- after watching the vlog for a while I have to smack myself in the forehead. Yes. Sometimes people do put a bunch of effort into sitting around and telling me about the good in their lives.
It’s complicated.
I know I am not alone in struggling to give myself credit for progress. I spent 7 hours making furniture yesterday and on one hand that’s a lot and my hands hurt and on the other hand… that’s a reasonable work day and then I stopped. I really struggle with giving myself credit for taking breaks and resting. But that’s important and I need to do it.
I am trying to figure out what I want from the vast network of people I love. Many of them love me back… but some of them don’t and I have carried a relationship with them to my detriment. I’m deleting chat programs from my phone because once I go to a top-up sim card I don’t want to be using data when I am out and about to chit chat. I want my phone as a utilitarian device, partially because it does a fuck ton of damage to my thumbs. Typing on a real keyboard is just different and better for me even though it isn’t perfect.
But I’m leaving Marco Polo because I can use it in the house on wifi. It’s a fabulous little app where you make videos back and forth at different times so you can have a conversation even though it isn’t real time. It’s great. I have a couple of friends who use it and I’m excited to keep talking to them this way. Very low stress. No coordination of calendars!
I continue to struggle with appropriate enthusiasm for setting my boundaries. There are things I need and things I need to stop doing and I tend to… either not set the boundary or set it overly forcefully in a way that creates problems. I still struggle with this happy medium. It is not wrong or bad for me to have different needs and preferences than my friends… but I feel like it is and then I get harsh. I am frequently harsh with other people when I am upset with myself for setting a boundary. Which is shitty and terrible and totally unfair.
I am absolutely a shitty friend if someone wants to stay in a situation that hurts them and complain about it and never change anything. For the same reason I am brutally harsh with myself for not making progress fast enough, if someone else wants to slowly shift things over years or decades… I am not the best support for that.
“If you can’t look back on yourself 18 months ago and say ‘Wow I really sucked’ you aren’t trying hard enough.”
I am now living in a place where the scale of progress is totally different and I don’t know how I will adapt. Part of it has to be focusing inwards because I can only really change myself. But how do I balance creating relationships with people here?
I had shows on in the background yesterday while I was working (bless you, Noah for getting internet turned on so I can have Netflix back) and I keep hearing the line “I like my own company” go through my head a lot.
I like myself. I like spending time with me. I like how I choose to spend my time. I like what I do and create and think and feel when I don’t have to censor myself for anyone else. The past 25+ years of my life I have tried as hard as I could to avoid me and to always be looking for more contact, more people, more of other people’s interests.
Why?
I don’t want to get out of the house every day. I don’t want to talk to friends every day. Even if I do talk to people every day I kind of need it to be a rotating cast of people so I don’t eat myself alive with anxiety trying to conform to my broken mental picture of what a given person wants from me.
I think I do want to get out of the house every day but I want to go as far as a walk and not really talk to anyone. I am absolutely elated that one mile up my road is the start of a gorgeous trail through the woods. I can walk for hours and only pass an occasional person and we just smile and nod at each other. I want that.
I have hurt a lot of people forcing frequent contact because I felt like I “should” even though neither of us truly enjoyed it. When am I going to learn? When am I going to stop insisting on constantly seeing/talking to people even though it creates friction?
I don’t know. I’m getting better about it?
Noah is being super proactive this year and he asked me how I want to handle Christmas cards. It’s going to be complicated with international stuff. I think… our list is going to shrink a lot. If someone has not bothered to reach out to me to initiate contact or conversation in some way in two years… they are falling off the list. That seems fair and reasonable. Someone being willing to grudgingly talk to me when I initiate contact isn’t the same thing. Our Christmas card list is huge and I have put a ton of time, labor, and even money into the project. I think I am done.
If our whole relationship is me reaching out to you then I am going to drop the rope.
And for some strange reason thinking that makes me miss Jill so much. She’s been dead for years. But that woman and I alternated who contacted the other every six months for so long. We both valued the relationship. Letting go of people hurts.
I keep having fantasies about saying goodbye to my family before I cut off my California number. I won’t. You don’t say goodbye to cut off people. It’s cruel.
Today I will do my PT exercises (that don’t require the TRX…. which is on the dang boat) before I start working. I could use the time spent on my body.
EC is reading To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and she keeps interrupting her reading to yell at the book and I love it so much. I like that we spend a lot of time at home doing this kind of thing.
And I have a bunch more I want to write but the day is starting and I’m off like a shot.
Yesterday I asked the kids to do the vast majority of the cleaning up in the house. After every meal you wash the dishes and clear the counters and get stuff ready so that making the next meal is easy. That leaves me room to use my spoons for other things.
So we went on an epic hike. It was really glorious. By the time we got home we had done about six miles, but a ton of it was on hills and I wore Youngest Child for probably 3+ of those miles. Then I got home and made everyone dinner and did a full kitchen tidy. Then food got delivered and I put it all away. Today I feel wasted. My back hurts so much. I can’t find the ibuprofen. Whine. I guess I’m not going on the bike ride the kids asked for today.
I am sitting at the table bleary and weary and just about numb.
Last night I had a chat with a bunch of teachers about schools and affluence and mental health. I love it when I get to stumble upon such conversations. Most folks are teaching/used to teach in the US but there were folks from other places too. The general consensus was children who are pushed to put 100% of their focus on school and grades and Being The Best at academics often turn out to be pretty unhappy and miserable and mostly not great at functioning at life. It was interesting listening to other peoples stories. My point of view was mostly affirmed and shared even from people with wildly different backgrounds.
The folks in the conversation who have witnessed affluence and poverty up close (professionally and/or personally) all have our kids do a lot of non-school work. Chores/volunteering/getting to know people outside your bubble of school are all massively important. Encourage your kids to try to do stuff and then fail and then talk about what they could do differently and then don’t fix it for them.
Eldest Child’s room was neat. Then she babysat and brought the baby in there. Now it looks like a bomb went off again. Ok.
My kids have said a couple of times over the past few days that they can appreciate how much effort I put into helping them have a nice house to live in now in a way they couldn’t in the past. The combination of a bigger space, plus the constant awful tidying of borrowed apartments, plus them going to school and not doing the chores during the week because they are exhausted, plus being on holiday this week and doing a lot of extra stuff just because they can…
Perspective is awesome.
Now I sit around backing up all my schtuff onto a local massive hard drive because that way I can stop paying for iCloud. I want to stop paying for as much as humanly possible over the next two months.
I’m feeling like a super nerd as I search how to get shit out of DRM locked files. I paid for it! I want to store it where you can’t steal it back! Clearly these companies disagree…
Downloading everything from the cloud so I can upload it to the new hard drive is going to take a lot of time and hand spoons. *sigh*