Category Archives: abandonment issues

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The older I get the more I learn about my own introvert nature. I always thought I was an extrovert. I needed people. I had to take what I could get in terms of company. I need time where I get to write. I have to empty my head.

Notice those days where I bop around from social media tool to social media tool? I feel lonely. I want to feel like I am seen and part of the world.

I don’t use social media more because I am afraid. I am afraid of being yelled at. I am afraid of being told I am bad and stupid. I am afraid that if I actually said more of what is in my head that people would not want to know me any more. As lonely as I feel at this stage of my life I know this is the absolute best I have ever had it. I try very hard to understand what this might mean in the scope of my life. If I blow this… I know how that goes.

I am ok with someone getting to know me and disliking something that I do. That’s fine with me. No matter who you are you do things that I don’t like. I’m fine with you feeling the same way about me.

But I desperately want people to believe that I am allowed to exist. Without having to offer sex. I want to have some kind of value in the world. I want to be needed. I want who and what I am to be useful. And without having to change so that I can be more like other people.

It is kind of funny to me when people tell me that me making the choices I make reflects negatively on them.  Well, funny in a horrified kind of way. I can tell you in great detail exactly why I am bad for every single choice that I make. I know all of the arguments down the last specific. I don’t think that my choices are “good”. I don’t think that other people are bad for not being like me. I think I am bad for not being like other people.

I think I am rather pathetic for not being able to work while having children. I know a lot of women who do it and everything is working out great. I would be an abusive monster. I cannot handle that stress. I feel very ashamed of my limits.

I think it is rather pathetic that I can’t deal with hiring childcare on a daily basis so I can go get work done. I think it is extremely pathetic that I would use that time to hide and cry. But I would.

I worry a lot about isolating my children. I think there are HUGE benefits to public school. I am not sure I am doing them favors by encouraging non-conformity and inability to follow institutional rules. I’m not sure I am doing them favors by showing them that they should be very angry with any one who tries to tell them when and where they can use a bathroom. My kids think they have the god damn right to decide when and where. If you pester them to “just try” so that you don’t have to be inconvenienced later they will lash out at you. I’m ok with this. I feel the same fucking way. I don’t act like accidents are that big of a deal. I’ve had too many because of problems I have in my body due to a lifetime of malnutrition and control issues in institutional settings.

I worry a lot about being a parent with mental illness. What am I teaching my children about “normal”?

No. I don’t look down on people for making different choices.

I believe with everything I am that no one can judge what is the right choice for another person. I don’t believe I ever have enough information to judge what a different person is capable of accomplishing. For good or for ill. I under estimate and over estimate. I just can not judge. I don’t feel that other people judge me very well.

I’m going to be semi-egotistical and say that I am an extremely competent person. I know how to do a wide variety of skills at a better than average level. I have had to learn how to do things for myself and by myself. I am a ridiculously hard task master.

But I don’t think I am capable of much. Notice how I actively avoid anything in life that might lead me to having power? I don’t want to have a powerful job. I don’t want to associate with “powerful” people. I don’t especially want to have a rich lifestyle regardless of how much money I ever have. I would feel wildly uncomfortable.

When I picture my old age I would be just fine with living on a trailer on a piece of property in Oregon where I am legally allowed to decide when I die. Sure. That would be fine.

I don’t think that most people uhhh set their aspirations at such a level. I want to have enough money to never need to work again. I’m trying to use this ridiculous income of my husband’s to ensure that it happens without him having to work for many more years. I don’t want him working himself to the bone for decades to support my sloth. That’s not the deal.

I want both of us to be able to do things we want with the hours of our days. Luckily for him, the shit he likes to do for fun will probably generate a modest income. Eventually I will do something for some pay. I don’t want much. I really fucking don’t. I already have more than I need.

I feel like I have grown up in a weird space of intersection. Boy howdy have I seen the American Dream up close and personal. I see the stress. I see the trade offs. I see the A/B decisions that started with your parents decisions and I know that I will never be able to be competitive. It was done before my birth.

Oh man does that make me want to opt out of the system. I want to have my private, isolated life where I don’t have to try to step on anyone else’s neck in order to inch my way up.

I don’t have that in me. That fight was lost too long ago.

So what am I teaching my children? I worry. I worry all the fucking time.

What kind of adults will my children be? They will never experience deprivation of any kind. They will grow up with a mother who responds to any and all signs of entitlement with the nastiness of a viper. You are not fucking entitled to the labor of my body. Do for yourself. (I try to tone things down because they are kids and all but I am getting less patient by the year and by the time they are adults I won’t feel any desire to tone it down.)

You have to care about how the actions of your body effect the people around you. You have to. Period. If you are not willing to care about that, well you can bloody well stay in a room by yourself. (For an age appropriate number of minutes on a timer. Then you come out to kisses and hugs and talk about how much you are loved.)

I don’t know that I am doing anything right.  I don’t really feel like I am in a position to look down on what anyone else is doing.

My life is such a bizarre mix of trauma and privilege that it is hard to tease out what is positive and what is negative. What parts of my behavior and character are positive or negative depends entirely on your point of view.

Recently (this year) a lot of my reading has been about what personality traits enable people to thrive despite adversity. I may be a whiny bitch because most of my current adversity is all in my head but other people in the world deal with real adversity. It is still relevant reading and all. (See that denigration about the mental illness bit. IT’S ALL IN MY HEAD! Well, what isn’t?)

Apparently one of the most important aspects of character is the ability to live with having conflicting traits in yourself. Be ok with the fact that you are patient AND impatient. Be ok with the fact that you are trusting and suspicious. I really am quick to judge people. I give people a lot of fucking rope. Then I hang them hard and fast and walk away.

I don’t like being alone. I find being alone significantly preferable to being in social environments where I have to try very hard to be “good” or I might be expelled. I think of basically every social space that way. I’m not invited to that many parties any more. Part of it is the kid thing. Part of it is that I make people feel fucking uncomfortable. C’est la vie.

I feel intense guilt for not being able to unschool the way I see some people doing it. I can’t have my kids involved in activities six days a week to meet social needs. I just can’t. I am not capable.

When I was a kid it was a joke in most of the schools I was enrolled in that I shouldn’t bother enrolling because I missed so much school. I have never been a consistent part of anything. I can manage a few months, maybe. I taught for 2.5 years at S.T. That is the longest I have ever consistently done anything in my life. I was technically in the graduate program at SJSU for seven years… but I attended one class a week for most of that and I had years off in the middle.

I lived with my Owner for three years and dated him for four. Outside of my mother he is the person I have lived with the longest consecutively by far. I’m not sure my mother beats him by much and after I was four years old I never lived with her for four years in a row again.

I have lived with Noah and Shanna longer than I have ever lived with my mother in a go. When I write it down it becomes a thing I can look at. Holy shit. That’s really pretty sad. When I just feel anxiety and frustration because I am having a horrible time with the pressure that comes from trying to provide stability for children I don’t think of it in such terms. Of course this is hard for me. Of course I am struggling. I’m swinging without a net. So I pursue relentless competence at a wide variety of skills. Most of which are utterly without value to anyone beyond me. I can’t care about that. People like me die if they worry too much about which skills to pick up because they will invariably make the wrong decisions.

I’m trying really hard to make my 10,000 mistakes. I’m not sure what I will be a “master” of but I think I will be much more calm. What is another mistake at that point? I can do anything and it doesn’t matter.

I want neither the path of complete disconnection from other people of Zen nor the immersion in community behavioral norms I have always known. I don’t know what my path will be.

I can neither lead nor follow. If I am making other people feel like they are wrong then I need to work on my communication skills.

I haven’t figured anything out. I just keep walking because I don’t know what else to do. I try new things because I don’t know how to do the same thing for a long time.

I want to raise children the way I am doing this because my children are going to be the only people I ever have this kind of intensity with. I have absolutely no other window into such an experience. I am a selfish piece of shit and I want it. I want it. I want it. I want to find out what it means to live with someone 24/7 for 18 years. I understand that other people get enough out of that experience with their kids being gone for school and I’m totally cool with that and I think it represents a healthy approach to life.

I can’t. I can’t miss this. I have no other way to find out what a normal childhood looks like. I want to watch this so fucking much. I am so scared that I will miss part of it and I won’t be able to understand why something later is happening. I need to fucking know what is happening to them. I NEED to know. I can’t just trust a daycare provider. I can’t. This is a failure in me.

I need to know in my bones that when they are eighteen I have kept them safe. I can’t pass the buck on responsibility. I don’t trust anyone enough. I am not saying that you don’t love your children. I am saying that I am broken.

I worry so much about what I am doing to my children. They have never had a daily relationship with anyone but me and their dad. Even when we had a housemate she did not appear during their awake hours every day. They have literally never had a relationship with anyone else where they saw them every day for two months. Not even five days a week. And I take them on trips away from their dad, sometimes for weeks.

I worry a lot. Is this ok? Is this basically broken? It makes me feel hellza better that Laura Ingalls Wilder was way more isolated than my kids. I mean… isn’t that part of the American story? We are all alone. Even when we live in suburbs shoved cheek and jowl. Most of my friends talk about a loneliness of the soul they felt because even though they went to school… they never had friends. I collect self-identified “rejects”.

This is a lot of why I am trying so hard to get to know the people who live in our neighborhood. We actually see people and have conversations with them pretty consistently.

But I’m not providing little friends. I’m not sure school would anyway. And man it would waste their time. And teach lessons I don’t like.

It all comes down to control. Do I think the American government is doing a good job in how it is raising kids? No. Ok. I’m super glad I have the privilege to opt-out then. Not everyone does. Everyone has different privileges.

My choices are about what I can bear. I know that what I am capable of is pretty pathetic in some core ways. If you go spend some time studying brain developmental stuff you might cut me a little more slack. Not a lot. I don’t need a lot. I do very well all things considered. But there is a cost to all things considered. My kids have to bear that. I can’t understand what that cost will be in advance. I am fucking worried.

Did you know that rape is down 58% since the 1970’s? (http://prospect.org/article/should-rape-porn-be-banned)

Complicated stuff, yo.

Back in my day (*cough* choke*cough) I wanted to “play act” things that are much more extreme than average.  I have had the last several years of being a parent where I have done the “trapped under a baby” thing and I was alone all the time. I’ve had a lot of time to think about why I have done the things I have done. How many of them are things I will ever do again?

I will never again allow someone to put a noose around my neck and lift me off the ground because he wants to be able to look at the picture later and masturbate. The risk/reward ratio will never be tipped in that direction again. I’m really willing to go pretty far to be “good enough” for someone who wants to hurt me.

My daughters will not believe that anyone has the right to hurt them. What they go do in their sex lives will not be my problem. My children will not believe it is ok for an adult to grab them by the arm and drag them along. It is fucking assault. You see it in schools all the time.

I am not strong enough to teach my daughters how to be strong in that world. I don’t have any appropriate coping skills. My coping skills got me raped and beaten over and over again.

I worry so much. What do I have to give? Is anything about me worthy of learning about? Should I just shut the fuck up so there is never any reason for them to have to know how very self absorbed and bad and stupid I am.

I’m teaching my kids that adulthood is very free form. No one is your boss. You get to decide what to do with your time. If you need money (and everyone does in one way or another) then you need to figure out how to get it. All career paths involve training of some kind even if you are working retail or cutting hair (holy moly the training for hair dressing is intense). Lots of careers involve college. If you think you are heading down that route we will have some serious conversations in five, seven, and nine years from now about what you want to do to prepare for that experience because it will be up to you to pull it off. I won’t be part of that.

I don’t know what you will be when you grow up. Do you have ideas? What do you want to prepare for being able to do?

I’m trying to learn what I will do when I grow up too. I’m not ready. I’m sorry. I know that is a sign of my basic immaturity. I get it. But I am where I am. I am sorry that my development is so retarded. It isn’t my fault. I’m trying. I’m trying so hard. I can’t be anything other than what I am.

Life is in medias res. We are all part of the continuing story of humanity. We are part of the story of our individual families. We are bearing the body load of their deprivations, excesses, tendencies, and flat bad choices. Or you can be one of those people who is happy and healthy and your family has been for…. Well as long as any one can remember. Great. Thanks. I’m happy for you. Sigh.

Ok, well so what does this all mean for my kids? In order for me to change the narrative of my family I need to change the narrative of my family. Which I have done in some major ways of  which I am proud. I continue to examine my behavior and attempt to make progress on doing course corrections.

I can’t do anything but what I am doing.  Oh, that’s bullshit. If Noah died I would cope. Well, I still wouldn’t work. He made sure of that before I quit. But shit happens. I could still have to get a job. I reiterate that I would cope. I think I would not be a very nice mother any more. I think my children would effectively lose both parents and it would be horrible. I would not be able to be present for even 1/10 of what they expect.  Good grief they are entitled little things.

They think they are entitled to my love and attention at absolutely every fucking hour of the day and night. Whoa. It is over whelming. After five years I have pulled back my boundaries like mad. When Shanna was born I did it twenty-ish hours a day (Noah had the other four). Calli has never had quite what Shanna had. It just isn’t possible. But they sleep together.

The three of us are a little self contained unit of affirmation and approval. We love each other and only sort of need anyone else. I feel bad about the ways in which we leave Noah out. He’s just not around enough to make as much impact on them. (I say as I hide in the garage away from them. But geez I’ve been low on personal time lately.)

I have to militantly believe that it takes all kinds or there is no chance that it is ok for me to exist. Sometimes that is hard to live with.

We all live in the middle. I come from hard core religious zealots and prostitutes–and that’s just on my mom’s side. How about you?

end of the day

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I think I am getting sick. All day long I have been alternating between feeling feverish and shaking with chills. My neck and head ache unbearably. I did not paint.

I did some minor housework but mostly I’ve been trying to rest. I don’t think I’ve had a rest day in a few weeks. I really should be trying to schedule these more. My body doesn’t keep up.

I have plans tomorrow to meet up with the guy who made the inappropriate comment at the wedding. I don’t know how this will go. After my experience with talking to the guy in the scene and him promising an apology and then never following through… I don’t have high hopes.

I dislike the fact that when I am going into a situation where a man has the potential to say, “I didn’t mean to hurt you” I assume that he doesn’t give a shit. I think that men in general don’t give a flying fuck about me unless they are desperate for sex and I am the only hole around.

Well, not you Tay.

Ok, I could probably pull a few other names off the top of my head. But I’m pretty sure I would not get past my fingers. I don’t think men give a shit about me. I really don’t.

But I have to keep hoping I’m wrong. That’s why I talk to these bozos. That’s why I try to explain what it is that they are doing in the full context of my life. But they don’t give a shit.

No one gives a shit about the stupid white trash whores.

I’ve been saying “stupid” over and over in my head since last night. Apparently the last 24 hours has been a complete removal of my respect for my intelligence.

I wouldn’t get kicked so often if I didn’t bring it on myself.

I wouldn’t get raped so often if I didn’t bring it on myself.

I wouldn’t get the inappropriate comments so often if I didn’t bring it on myself.

How come I am so powerful that I can “make” all these men do these things but I can’t make them apologize? Why can’t I make them treat me approximately as they would a fellow heterosexual man.

Why do they have to comment on my cunt? Why do they have to presuppose that they have access to it? That it is a topic for casual conversation.

My body hurts. I feel worthless and empty. I feel like the only thing that is within my control as a means of influencing how people treat me is dying. Otherwise I have to shut the fuck up and take what they feel like dishing out. Or just stay home you stupid cunt.

I haven’t felt safe recently. I hate these cycles. Is anyone doing anything terrible to me? No. Am I being victimized or persecuted? No. I’m just a stupid whiny bitch. I just watch patterns. I have seen these patterns go so very badly before. Am I stupid for seeing patterns after those patterns have existed so strongly for me before?

Am I stupid for being afraid of being raped when someone says something like that?

So I had a friend pull me off to a different room during a party and no one could hear me over the music. I didn’t think anyone would believe me afterwards that it was non-consensual. Stupid whores aren’t allowed to say no. Anything is allowable with them.

Am I stupid for being afraid when men talk to me like this? Or am I an animal trying not to die? I can’t tell. I don’t want to ever be raped again.

Sometimes, on the internet, I read these articles by women who say they were raped and it really wasn’t so bad and that they think other rape victims need to stop whining.

Yup. I need to stop whining. I think the only way to stop it is to cut off my fingers and my tongue or I could die. I don’t think I can be stoic. I’m sorry I’m so weak. I’m sorry I’m such a selfish person that I cannot keep my pain inside my head all of the time where it is no one else’s problem. I am sorry I am so self-absorbed that I need to talk about myself.

I’m sorry I exist.

And then I look at my kids. Can I really be that bad? Am I beyond redemption? I see myself in them. I think they are so wonderful. They are kind and compassionate and thoughtful. But I don’t think I am kind or compassionate or thoughtful. I think I am selfish and spiteful.

I decide that people don’t like me very much and then I put up a brick wall. I don’t want them to be able to hurt me more. So I need to pretend this person is a non-entity. Otherwise I know they will hurt me. I *know* it.

And the whole time I am avoiding someone I know in the marrow of my bones that it is my responsibility to be silent so I do not offend them. So that I don’t bother people. It is my responsibility to keep my stupid piece of shit mouth shut. No one wants to fucking hear it.

Sometimes Noah manages to say something in a way that lands wrong. He pointed out yesterday how much better he is at remembering all the things I do wrong. I don’t know why he wants to be with someone who is so wrong. Why didn’t he pick someone better?

Because he wanted an elite private tutor for his kids who is compulsively sexual and doesn’t believe she has the right to say no.

I’m sure that is uncharitable. I get the distinct impression I am nicer to Noah than anyone ever has been. I don’t think many people respect him the way I do. That respect is a double edged sword. I think he is better than me. I think he married down. Sometimes I hate him a lot for that.

I don’t really see a way that someone could want someone like me without it being a bad thing. Sometimes I wonder if I make him feel comfortable because almost no one else in his current world understands hard scrabble white trash culture. That is what he grew up with. Not many people in his current world look up to the guys in his position. He was never poor. But the people he knew during his childhood mostly were.

Noah makes me feel better about myself than anyone else. He doesn’t make me feel very good about myself. I know that says a lot more about me than anyone else. I wish I could stop thinking about my father. “Do you deserve to live?” No. I don’t think I do. But I’m alive anyway. And you are dead.

I’ve been thinking a lot about how convenient Christianity must be. What would it be like if there was some magic invisible sky friend who loved you and protected you and cared about you? I don’t have one. There is no one protecting or loving or caring about me. I am alone. If I want to not be beaten and raped it is my responsibility to protect me because no one else will.

When it happens over and over, like it did with me, how can it not be my fault? How can I just randomly find that many bad people? Is it just that I draw the evil out of otherwise neutral people?

Let me tell you, most people who knew me and my rapists greatly preferred the company of my rapists. They don’t want to “take sides” so that means they pick the rapist.

Tonight I am glad I don’t have a scalpel in the house. I would find a way to hide the marks. I don’t have an endless amount of self control.

My next door neighbor had to call an ambulance tonight. A three week old baby stopped breathing.

Given how fragile life is, what business do I have wishing for death? What hubris? What idiocy? What masochism?

It isn’t masochism. I am sorry that I hurt this much. I don’t want to hurt any more. I don’t know how to make it stop. I don’t know how to stop being a bad person that people want to avoid out of self-preservation. I know they are right to avoid me. I am not criticizing.

My head hurts so much.

Probably time for a sleeping pill. I don’t think I will sleep much without it. I think this would be an all night hysteria sort of night. I haven’t hit my head on the floor! I am exercising self control. I want to treat my body how everyone else thinks my body should be treated. I want to feel that. I know it is right. I am not supposed to be whole.

I am just a hole.

Off-schedule freak out.

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It is very rare for me to wake up at midnight freaked out. I usually make it to 4am before I wake up and start feeling anxiety. I went to bed with abdominal discomfort. I woke up with more. It’s obviously not just carbonated beverages.

For some reason when I woke up this time I started thinking about Thanksgiving. I kind of spend most of my life planning for the future. I think I will make it up to Portland this year for Thanksgiving because I want the kids to see Dad’s house this year. I want my kids to get to know him.

Then I leap-frogged to thinking about the Amanda Fucking Palmer concert on the 7th of December. I will probably drive south on the 6th of December. I am hopefully going to not do that drive alone.

December 6th is my mother’s birthday. She will be 63 this year.

I feel so bad for missing my mother. All of this separation is my fault. But I do miss her. I miss her so much that sometimes I feel like I cannot breathe. Thank goodness my kids don’t ask about her much.

I’ve been thinking about my mom and crying on and off for a few days. Do I want to be a stay at home mom so much because she was? I want to prove that one can do what she did *and* keep children safe at the same time.

I feel so needy and pathetic.

I am considering NaNoWriMo. Apparently if you want to participate in the mid-month Night of Writing Dangerously (more or less a mid-month party to help you catch up on word count) you aren’t supposed to just buy a ticket. You are supposed to ask for sponsorships. I’m not sure if I have the courage for that. This may actually keep me out of NaNoWriMo this year. Because the party sounds fun and if I’m not allowed to just decide to go I won’t go. If I have to ask other people if I can get to do it… I just won’t. There are too many people and things in this world much more important than this. I’m not going to ask anyone to fund my hobbies.

I don’t know how to live with this lack of feeling deserving.

Mostly what I am doing is changing my house and yard. I don’t get to control much in this life. I get to control what my environment is like. I know I don’t deserve much but I have the ability to do this anyway.

Hide. Refocus energy. I don’t have to deserve something in order to get it. I don’t necessarily avoid the things I don’t deserve. It all seems so random.

I think I work so hard because I wish that I could share it with my family. I wish my mother knew how hard I work. I wish my mother was proud of me. I wish my sister bragged about me. I do a lot of stuff. I’m pretty neat. Instead they hate me and deride me.

Just keep breathing.  Just keep walking.

I try as hard as I can to not get my hopes up that something, anything, will ever make me feel “better”. I don’t do things “to make me happy”. I don’t think I can make me happy. I don’t think that improving my backyard will “make me happy” but I certainly hide grief in activity.

It’s a lot more comfortable to think about hanging plants and rope lights. It’s a lot more fun to think of ground-cover plants that will make my feet more comfy. It’s a LOT more fun to think of swinging outside and watching my garden grow. I really like thinking about having parties and watching hordes of children run back and forth.

I like imagining that I won’t always be alone in my space. I like imagining that maybe me and my house will be so fun to visit that I won’t have to spend my life alone. It’s a dream.

Heck, I’m not alone now. I have the usual three people sleeping and a guest. I’m not alone now. I just feel alone. I feel unworthy of love.

Hopefully I will get back to sleep soon. Thursday involves a trip to the zoo and painting. Must paint. Eleven hours in. So far to go. The month is more than half over. I need this task off my list. There is too much anxiety associated with this project.

When my friend’s husband finishes his list of AWESOME things to do I will need to take a break and not spend more money on the house this year. That’s not great because the bathroom is in dire straights. I will probably try to schedule that remodel next year. I know it is becoming urgent but I want to expand the front of the house anyway. I don’t think it will matter that much that the wall has to be ripped out. That will be done no matter what. Yet I can’t wait until the damage causes my time frame to be tomorrow. Then it will be more expensive.

Distraction is awesome and terrible.

Is it distraction or is it just not allowing my general sense of self-worth define what I am allowed to hope for? I’m not sure.

Text has no tone.

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No really, I worry about making my friends feel attacked. I don’t really need to alienate people I care about at this stage.

I need you to work and put your daughters in day care because I think my daughters will do that. They will need to ask you questions. They will need to ask you how you did with the mixed emotions you had–because they are really common and I can’t speak to them.

I need you to work and put your daughters in day care because without doing so YOU wouldn’t feel happy or fulfilled. I need you to be who you are. I need to see you in contrast to me so that I can understand where my edges are.

I don’t think you are doing it wrong. I don’t think you are making bad choices. I’m trying to get better about saying that you are doing something that wouldn’t work for me. That’s not because it is problematic.

Have you noticed this whole, “Krissy is crazy” thing? Maybe me not being able to do something isn’t a negative statement about the thing?

I know there is an Attachment Parenting movement and if you read about the Continuum Concept people—whoo boy. There are some extremely “attached”people.

I’m pretty honest with myself that I want this much time and intensity because I am making up for the deficit of being loved and touched that exists inside of me. Every child naturally wants to hug and cuddle and kiss. That is just normal. I wasn’t allowed to do those things as a child without being hurt for the impulse.

I want to stay home with my children because I want hundreds of hours of sitting on the couch with them sleeping on me. I want to be able to stroke their face and watch them exist. I need that time. I need to be able to sit very still and very quiet and just watch them exist and think about the fact that they like me.

When I made the crack about the mothers at the wedding wanting to stick forks in their eyes, that was their words–not mine. I can sort of grok how it would work. I don’t like doing all the physical work for my kids all the time. I get how it can feel annoying, demeaning, mind-numbing, etc.

I have something to prove to me, here. I have to prove that I can stay in one place and take care of someone without neglecting or abusing them. It is very hard sometimes. I feel like a jack ass for saying that.

I got a book on parents who have PTSD for kids. It sounds like it was written to be used by a therapist talking to kids who have parents who manage their symptoms less than I do.

Stopping and being actually aware of the fact that my children have needs is hard for me. I naturally dissociate. I am very depressed a lot of the time. Having to get up and care for my children is difficult for me. But I have to prove to myself that I can do that.

I do not have the self-discipline to schedule a two hour block in the middle of the day to do specific work. I just don’t. I have to have a full day of going from thing to thing or I never get the rhythm. I often miss afternoon engagements because if something starts after I’ve gone mid-way through my day then I can’t handle breaking my flow to go do something else.

I am limited. Everyone is–I’m not acting like I’m the only one with limits. Other people have different limits though.

I don’t think that mothers should have this freakish need to earn their childrens love. I don’t think it is psychologically healthy or anything. I’m just willing to be honest that it is where I am. I think people who are secure enough in being loved to share the care of their children have nothing to be ashamed about. I think that is probably what people should be shooting for in terms of mental health.

When Shanna asks me questions about her mothering in the future I don’t in any way shape or form tell her that she should expect to take care of her kids. I have told her that when you have kids you need to make sure that your kids will be safe and loved. If that means their mom stays home, ok. (Shanna pretty regularly says she would rather have a wife over a husband–she’d rather earn the money and have her wife stay home, ok.) If that means their dad stays home, ok. If that means both parents work and the children need alternative day care, ok. They are perfectly valid paths through life. But you will need to ask working moms for advice because I won’t be able to tell you how to manage that. Good thing we know lots of them!

I can’t teach my kids how to be everything. They have to know people who are different from me. That means people need to make choices that have no resemblance to mine.

I know that when I talk about myself I do not always use qualifiers. I don’t always say “This would be bad FOR ME” sometimes I just say, “This would be a bad choice.” I know that I sound rabid and hateful.

It is hard sometimes to make choices that seem very different from my friends. It feels like I am doing something bad and wrong. So when I talk to myself about it I am very emphatic about why it is not a good choice for me. I don’t mean to hurt anyone else. I don’t really know how else to talk to me. I can’t always evaluate whether something is in abstract a good and worthy thing I can only evaluate whether it is appropriate for me. And I sound harsh as I do so.

There is a big difference between how I evaluate things for me and how I evaluate things for other people. For me I am quick, decisive, snotty and harsh. I have to have a really firm grasp on my limits. Or I will be unable to function. If I try things that work for other people just because it works so well for them I will fuck myself over. Because I do not have that persons situation and resources.

That doesn’t mean that other people need to care or change based on my limits.

I have a husband who is able to go out and make obscene amounts of money. He is very cheerful about supporting me. That is a rather unusual privilege. Not that many people are capable of earning as much money as Noah does. That changes my whole buffet of choices right there.

But I am not an income earning person. I may never be. That means when my working women friends tell me that I deserve time off every day… well… I might agree in the abstract…

There is no right. There is no deserve. There is no should. There just is.

I know I am all melodramatic in writing and such. I know that I have bad days and I have gotten much more explicit in writing about them as the years have gone by. That isn’t because they have gotten worse–it is because I have developed the language.

I like my life. I like the choices I am making. I feel like I will be proud of myself as an old woman. I will feel like I did good things with my life. I did not waste very much of the time I had all things considered.

When you have chronic, severe mental illness you waste a lot of time. You spend a lot of time staring at the wall feeling bad and being unable to do… anything.

I work in weird spurts and starts all day with the kids. We get a lot done but not in a predictable way. We work then sit down to snuggle. Then work then break to play. Then work then go to the water park. Then work then read. What kind of work we do and how much time it takes varies a lot. I am not good at saying, “From 12-2 we will do ______”.

I have constant anxiety about the long list of projects I’m not making enough forward progress on. But getting me out of my anxiety is not as simple as providing childcare. That just means I don’t have to pull myself up by my bootstraps and look functional in front of my kids.

I think I am afraid that if no one is watching I am a clock that winds to a stop.

I wouldn’t have offered to paint the fence if I didn’t have little kids who need to meet everyone in the neighborhood. So the fucking kids need to figure out how to behave so I can finish painting. Ahem. (They aren’t actually being a problem. That was a random hyperbole sort of expletive.)

I know that a body needs rest. I understand that people who tell me that it would be ok if I paid someone for two hours a day of watching reruns mean to be supportive of the health of my body.

That doesn’t mean I am in a space psychologically to make the same priority list. Does that mean I am wrong and I should change to be more like other people? Maybe. I don’t know. But I know that what I am doing right now is putting my head down and just getting through. And it is working.

I have never met a mother who is without hard days. They happen. They are part of life. I don’t think I should be trying to get out of having them. I need to learn how to manage them. I manage them differently than other people for a lot of reasons. Is what I am doing ok? I don’t know. I honestly don’t. I just know that it is what I am doing.

Please continue telling me when you feel I am attacking you. I am not trying to. I want to know if I do so in my ridiculous self-obsessed rambling. You are not my enemy. I have no reason to attack you. I do not want to do so blindly.

I don’t want you to feel bad about what you are doing. You are making the choices that are right for you. Even if I individually might second guess some choices I wouldn’t overall presume to think that I know what is right for your life. I don’t actually have that much hubris.

I get too much wrong for me.

Lack of consistency

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One of the things that I prioritize with the kids is being consistent. Even if it makes me kind of a dick. I think that children need predictable responses from adults. But I make exceptions.

Last night Calli had a hard time going to bed. She had a hard day in general. Big Sister got to go on a play date alone for the first time. Calli was very jealous and upset. We had a pretty good date by ourselves (yay library) but there were a lot of feelings throughout the day. Then she slept from 3-5:30. So she wasn’t sleepy at bed time.

Noah was kind of done after a bit. His voice started escalating a bit. I decided that I needed to handle everything from her.

I walked her back to bed or spoke gently with her each time. When she came back after a decisive “No really I’m done” Noah got upset and I laughed. Persistent little thing.

I keep thinking that Shanna was still nursing constantly and sleeping with us full time at this age. Why do we expect things of Calli that we in no way expected from Shanna? I can comfort my two year old to sleep without being an impatient bitch. I have that still in me. (I’m thoroughly convinced it is best for all concerned that we are not having a third child. I don’t have anything left. But I can bloody well be nice to Calli.)

I couldn’t be mean to her. She would come to the door and say, “Please snuggle me.” I wasn’t a lot older than her when my parents divorced. My memories of rocking myself to sleep while crying for my mother are so intense and vivid that they haunt me waking and sleeping. I can’t be cruel to my children and deny them the comfort of my presence when they are little and scared and need me. Is it annoying sometimes? Oh golly gee yes. But this phase will be short in the over all scheme of things. I can comfort my two year old.

I have been told that I am an angry person since I was a little kid. That is one of the things people feel free to comment on the most–how angry I seem. I want my kids to remember me as someone who was always always always there when they needed me. I want them to remember me as loving and compassionate. That means I must behave in such a way over and over even when I’m not in the mood.

More than anything in the world I want my children to remember their childhoods well. I want them to remember that it was ok for them to be. If you are scared that is ok; we can handle that. If you are hungry that is ok; we can handle that. If you are hurt that is ok; we can handle that.

My children believe in the marrow of their bones that most things that go wrong in life can be handled by saying, “Well that didn’t go as planned. That’s ok, it’s easy to fix.” They both say it immediately when something starts going off the rails. They believe that problems and mistakes are just learning opportunities.

I’ve been thinking and thinking and thinking lately about how adamantly I used to deny that I was beaten as a child. Up until about twenty-four I would hotly deny that I was beaten as a child. That was because throughout my entire childhood people would hit me and then sneer that I didn’t know what a beating was and I needed to shut up and stop crying or they would give me a real reason to cry.

Now that I have children and I have to have the self-control to not hit them I believe I was beaten all the god damn time. I believe that the adults in my life had no self-control and they used me as a relief valve for their general life frustrations. I had to become a parent before I could see that.

My children will not have memories like mine. My children will remember that when they needed their mom she was there. My children will remember being safe and happy and secure. My children will remember being loved and protected no matter what.

Even when they are annoying in the middle of the night. Even when they push all of my buttons. Even when I am so sick of them I could just fucking scream. I still can’t take that out on them. Period.

Sometimes I wonder about consistency. With children you need to consciously be aware that you have a limited amount of power and control over them. You have eighteen years to be their boss and then you need to shut the fuck up and let them do their thing. Really it is a lot less than eighteen years. You only get to really be the boss for like ten years. Then you need to pray you taught them well and just keep moving.

I am not consistent in pushing them away from me. When opportunities come up where I could hold a boundary and keep them away from me… I suck at that. If they tell me they need me I weigh my opposing needs and more than 80% of the time I decide their needs are more important right now. (My bladder waits for no one.) But even that has been a process. I learned how to hold my bladder after having kids. I do it better now than I ever have.

The most important consistency in my life is being loving towards my children. I am ok with bailing on absolutely every other requirement. I can’t keep too many things in my brain.

When people are under stress they revert to their earliest training. Over coming that is ridiculously hard and takes a lot of very conscious effort. I am not intellectually or physically capable at this moment in time in just writing a whole new pattern of reactions. That would be very hard. I can’t make me into a different person. But I can choose a behavior to move towards. I can’t pick too many at once or I will be overwhelmed and fail.

I can choose to prioritize being loving over any other form of consistency. That is something I can find a way to do. I mean, I told Calli last night, “You understand that my patience tonight will have a cost tomorrow–right? If you don’t let me go to sleep soon I will be kind of cranky and tired tomorrow.” She said she didn’t want me to be grumpy but she really needed cuddles. I believe her. I believe that she needed them right then.

My children are certain of their own worth. They are sure that they are worth extra effort. They understand that taking care of them is work and that I am very happy to do it because I am so glad to know them. But it is work and you have to be patient with me while I do it.

When I feel really bad about myself one of the things I focus on is how easily I make everyone around me feel bad about themselves. I am critical and sharp and mean. I take things apart that needn’t have the scrutiny.

I’m busy enough lately that I don’t need to look at the fact that I have stopped inviting people to do things. I’ve gotten enough “no’s” lately that I just don’t have it in me to invite anyone for a while. I’m going to coast on ballet recital rehearsal and painting probably until the end of the month. We aren’t doing much socializing outside the home school group. It is wonderfully convenient to be able to just sit down and look at their calendar and decide yes/no without having to weigh any emotional friendship factors. Do I want to drive to that event and do we have time/money? It’s very low-stress. I’m very grateful for all the work our Meet-up group organizer does. She makes my life better. She lets me kind of hide from a lot of life. I’m not sure she is aware she is doing that but I appreciate it any way.

I’m not consistent with adults. I don’t feel like I am kind enough to deserve consistency from any other adults so I’ve been avoiding them for a while. I’m not good enough at giving it so I don’t expect to receive it.

When I read stuff about introverts it almost justifies my existence. Being alone is so much easier–but I’m not really alone. I have these two excellent people keeping me company all the damn time. I do appreciate quiet in a way I didn’t used to.

I feel like Noah and I are having trouble connecting lately and I’m not sure how much of it is all a manufacturing of my fucked up brain. He’s tired and being less overly-sensitive of my ridiculous over-sensitivity. Of course that means I feel like he is picking on me. Because that’s how I roll. I don’t really think he is picking on me. But I do feel like he is saying small things that are kind of dismissive and that remind me that I’m just generally not very nice or very worth liking. I don’t really want to argue with the things because I mostly agree with him. I’m not very nice and I’m not really worth liking.

I’m not sure that I’m not just creating this whole cycle basically on my own. I doubt his feelings for me have shifted. He’s just too tired to be neurotically careful about his speech. He’s not being mean.

He used to tell me that I looked nice. Now he says I obviously dress for comfort and not to look good. Unfortunately he said that on a day when I had consciously tried to look good. I had picked out an outfit and had fun with it and everything. (Let’s be honest–I usually don’t try.)

I’ve been thinking a lot about the validation I got in the relationship with my Owner. I’m trying to figure out how to write about it–what to say.

Both Noah and my former Owner strike me frequently as very young in affect. They are both feel to me like enthusiastic teenage boys who are getting what they want when a girl pays attention to them. I know that men continue to be enthusiastic about women throughout life and all, but there is a difference in exuberance. You know the kind of excitement that is way more piqued for toys in young people than in older people? Like that.

I can still tell that Noah likes me and all. I’m not quite that blind. I feel less shiny. I feel like one of the responsibilities of girls is to be comely and I’m not so much any more. I feel like Noah has gotten a remarkably raw deal in terms of actual attention. I don’t pay much attention to him. Well, it depends on how you mean. Over the past seven years I have developed the ability to talk about computer shit on a level I previously resisted with extreme hostility. I pay attention to Noah. I have learned so much stuff from him that frequently I feel like my head will explode. But I don’t look at him and act like I want to jump him.

How much does being attractive matter? How much does feeling exciting matter? I feel faint worry that if I ignore this problem it will bite me in the ass at a later point.

With my Owner cleaning the house was directly paying attention to him. For the first long while I didn’t live there, I just came over to clean. Even once I lived there I lived there the way a cat lives there. Nothing was mine. I was very clearly being permitted to be a live-in servant. That’s not a life sharing partnership sort of thing.

I clean my house now mostly for me. I’m not doing it as service to Noah. He’s not here much and he isn’t all that impacted by how much I clean. Some of it effects him. He certainly appreciates it when I am on top of my chores because then he doesn’t have to pitch in.

With Noah the work is mine because I choose to do it. He would share in it if I demanded that he do so. I do it because I have more time and energy going spare. It doesn’t feel as much like something I am doing for him. I feel kind of weird about that. It often feels like I don’t do much of anything for Noah even though I do far more for him than I have consistently done for any other partner. In the past I felt like I was doing it because someone else wanted me to. Now I’m doing it for me and it doesn’t feel like a magnanimous act. Now it is just life. I’m not doing it to be nice to Noah. I’m doing it so I don’t lose my shit and beat my children bloody. (kidding. kinda. I know that cleaning helps me stay calm.)

Now cleaning is a way of having CONTROL over a small part of my life and that makes me feel more secure. Once upon a time I cleaned what I was told to clean how I was told to clean it. It wasn’t about me except that I felt secure because I was meeting his needs. He had a direct reason to keep me around.

Sometimes it blows my tiny little brain that Noah hangs out with me just because he wants to. He could be a much bigger asshole to his family. He could pull away more. He could isolate more. He could want more space. He could take off to hang out with buddies. He could go in the bedroom a lot and lock the door. He could be like most of the people I have ever known.

Instead he chooses to be near us even though it is obvious that he doesn’t always feel comfortable. I’m hard for him sometimes. He still comes home. He plays with the kids. He does a lot of work in the house and outside of it. I don’t feel terribly justified in complaining about Noah.

Can I feel sad and have trouble feeling connected without him having to do anything wrong? I feel sad and I miss my mother. When I really feel in the feelings of missing my mother I tend to feel like I miss everyone. Like no one is really there. No one really loves me. I know that global thinking isn’t very accurate and all but it’s there any way.

I feel scared and unworthy. Noah is going to leave as soon as he understands what a loser I am–right? I’m not sure how I have kept it a secret for so long. I’m not sure why my kids still like me.

Only I do know why my kids like me. It is a biological defense mechanism. Their tiny little brains are trying to ensure that they will be properly cared for as they grow up. I’m their shot at that.

Noah and I periodically remind one another that we are both very serious about this family business. We get one shot at forever. I am increasingly sure as the years go by that I will never bear another child. I get one baby-daddy. He is already fixed. He gets one baby-mama. I am pretty fucking sure I would never marry again no matter what. I wouldn’t fuck with my kids’ inheritance. Marriage is about property rights and all of my property comes from Noah and goes to our kids. I don’t really want to get that muddy.

What does it mean to pick someone for better or worse? I know a lot of people who were very ok getting married even though they knew before the wedding that it probably wasn’t permanent. That blows my mind. Why get married then? What is the benefit?

If I can make this work then I have a permanent relationship. If I can’t make this work, well then I can’t make relationships work. I couldn’t figure out how to have a sister or brothers or parents. I can’t figure out how to have aunts or uncles or cousins. If I can’t figure out being a mom or a wife then I am pretty screwed. This is my shot. No pressure.

Yesterday after Hindi class I got to be an object lesson in What Not To Do. I was talking to the other teachers (one of whom was a mom of a tween-aged boy we were talking about) about how important practice in when learning new skills. The other teachers were complaining about how smart this boy is and how he manages to coast without studying. He smirked. I told him about failing out of the Masters program after seven years of work because I couldn’t hand write fast enough to get the degree. I was told, “It is obvious that you know the material you just didn’t quite… write enough“. The kid looked god damn terrified. He has never met anyone who had serious consequences for not studying enough. Ha.

Now Calli is starting to talk about going to school when she is a big girl. I’m not sure how this is all going to be handled. So far neither of my kids are enthusiastic about home schooling. Everyone I know who home school says, “Ha! Stick them in school for a while. They will change their minds.” That seems like a lot of hubris. I don’t think I will be able to convince my kids of something in a short period of time just because. They may well love school–many people do.

I am very aware that I want to home school for selfish reasons. Am I allowed to be that selfish with my kids? I will over ride their preferences and keep them home for kindergarten. Will I argue with Shanna over first grade if she decides to really get fierce? I don’t know. I will have to cross that bridge when I get there.

I don’t actually think my kids would have a hard time adjusting to the timing of school. I think they would hate being told to sit still. Other than that they would have fun.

Why do I care so much about a school wasting their time when I certainly waste their time every day?

It’s all a conundrum. Luckily it is one I don’t have to solve today.

Missing

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I write Noah’s mother long letters about my kids because I wish I could tell my mother these things. It isn’t the same. She doesn’t even like me.

I sent a follow up message about the cat scan that should be ordered. Let’s see what happens. I feel so sad.

This morning during our morning snuggle Calli said, “Everyone needs love!” and hugged me tight. Shanna said, “You weren’t loved when you were a little girl, were you?” I said no. I wasn’t. She said she would love me enough to make up for it.

I hope so. I’m not sure how this works. I try so hard to hide my need. It isn’t anyones problem but mine.

One of the random moms I don’t know well from the home schooling group happened to be in the lobby when I walked out of the surgeons office crying. She wanted to comfort me. I couldn’t even talk to her. I’m not sure I was civil.

I want people to like me and be nice to me and care about me but I don’t seem to be able to behave in a way that will let me deserve it. Noah likes me. Shanna likes me. Calli likes me. That has to be enough.

I hate talking to doctors. I hate them so much for, “Why don’t you go see psychiatry? You don’t have to feel this way.” Fuck you and your fucking magic pills. They don’t work. They won’t make me “feel better”. They never have before. I have fucking tried.

It doesn’t matter. Just shut up and get used to hurting. That’s just life. Sometimes it works that way.

I’m not going to stop feeling disposable until people stop disposing of me. Trying to convince me that I should change this is flat stupid. If I started expecting people to stick around then I would experience much more extreme grief when they leave me. I can’t believe that people will stay. They never do.

It feels very bizarre every day that Noah isn’t gone yet. What is he waiting for?

I lay in bed half the night thinking about cutting. I couldn’t sleep. It was too late for a sleeping pill. I traced with my fingers the lines I wanted to make. I wish this wasn’t the resting place for my brain too. I wish there were more tracks.

This morning I commented to Noah how intense it is that the kids like to cuddle with me for literally hours a day. I wonder how children handle not being able to cuddle as much as they need to? I learned to offer sex or cut myself. Those are the kinds of touch I know how to go get for myself when I feel bad. I couldn’t wake Noah up. I wasn’t interested in sex and he hadn’t slept enough. He can’t be up all night with my stupid hysterics.

I don’t know how to be someone different. Someone better. Someone who isn’t bad.

My therapist keeps telling me that I need to work on letting people touch me. This cuddling with the kids is a good mid-level step but they sit on me. It is kind of different. I don’t seem to be able to let adults touch me in a comforting, non-sexual way. I can’t allow it. If I allow it I might find out I like it and then I may never get it again. I don’t want to find out how good something is that only other people get.

Stop whining Kristine. Go work. The only value any human has is what they do for other people. It really doesn’t matter what happens to you. It isn’t like bad things are happening any more. Other people have genuinely bad experiences happening to them today. Shut the fuck up already you whining, pathetic, stupid loser.

No, I wouldn’t talk to anyone else this way.

I’m scared. My body hurts. I tried to ask for help. That rarely goes well. See, this is why I think I am better off just staying home and hoping it kills me. Then I won’t waste anyones time with them having to tell me that pain just happens when you are crazy. If I weren’t so crazy my problems would go away. See, just stop being crazy and it will all be fine. It is my fault things happen. If I weren’t so damn crazy…

A conversation

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“I feel like I have at least two trains of thought going at any point. A central loop and an outer loop. The inside loop is driving much faster. It keeps lapping the outer loop. The inner loop is why I am terrible and people should hate me. The outer loop is, ‘Huh–fancy finger sandwiches for lunch because park day will be a birthday party?'”

“With anxious thoughts sometimes it is good to stop and consider why you have the thought.”

“Well, if I remember as hard as I can that no one will be able to like me long term then I don’t emotionally connect to them. It’s easier when they dump me. I don’t get hurt because things are just working how I predicted.”

“Well that sounds kind of useful.”

“Yup. Thus hard to derail.”

Just keep swimming

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I saw my therapist yesterday. I told her, “This won’t be a deep processing session because a lot has happened and I don’t have the bandwidth to get emotional about any of it right now.” I asked her if my reaction qualified as mania. She asked a few questions and confirmed that I’m not manic. I didn’t think so but I am not always sure. She said, “Hyper-productive coping methods” and I’m comfortable with that.

I got through several big things on my to-do list yesterday with a bunch of big things left today. The kids and I have our work cut out for us today. Lots to do to prepare for camping this weekend.

My therapist patted me on the head and told me it was a good idea for me to bring books and require myself to sit and read. It’s all calming and shit. I will get through. Hopefully I won’t alienate anyone by being an asshole on this camping trip. Luckily we are all responsible for our own families. That way I have no reason to feel anxious because of responsibility for other people. I am less likely to be nasty. Two more days.

The wedding is in nine days. I am going to spend the next few days reading my speech over and over. I need to work on pauses and breath because I will have to project a lot and I am out of practice. I’ve spent the last few years trying to be less loud. Oh well. Maybe I’ll just end up a yeller again. I’m not good at moderating my voice level overall–no wonder my kids are so loud.

Ten days till a kid weekend at the Godmamas. Nineteen days till Disneyland. The Amanda Fucking Palmer concert date was announced–luckily Noah’s parents don’t want to go to Disneyland in December so we probably won’t go either. May and September will be enough for this year. Then I can save those points and use them later. I can save enough to go during a school vacation next year with friends. I haven’t been getting much traction on going during the school year. It’s like the state of California will take you to court if your kid misses school or something. Oh wait. They do.

I’m trying to figure out when I can get to Portland. Not sure. I’m already very booked through June. I’m not sure how I got this busy. It trickled in. Today will be busy. Yesterday was very happy. Dress shopping will probably be stressful. At least it will be fun with Shanna and Calli. They will tell me extravagantly how beautiful I am. I won’t believe a word of it but I will let them take pictures of me and email them to Noah.

I think that losing friends will hurt less from now on. I feel like I have a protective bubble of love. It doesn’t really matter if anyone else likes me. Noah likes me. My kids feel they are getting a good deal. They don’t have a choice about being here yet but they will. So far all they want from life is lots of time with me and access to having fun. I do that.

This is what I’m doing with my life. This is what I want to be doing. I’m doing it well. I am meeting my obligations. I’ve been sleeping better. I ran out of sleeping pills over a month ago and I haven’t refilled it. I haven’t needed them.

I am mid-way through season seven of The West Wing. This is my fourth run through of the show. I think I partially don’t watch television because I have a violent hatred of watching random thirty minute snippets of peoples lives once a week. I like this show because it has a whole story arc and point and when it is over it is over. I don’t want in medias res for my brain candy. I want to learn about people and love them. I don’t know Seinfeld even though I have seen a bunch of it.

Time to go snuggle.

Oh man. I spend my life waiting for the next person to be mad at me. When it happens I experience a big surge of emotional reaction but the anxiety goes down. That’s predictable. I wonder if I should start tracking my anxiety in comparison to when that kind of thing feels looming. Probably not. Go snuggle.

More on being judgmental

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After I go on my little tirades about things I tend to feel very guilty for days. Who the fuck am I to decide who is and is not a good father? What right do I have? How the fuck do I know? How do I know how people treat their children and families when I am not around?

I don’t.

So how dare I judge?

I’m not sure I can help it. I judge. I evaluate. I think about everything I hear and see and I think about how it fits into my world and value system. Ok, “everything” is hyperbole. But I think about a really fucking lot of things. 

It’s kind of a modern joke that moms go read a bunch of baby books when they get pregnant. It’s a trope. It is something to mock. I started out preparing to be a parent when I started the credential program. I went and learned how to work with children. When I got pregnant I started reading childhood development books which are a very different category than “parenting” books. I want to know what researchers have found.

I have spent thousands of hours reading medical/behavioral research. I mean real stuff in medical journals. I mean like reading the vaccine studies. If I lived in a small town in the middle of the country with a low immigrant population and I never traveled I wouldn’t vaccinate. I would be a selfish asshole and decide the risk outweighed the benefit for my kid. They are vaccinated because I did a fucking thorough evaluation of the risks and benefits. Given where we live and how we live vaccines are not optional.

I read about child development because I have never seen a healthy childhood before. I have seen a few minutes or a few hours of someone else having healthy childhood in brief spurts. I need to learn how to take care of my children. I do not want to fail them.

I want to be a good parent because I want to find out how that works. No one is perfect. But I want my children to grow up in a house where their mother is respected and not taken for granted. I want my children to grow up in a house where no one is inherently better than anyone else. I want my children to grow up in a house where everyone must share the work of living. There are no free lunches.

I’m like everyone else. As I walk through the world I am continually surprised that people aren’t like me. They don’t sit down and think, “I want my children to have ____ experience” and then prepare a course of attaining it. And even the people who do think about it generally don’t share my values. Like, at all.

I’ve read so much research that I feel confused when I see people making choices that are uhm outside how I interpret research. But that just makes me as big of an asshole as everyone else. Other people can’t understand why I reach the conclusions I reach. It was a process. A long one. Same for you. I need to stop getting angry with people for being different from me. It’s not fair. People are going to stop putting up with me. It’s not only a realistic possibility it is what people should do if I am lashing out at them constantly. No one should tolerate that from me.

There are reasons that it was initially useful and helpful for me to have that “This is bad” reaction. It is no longer as useful. Once upon a time lack of nuance may have saved my life. It will, at this point, destroy my life.

I have been watching the Bill Gates top 13 recommended TED Talks. Things like “This is the least violent period in all of human history. Yes, even with these bombings.” It makes sense that my physiological response is violence and anger and hatred–those things would have enabled me to kill people who seemed a threat to me or mine. We live in an unprecedented era where our mouths and our ability to persuade are uniquely necessary. Violence is no longer the answer. The rage that I learned how to feel no longer has any advantage in my life. This is fucking inconvenient and my ancestors would not have handled this better than me.

My nearly five year old keeps asking “Where did the first people come from before there were parents?”

“Well, there are a lot of different theories. I’ve told you what a theory is–right? A theory is when someone takes all the clues they have about a problem and they try to guess the answer. Some theories have more evidence than others. Some people believe that everything started in a big explosion of gas in space and we slowly evolved into being humans. We are kind of related to apes. Some people believe that a magic invisible sky friend decided to make the world and all the animals and people–they think he did this in a week. Some people believe we are descended of a giant rainbow serpent. I could go on for a long time. There are a lot of theories. But the plain truth is we don’t know. No one does. It’s a mystery. People tend to pick the theory that suits them the best.”

I have this basic physiological problem. My brain says, “It is ok for people to be different from me. That does not challenge my safety. Everyone is allowed to coexist.” Then the rest of my brain gets a big club and whacks that part of my brain for a while screaming, “SHUT UP SHUT UP THEY WILL KILL US ALLLLLLLLLL.” It’s kind of melodramatic. And while this is happening I have to stand very still with a neutral or positive expression on my face or there may be consequences.

I dislike the fact that I work on being “nice” because I don’t like dealing with the social consequences of being not nice. I don’t want to be shunned. I don’t want to be rejected. If I didn’t give a shit what people thought about me I would be so much more hostile I would not be recognizable as the same person. Seriously.

I feel like part of the reason I scream at the people I do (because I don’t scream at everyone) is because they fall into this weird cross section of feeling safe to get mad at, like someone I want to influence, and someone who feels similar enough to me that I have a prayer of influencing them. But only if I stop fucking screaming because no one listens to a screaming banshee.

My behavior is not serving my goals. I want community so bad I stay up late and wake up early crying and crying and crying because I don’t feel connected to people. I feel like people secretly hate me and tolerate me for…. I really don’t understand the reasons. It just feels that way. It’s not exactly rational.

Part of what I like so much about hanging out with my kids is they walk through the world wrapped in a blanket of security. They believe they deserve to be loved and wanted and that they are wonderful people. Shanna can absolutely spout off, “Even if someone gets mad at you that has nothing to do with whether or not they love you. Everyone gets mad sometimes. You shouldn’t be mean to people you love though. That’s not cool.”

She in fact rattled that off nearly verbatim yesterday when I screamed at her. I think her wording was closer to, “Even though you are mad at me you are not allowed to scream. You have to use a polite voice.”

Sometimes I feel like the top of my head will explode. But when she says that I stop mid-shriek and say, “You are right. I will leave the room until I calm down and then we can talk about it.”

Her saying that to me gives me this psychological permission to say and believe the same thing. Shanna is allowed to have boundaries and so am I. So are my friends. My friends do not need to put up with me screaming at them no matter how dysregulated I feel. That is my problem and not theirs.

I feel like I keep having these weird flashes into peoples lives. As I was being mean to my friend’s husband the other day I felt like I couldn’t stop the rude words from coming out of my mouth but as I was speaking I saw this whole full-length movie in my head of what I know of his life. He is behaving entirely appropriately given what he has known and experienced. My nastiness seems totally irrelevant and inappropriate. I wish the movie had started playing like three minutes earlier so I could have buttoned my lips shut. Or said something appropriate.

If instead of being pissed off at him I had said, “Well, we’ll see if things change or not. Babies have their own agenda” then maybe I would have had a prayer of opening his mind. Yelling at him… not so much.

If I want to influence people I need to think about how my behavior, tone of voice, and attitude affect how I am perceived. If I want to be influential in positive ways I have to make conscious choices. Otherwise I will still be influential but I sure as fuck won’t be a force for good in the world.

More self-control. That is pretty much the beginning, middle, and end of that conversation. But no one has endless self-control. I could choose to just avoid the people I blow up at. Honestly that is usually my first choice. If I find myself blowing up at someone over and over I start avoiding them because they don’t deserve to deal with my ill temper. I consciously don’t want to do that any more. I’m tired of walking away from relationships because I can’t control my temper tantrums. It’s really lonely.

The thing I am getting the most strongly from the survivor books I’ve been reading is: you have to figure out a way to have the worst things that happened to you become sources of strength. You have to have a sense of humor and perspective.

It was very useful at one point in time that my brain developed the ability to categorize behavior as Good/Bad but that doesn’t serve the same purpose any more. I’m still looking for my Faith in Gray. Just because something would be bad for me does not mean it is bad for someone else and I need to not freak out. Seriously.

Speak less. There is no shortage of words in the world. Consider what I will say before I say it. Play that fucking video of peoples lives in my head before I start being a condescending bitch. It is truly not my place.

No one is trying to make me be like them any more. Why do I turn around and tell people to be like me? Because that’s a species level attitude. I have to find a work around.

Progress, not perfection–right? I feel sad because it feels like when I fuck up that I have to abandon all the work I have done on that relationship so far because I am no longer worthy of that persons company. If I can’t control myself I should not inflict my asshole behavior on other people. I have no way of knowing if that is actually the best choice or not. It’s the only way I can figure out to ensure that I am not nasty to people.

It feels very lonely sometimes. Even though I have no right to claim loneliness. I’m really over-scheduled right now.

But if I have to be careful and never really just speak to people then it doesn’t change how lonely I feel. If I have to weigh every word because I know that I am not really appropriate and I don’t really belong in such an environment I feel terrible the whole time. I know I am a fraud. I know I am not really connecting. I am a card board cut out of a person standing where a person should be. A person would be genuinely kind and loving. I have to pretend.

And then I think about some of my male friends. Holy shit do they not care about being kind and loving. And they are real people. I feel like I am caught in the trap of being female.  It is just too dangerous for me to fuck with my herd status. I will die. It’s not really true any more–we no longer live in that world. My brain doesn’t know that.

I can’t help but feel that there is no way to make progress on rape culture without finding a way out of this anger. This anger is paralyzing.

Self control sounds hard

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What I know about my father is: he was tall, 6’7″. He liked to read science fiction books. (If you want the real reason I avoided sci fi for most of my life… knowing he liked them was enough.) He liked taking baths. He was a printer. He was from Pasadena. He was mean. He liked to rape his children.

I was reading about Buddhist meditation retreats. I’m not sure how I would handle having to sit around and just be still. I would spend a lot of time thinking about my dad. Watching my husband with our kids is like the bitter mixed with the sweet. I feel over and over every day, why didn’t I deserve to be loved? I keep wondering when people are going to realize they should stop. I don’t deserve any positive emotions from anyone. It has always been true.

I feel like a fucking asshole because I got angry about not being loved and I ripped the whole fucking house down. I prosecuted my father and I divorced my mother after loudly and publicly humiliating and shaming her.

Don’t fuck with me.

Ok, I don’t do that to everyone. I haven’t been quite so hostile with all of the people who have hurt me and not loved me. Usually I just put my head down, accept it as the natural order of things, and start walking.

It is very scary trying to be emotionally attached to my children. Every part of me screams not to. Don’t invest. They will just leave you and hurt you. Families are bullshit. No one really gives a shit about anyone but themselves.

I care. I take care of them because I love them. Not because they do anything for me. Well, they hug me. That’s nice.

Apparently my father pestered my mother for a threesome for many years. I wonder if she had given in to that would he have left her daughters alone? There is no way of knowing and no sense in blaming. I doubt he would have left us alone.

My experience of men who rape and men who hurt little children is that they are deeply wounded. They feel small and weak. They do not know that they are so strong they can crush the person with one hand. In their minds that transformation never happened. They believe they are still weak like I believe I do not deserve love. Most of them believe they do not deserve love either. Most of them understand that they should shut their mouths and look down and never expect anyone to love them but everyone gets sick of doing that.

So when someone shows signs of love it is hard to stop. It is hard to keep from pushing harder and harder in your excitement. Oh my goodness this person loves me. If the recipient decides to say “no” and pull away… that’s dangerous and bad. No. They are just kidding. They want to love me. See, they do. They are still here. They want me to be happy. This is what will make me happy.

One of the hardest parts of all day every day is balancing all of the needs in my head. I have to be important–I can’t be a martyr. But I have to look really hard at the people around me and meet their needs. Often when they can’t express the need on their own.

It is hard to not be selfish. It is hard to not take. It is hard to not be self-centered. But I can’t be. That’s what fucks kids up. I have to fucking care about my children and their needs. No one else will unless I do. If I don’t treat them like people of status it is unlikely someone else will.

People get the treatment they expect. People get the treatment they accept.

I don’t know how to defend myself without being angry. I don’t know how to take up space and be allowed to be without setting fire to earth and eliminating every one and every thing near me. That’s not a useful skill right now in my life. It is kind of the opposite of useful, really.

If you don’t like the paths you know go find a new one. What would it be like to not be angry? I haven’t had very many days in the past twenty years when I haven’t felt simmering rage. It kind of blows my mind.

What I know about my father is that he was angry and entitled. I worry about myself. I don’t want to act entitled. I’m not. I worry about the men I know who rape. They are angry and entitled.

You can’t persuade someone to change by yelling at them. Not really. You can cause them to cower and lie and cover up. But that’s not what I want. I want people to understand how big and strong and powerful they are… and to consciously choose to not hurt people. I don’t think that is something I am going to be able to do by being nasty.

I’m really scared of not being angry any more. I know that has to be part of the next step. But I’m afraid that without it I will die. I’m afraid that anger will kill me. (Yes, that was a contradiction.) Being angry is a tremendous load on the body. It is slow suicide. Being this angry allthefuckingtime is a way of killing yourself. But being angry is what motivates me to defend myself.

What is the point of living in preparation for death? Death is part of every life. I’m not sure that anyone should focus on that being the whole point of every day.

I have a lot to do today. I’m feeling overwhelmed already. Weeding, make lunch, park day (there seems to be more and more drama-I think I will do a lot of Shiny Change of Topic), reply to about ten emails with scheduling foo, make phone calls (I am going to schedule physical therapy. I am going to schedule physical therapy. I am going to schedule physical therapy. soyouknowhowmydoctortoldmetodothisinJanuary?YeahI’mbroken.

Make dinner. I’m already in progress on (yet more fucking) laundry. I’ll be happy when younger daughter outgrows the four-outfits-a-day stage. Older daughter has. But then again they have different body temperatures. Younger daughter changes her many layers of clothing as often as I do. We’re in trouble.

When I think about why I am doing things (cleaning the house, weeding, whatever) I think that I want my children to say, “My mom likes to work.” That’s a description I will have to fucking earn. It will be harder given that I don’t have a tidy outside job to at which to point. Lots of people claim to work hard while doing less in a day than I do in most hours. It’s kind of perplexing to me. I could not handle a job where I sat around kind of waiting for something to happen. Not even the kind of waiting/work firefighters do. I have to work more than that. Nervous energy.

It is weird trying to appreciate the difference between mental and physical labor. They are both serious effort. Many people are capable of one but not the other. I’m trying as hard as I can to walk down the middle of the aisle. I want to learn things today that I did not know yesterday. I want that to be true every day. I want to have moved my body around and improved the nature of something pretty much every day. (Ok, I understand that some people don’t consider cleaning to be improving the nature of things and yet those people seem to get pissy about not being able to find things.)

I like resetting the space. In our home there is a place for everything and I can get everything in its place. It all comes down just about every day because living is like that. But I can reset. I can get to baseline. I don’t do it over and over all day. Ok, I skip days of cleaning my kitchen when I am enmeshed in projects elsewhere. It gets gross.

But as long as it is in disorder I can physically feel it and it bothers me. So I don’t leave things messy for long. The idea of going out and buying nail clippers over and over because you can never find them turns my stomach. I have no idea why but that is a little microcosm of first world consumptive waste for me. No. I just can’t be part of it. Clean up your fucking house and you will be able to keep track of your belongings. If you can’t keep track of your belongings clearly you have too many.

I think this makes me a “minimalist”. But I don’t even feel like a minimalist. I have too much shit for that.

Wow this got rambly. This is all connected for me. This is what I fear facing in meditation. I only face this flow of thoughts for a few hours of writing a day. It’s kind of intimidating to think of going at this speed for a day.

The retreat center spoke of accessing your wisdom. To me that clearly means “people shouldn’t come until they are over fifty”. The internet tells me: “Wisdom is the judicious study and application of knowledge. It is a deep understanding and realization of people, things, events or situations, resulting in the ability to apply perceptions, judgments and actions in keeping with this understanding. It often requires control of one’s emotional reactions (the “passions“) so that universal principles, reason and knowledge prevail to determine one’s actions. Wisdom is also the comprehension of what is true coupled with optimum judgment as to action. Synonyms include: sagacity, discernment, or insight.”

I’m in that needing control stage. Shit. I hate this part.

Intersection of privilege, feminism, and being “retro” as we head into the future.

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I went and read the NY Magazine article on Feminist Housewives. I understand that some people feel insulted by the piece. I thought it was hilarious. Holy tomato do I fall into the demographic she is lampooning. Upper middle class and white. We started into this demographic when I was 27 (right in the middle of the 25-30 age group that is the fastest growing segment) when our combined household income was between $75,000 and $100,000. Over the last six years Noah has nearly made it to $200,000. We are absolutely the “kind of people” this article is trying to insult.

Wait, you didn’t think the author was trying to be insulting? Oh. I read it as if she was trying but failed because I really don’t care about her evaluation. Yes, I am a feminist who does not have an out-of-the-home job. What does being a feminist mean in my position? It means I lobby the shit out of my friends-in-similar-dynamics for them to have the autonomy and freedom I have.

On some levels my marriage is quite “retro” and in other ways it is anything but. Folks wouldn’t look at Noah and I and confirm that the patriarchy is in full force. I have agency. I make decisions.

If I were to work out of the house we would be in a worse place financially than we are right now. My salary would not cover how much we would end up spending on daycare, better clothes, eating out, a house cleaner, or a more active gardner. Let me tell you–if I had a job I would quite certainly do less cooking for the house than Noah does while having a job. My job was more hours in the week than Noah’s… for a lot less money. Really about like the social worker that was lampooned in the article.

I went into teaching for the express purpose of learning how to teach my own kids. I became a teacher because I knew I wanted to homeschool my kids someday and I wanted to be able to do so well. I did not go into a helping profession because I wanted to make the world better. I went into teaching to fulfill my own selfish desires and my own plans for the future.

I didn’t really live with my mother full time when I was a child. I grew up in extreme poverty and that means I often had to go live with virtual or literal strangers because she couldn’t care for me. This has created an ache inside me that time doesn’t seem to dull. I did not learn how to be a person from my mother. I learned how to be a person from books while I was alone in a room. I feel a physical need to have specific one-on-one relationships that facilitate personal growth. I need to see what it looks like when people go through the normal changes. I don’t need to spend the rest of my life looking at one cross section of life and only adapting to that. I was great with teenagers–I need to learn how to deal with all ages. I need to be exposed to all ages.

My life journey will never look anything like the typical journey. Even though I fall into specific demographics of high privilege now I will never be able to change who I am or where I come from. I am not like the other women in my demographic. Often I freak them out.

I can say without reservation that I have an uncommonly feminist marriage. My husband has permitted, encouraged, shoved me towards a degree of autonomy that I just don’t see in other marriages. It isn’t that he makes me do things by myself, though he does. It is that he has taught me about his own journey of aloneness. It is that he has made me understand why he has the limitations he has and he understands why I have the limitations I have and we seamlessly step in and rescue one another. He cares about my individual issues and he never assumes that I am a certain way “because I am a woman”.

I do not believe in biological determinism. I know men who are wonderful stay-at-home-dads (my brother has actually been a SAHD for the entire lives of his children) and I know women who are so non-maternal that I don’t understand why they had children. Because that biological clock thing is No Joke. These women wisely find very nurturing caregivers to provide most of the care for their kids and their kids grow up feeling loved and cared for. That’s what life is about, right?

There is no one path. I want to be near my children because it satisfies deep emotional needs for me. I was deeply neglected and abused as a child. I have baggage I am learning how to work through.

I have to stay home and take care of my children myself because otherwise I will never have the impetus to work on my hatred and rage towards working in groups. Without doing this I am unlikely to value the input of other people. Let me tell you I will never change my opinion if I just take a job where I have to work with people. I hate working with people. That’s my idea of hell on earth. I can be the boss and steer the ship in a group–but that’s different. I’m a harsh taskmaster.

I don’t want to be a harsh taskmaster with my children. I want them to learn how to be functional people. That means I have to model being a functional person. One of my biggest gripes about the American educational system is that we are turning out people who know how to be cogs in the machine–not people who can deconstruct the machine and build a new one.

I don’t know about you, but I think we need a new one.

I went on to read The Retro Husband and thought ouch. He’s talking about Noah. Only he isn’t.

Noah and I met during a period in our lives when we could lovingly be called fuck ups. We had a lot of relationship instability and we both treated people like they wouldn’t be in our lives very long. Mostly we were right. When we got married we both had to abruptly change a lot of things in our behavior. We went from not dating/just friends to engaged to married in five months. Our lives changed fast.

I picked a mate who has a profession that is best served by a combination of locking himself in a room to work alone and going out and teaching what he has learned while being locked in a room. Strip clubs don’t feature heavily. I’m pretty sure he has only been in a strip club once in his life. We went together on the first anniversary of our marriage. We had a lot of fun. (I’ve been to a lot of strip clubs and I love them.) We came home and conceived our first child. Amen.

I picked someone who has a dad who has never left his crazy mother. He understands what “for better or worse” means. I looked at the guys in my generation (and two generations above me) and found such understanding to be thin on the ground. I picked someone from inherited wealth who has a chip on his shoulder and something to prove. He was taught how to make money. That is a set of skills you either have or don’t have. I quizzed a lot of men. Let me tell you: financial acumen is thin on the ground. He wasn’t taught how to budget money. That’s one of the big downfalls of growing up with more money than you know what to do with. However he doesn’t track our money; I do. I budget well. We are very good partners.

I am self-aware enough to admit out loud that I would probably not be as happy if my partner made very little money. I would have different expectations. I think that  when you look at the demographic of “men who do very little housework have more sex” you have a combination of: women who are lavishly provided for feel grateful and men who philander. That’s my experience.

When I was eighteen I was engaged to my high school sweetheart. That was the price of shacking up and we both wanted away from our parents. I didn’t marry him because even though he made more money than me I paid more of our expenses and I did all the housework. He was really lazy at home. I went from that to a D/s or M/s relationship. (That’s Dominant/submissive or technically Owner/property in our case.) I have always fucking cleaned house for people. I’ve been doing it all my life. I even pick fucking friends who want me to come over and clean for them. (I offer. I am really good at organizing people’s stuff.)

I clean because I am an order Muppet. I have to see order in the world around me or I can’t focus and I can’t relax. I think I clean for other people because I am trying to bond with them. I am trying to offer what I have in terms of “benefits” so people will put up with being my friend. I believe I am intrinsically unpleasant. I must offer something in trade or being around me isn’t worth the cost.

I don’t want my children to feel this way. If I had to put my head down and work a full time job and take care of my kids and take care of my house and provide food… I would certainly never ever have reason to believe that people wanted me around for any reason other than I had work to do for them. “The worst burden for a woman is no burden.” She’s talking about privilege and idleness. She can’t shame and say it bluntly. I should be serving other people, not myself. I shouldn’t just exist for the pleasure of my company. Ha. I appreciate how much she believes women should be out working in the world–but I notice that in order to do it herself she had to give up on the marriage/kids thing. I wanted kids.

I don’t think the author of the NY Magazine piece means that I should be working for other people in order to help support the world. I just don’t.

What is the point and purpose of feminism if I am not allowed to say, “I have the financial privilege to stay home and be the primary caregiver for my children and more than anything in the world I want to do it” and have that be acceptable. I don’t want to have 18, 19, and counting so I am a perpetual breeding machine who never has to do anything else but be mommy.

I will engage in the world again. I will do it as a very different person. I am not allowed to fuck my way through the rest of my life. I spent my childhood assuming I would be a sex worker for most of my life. That was my actual plan. I decided to do something else because I didn’t want my children to believe they had to do it. I changed my behavior in large and dramatic ways because I wanted to be able to look my children in the face and say that acting like me is appropriate. Does that mean I think promiscuity is terrible or bad? No. But they should not expect it of themselves because it is not mandatory. It is not common. It is not standard.

I used two forms of birth control very consistently after I was eighteen (I was on hormonal birth control and ALWAYS used condoms for casual sex and used a diaphragm with longer term fluid bonded partners who refused to wear condoms any more because let’s be honest that is how that shit happens) until I was sure I wanted to have kids. I was not going to get caught with some kid I would resent and a lifetime association with a loser ex-partner. I was smart enough to fucking recognize that at twelve years old. That’s when I went on the pill for the first time. I sometimes used depo provera (to my detriment–that shit is bad for you) then I went back to the pill.

No one sat me down and taught me the facts of life. I found things out piece-meal. A little bit at school (I will say that Los Gatos had adequate public health education–that is a huge advantage not everyone has) but mostly through talking to people. I found out most of it by making mistakes. I made a lot of mistakes before I was eighteen. I had a lot of very risky sex. I made a number of stupid choices.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this rape/not rape thing. How do I differentiate between bad sex and rape? I don’t think it crosses the line unless I was saying “no”. I believe that I have to say “no” or it is my fault that something happened. I ascribe the responsibility and agency for such acts to myself.

When I was twelve I asked a twenty-five year old man to fuck me. That wasn’t rape. But it was still a crime. It was still illegal. It was his legal responsibility to tell me no. I was still a child and he is responsible for his actions. That other twenty five year old I dated when I was twelve. He was at least nice enough to not pressure me when I said I wasn’t ready to have sex yet, but he asked me to at least give him a blow job. I felt kind of guilty because he had taken me out to a meal (Johnny Rockets. I had a grilled cheese sandwich, fries, and a milkshake) and he bought me a Christmas present so… didn’t I owe him? So I gave him the blowjob he asked for. It wasn’t rape. But it was a crime.

This is where rape culture blows my mind because of how pervasive it is. It’s all my fault those poor men committed a crime. I asked them to do it–literally in the first case and by inference in the second when I said I wasn’t ready for sex yet.

I brought it up, you see. I was out on a date–of course there were expectations, duh. How stupid am I to not have stayed home. My mother had given me permission for the date. She met him. She saw us off. I was home by curfew.

I know the difference between rape and not rape. If I said no and lay there crying while someone fucked me that is rape. Even if we are both adults now and I would have consented to the sex if he had just put a condom on. That’s not a mistake on my part. That is not something I invited. Unprotected sex is not a right that a man has. He does not have the right to risk inflicting a child on a woman. Period.

I think in my little corner of the world a rapist is somehow less of a piece of shit if he at least keeps his future-children to himself.

I stay home to take care of my children. They are my whole world for this brief window of time. I don’t think I would be able to handle raising the child of my rapist. My mother had a hard time raising me. She did not bond with me as much as she did other children. She had her tubes tied when I was born. You know how “some women rape easy”? That’s my family. We rape easy. I’m trying to do something different with my children. I am escaping into a different kind of social dynamic.

I really have a feminist marriage. Why do I say that? Because I started off in a marriage where it was ok to beat and rape me and then I decided those things weren’t ok and I put a stop to them. (Let’s be clear that I was ok with it to start with–I gave active consent. Well, ok I gave consent in advance for the rape and then changed my mind because I didn’t really think it would turn into a violent rape because I didn’t know I had been dealing with mostly wussy-assed-pansies trying to “play rape” in the past. Hoo boy.)

Folks have called my husband “whipped” and his response was, “damn right”. Only he is a very autonomous being. I don’t have a lot of control over him in general. I have a ridiculous amount of influence on how he treats me. And other men/boys feel the need to let us know that I shouldn’t have so much influence on how he treats me. He should instead align his preferences with those of other men/boys and treat me how those men/boys feel I should be treated.

I really like my husband. He is self-interested in a way I can work with. I can predict how he will react because he is consistent. He has stated goals. When he starts wandering off from them a brisk reminder gets him back on track. He isn’t particularly pulled towards any boys club. He has been alone too much. He has no faith that the boys club will really be there for him.

I have been with him more for more of his life than anyone else. I like him more than anyone else ever has. I really appreciate him. My life has gone from being a nightmare to being the punchline because I am so vapid and privileged. It is… interesting.

When people mockingly say that I am trying to live how my grandmother lived I would laugh and say that I picked an atheist–not a Mennonite or a Catholic. One grandmother was a printer in Pasadena after WWII (she was enlisted) and the other was the wife of a boxer turned dairy farmer. No, I don’t live like them. I neither have to work as hard nor am I oppressed as much. The Christmas before I divorced my family my mom made me a wonderful book. She hand wrote, in her beautiful hand writing–my mother has the most beautiful writing in the world–all of our family recipes into a recipe book. She gave me what she has to give.

I am a much better cook than any of them. They used shitty ingredients and too much sugar in freaking everything to cover up the bad quality of all the canned produce. I have had to learn how to cook from The Joy of Cooking and the internet. I live in an era where there is no fucking excuse for saying “I don’t know how to do _______.”

Yes, I choose to be a stay at home mom. I choose to homeschool my children with the financial support of my husband. I don’t want to have it all. I don’t want the pressure of more people having expectations of me right now. I only have so much energy to give. I know that makes me fairly pathetic but that’s just how the cookie crumbles. I am privileged. I am lucky that I get to make this choice. I wouldn’t have been able to do this in this way with someone who made a lot less money.

Only I probably would. I would live in a cheap rented apartment and I would probably never own a house. But I would still want to take care of my kids. I don’t live in a nice house now. I will never live in an expensive neighborhood. I would feel unwanted and like I didn’t know how to behave in that kind of environment. Here the kids play on the streets and we hear lots of loud music and lots of people. I feel comfortable. I see signs of people living and laughing and putting down roots.

Yes, I want to be a stay at home mom so I can get to know the seventy-six year old man down the street. I wouldn’t have time to stand around and pass the time of day hearing his stories if I had a job. My life would be less full if I had never heard his stories. I would understand people a little less. He is helping me hate men less. He feels pretty safe to stand around and talk with. He has no designs upon me and he would probably freak the fuck out if I made a pass at him. It is a very comforting exchange. I really value having him around. I think I am shoving him in the role of my Uncle Bob. I’m going to freak out when he dies some day. I’m glad my kids are getting to hear from him. They are learning a lot of history.

Speaking of Uncle Bob. Not mine. Uncle Bob Martin is a technical guy who absolutely means well but has a humorous opinion of women. I’m not a fucking lady. Ladies are expected to act in very proscribed ways I will never agree to behave. Men should not treat me like I am a lady. I want them to treat me like a person-who-is-not-like-them. Like a human from another culture. I am a person who has had a very particular set of lifetime experiences. I am not like other people. I am not like other women. I am not like men. I am also not working in the technology industry so obviously I don’t matter–right?

Only I’ve been coding some in secret (not a secret any more) because I didn’t want to tell Noah at first. I’m still not sharing. I am who should be courted into such an industry but they treat me like an insect. They treat me like my brain is rotting inside my skull because I am so mentally deficient as to want to be near children all day. Oh go fuck yourself. Mostly women are treated like they have no value after they have stayed home to take care of children. Only Uncle Bob wants us to be the ladies and spiffy up the place and nurture our cwute widdle pwojects along to help them actually happen. The boys club has noticed that when you get too many boys in one place you need a den mother.

Well he is asking women to come work in a hostile work environment. He isn’t really acknowledging how or why. At the edges of that hostile work environment (the gaming community is kind of the bastard son of the technology community) we have Anita Sarkeesian speaking about what happens to women who have the audacity to look at how women are treated in the gaming community.

I could stay in an underpaid, unappreciated profession where I get to care for other peoples children all day but not really form bonds because the kids are leaving at the end of the year–so I don’t have to grow as a person. I can remain static as I stand there doing the same thing year after year. Like I’m perfect already. ha.

Or I could stay home and raise children and figure out how to grow fruit and vegetables so that when I am old my property will be fairly self-sufficient. I am contributing to my long-term future. Could it all be yanked away from me? Anything could. You don’t have to tell me that. I don’t think many people understand having an uncertain future more than me. But things really and truly have improved. I have changed. I have learned from my mistakes.

Yes, I’m a feminist and a house wife. Being in this position allows me to acquire skills that I want to have. Having a career would not allow me to develop these skills. I want them. I want them with every fiber of my being. I want to have survival skills that are not taught in an office or a school. Those environments are artifacts of a culture that is dying. I want my children to be able to do something else.

We are at a turning point. We have to change. If that makes me “retro” then I’m ok with that. This essay from Michael O. Church is fifteenth in a series (now of sixteen and counting…) about how corporations need to shift from being part of an industrial model to being part of the technology era. He’s talking about getting rich. He’s not talking about my life any more than Sebastian Marshall is talking about my life. I am not part of the technological revolution these men are portending. Yet I am. I am raising the children who will carry it out.

I believe that women have as much of a place in the world as men. I believe that women are as intrinsically valuable as men–not “because we nurture” but rather because if the human race is to continue it requires men and women. We have not found a way to get around that yet. It’s not because we are both awesome “in our own ways” it’s because we simply cannot continue as a race without both genders. And subjugating women isn’t going so well. We live in an era where silencing us is harder than it has ever been before. We fight back now. And bear the consequences of that too. It’s still better than it was. There have always been consequences for standing up for yourself–that is not a man or a woman thing. Unfortunately the consequences for women tend to involve threats that involve her gender, especially rape.

I have never met anyone who has been actually raped more times than I have. Either that or no one has been willing to say it to me. Some day I will meet someone. I have very real reason to fear reprisals for speaking out–the threatened torture has already happened to me. What makes me think I will avoid it in the future?

Because I have learned more about privilege. I was silenced previously in my life because I was young, ignorant, and too weak to protect myself. I am no longer in such a position. Most women and girls do not understand what the process of learning how to protect themselves means. Unfortunately “protecting yourself” often means staying home and not getting to be part of communities and hobbies you would like to join because if you have a bad experience you are on your own. If you defend yourself people may threaten to kill and/or rape you.

In many ways I feel very consciously like I am choosing a life more like a religious life–I am mostly cloistered and I mostly have contact with women and children. I’m doing it as an increasingly zealous atheist which is kind of awkward.

There are many studies that say that men/women in highly defined relationships do better and are happier. So far in history those relationships have followed a pattern of men work- women raise children. It was a biologically unavoidable task. We no longer live in that world. Now men are no more suited to the weird ass work people do in offices than women are–often men are not as well suited. A great deal of technological work involves a kind of multi-tasking that women are shown to be better at. And as my husband shows me week after week after week in our marriage–he is a better cook than I am and he is quite capable of bathing children and changing diapers and cleaning the house. He doesn’t do as much of it as I do, no, and that’s ok with me. Doing those tasks requires time. I have more time to kill than he does. He is genuinely working his ass off for more structured hours of the day than me. I can pick up slack and increase our mutual leisure time because it makes my life better.

I don’t see how these choices are unfeminist. I am being cold, calculating, and I am serving my interests and the interests of my progeny. I am, however, not serving the interests of an Industrial Age leftover feminism. I am not trying to stamp out home life in service of people living in dormitories and working in factories. I don’t want my children to imprint on a group of people exactly their age so they have no perspective on how dramatic the changes in life are. I want my children to grow up understanding that people change constantly. They don’t settle in and “be the same” for decades. You have to grow.

I don’t see a structure for that in the current set-up. So I’m going to go make it up as I go. I understand that has been the normal human path since the beginning of time. I’m ok with being on The Road Not Taken by other people. I will always be weird. That’s unavoidable.

I wish you knew that you were actually on that road too. You are not actually on the same road as other people and you shouldn’t try to be. What do you want to do with your life? That’s what feminism is about.

At the end of that rant the kind of logical next question is: so what about all the people who don’t have my privilege? Fuck if I know. That’s a really hard question.

Today is bad.

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All I can think about is getting a razor blade and driving to the beach. Several big deal cuts from wrist to elbow and then I would swim out until I couldn’t swim any more. I promised myself I would raise my kids so I’m not going to do it today. I want to. I want to stop hurting.

I have been sobbing and wailing and whining that I miss my mother for almost thirty years. Yesterday during EMDR the thought loop that kept getting stuck was, “Honor thy mother and father” and I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. I am bad. I do not honor my mother or father. I am bad. I can’t even follow G-d’s rules.

During Calli’s nine day labor from hell my doula and midwife were both very irritated with me. They both had children who were under a year old whom they didn’t want to leave. I was inconvenient as a client. So they were snippy and would come and go and didn’t want to be with me more than they “HAD” to. And I almost died. And I lay in bed for weeks because I couldn’t stand. I crawled to the bathroom because I could not walk the four feet. Thankfully Kira brought us food or we would have been in a difficult spot.

I am going to die alone. I am going to die feeling unwanted and unloved and unappreciated. I don’t really see any other ending for my story. Some days I am more sanguine about this than others. Everyone is alone in the end–right?

I have no interest in being alive at the end of today. But I promised I would raise my kids. So I will be anyway. It doesn’t seem to matter what I want in this lifetime. You get what you get. It isn’t about “right”. It isn’t about “fair”. It isn’t about “deserve”.

Noah told me that he is trying to give me freedom. I’ve been free since I was five years old. No one has known what I have done unless I have chosen to tell them. I have done whatever I want. I traveled. I met people. If I didn’t have the money I found a way. I have had more freedom than pretty much anyone I know.

Someone has to care about you before they have expectations of you. No one knew what I was doing.

I want to slit my wrists so bad. I have no interest in completing today. I don’t want this pain. I’m so fucking done. The last few days have actually been pretty good. I was in a great mood this weekend.

Honor thy mother and thy father. Sometimes it comforts/haunts me that because I am an American I am allowed to exist. In other places my disobedience against my parents would probably end my life.

Honor thy rapist. Keep him holy. Do as he says. Keep your mouth shut you stupid whore.

If I could get these things out of my head I would. I just don’t know how. I don’t know how to stop feeling like I should die because I am bad. I am poison. I am going to infect other people with my badness.

In my adult life I’ve had big celebrations for my birthday for 21, 23, and 30. Tom did the 23 birthday party technically after I broke up with him. He loved me but he didn’t know how to show it and a lot of things that I asked him for–a lot of kinds of attention that I needed–came in the month or two after I broke up with him.

I hosted my 30th. I spent the morning before the party beating my head on the concrete floor in the garage. I spent the day feeling like, “Why don’t these people want to see me unless I am offering food and drink and lots of other people to talk to?” I’m not actually sure I should try again.

What I want, the way I want to be seen does happen for some people. It’s not my lot in this life. Somehow I have to stop caring.

Instead I want to die. Then no one will even be bothered by a cursory glance in my direction.

I hate me so much right now. Fucking loser. Really the best thing my body could be used as is fish food.

I feel soft and badass at the same time.

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My skin is so nice. Oh man. Of course the woman giving me the treatment turned out to be my tribe. I didn’t press for specifics (uhhh it seemed inappropriate) but she said enough things that I know it to be true. I just know.

The first half hour I spent in the hot tub or sauna. The room was beautiful and huge. I felt small and I don’t very often. Then I moved into the treatment room. That was more to a scale that felt reasonable to me.

First she scrubbed me really forking hard with salt for a while. I rinsed that off. Then she slathered me up in mud and wrapped me up like a burrito. Then she did stuff to my hair and my feet and my face. Then I took another shower. Then she put oils on me. A few stages of this were billed as “massage” and given who I normally get them from it just didn’t rank as obviously meant to be therapeutic. It felt soothing though. Soothing can be nice.

We talked about intentional parenting. We talked about viewing your children as autonomous beings who do not owe you a relationship. We talked about modeling and mirroring and learning and the pressure of being on all the forking time. She is on the fence. She thinks she might want kids but she’s not sure she can handle them. She’s thirty-six. She’s running out of time.

If you don’t wake up in the morning and cry because you wish you were holding your baby then you probably don’t want to be a mom bad enough to go through the process.That’s how I feel about it.

We talked about having children to give yourself a reason to live and the problems and benefits of doing so. The only ethical way to do it is to think of your children’s needs above your own. Yes, they give me a reason to stay alive. That isn’t their problem. All they should see is that they have a wonderful mommy who loves them more than ice cream. In our house the measure of true affection is how it compares to ice cream.

We talked about hiding yourself in travel and needing roots at the same time. We talked about how you have to hide yourself in order to have “relationships” because if you are damaged and angry every problem will be your fault. It cannot be apparent that you are so angry. How do you mask it? How do you get along?

How do you get over hating everyone else who got to have a mother who loved them? How do you not take that hatred out on them?

I told her that I think very hard about how many people I want to have at my fiftieth birthday party. I want to still know these people. I want to still live here. Ok. What am I going to have to do in order to end up with that happening? It’s not a guarantee for people like me. I’m a runner.

And this conversation came in brief bits and spurts. It was never intense. It was a few sentences at a time here and there over two hours.

She asked me how I hurt my arms so I talked about writing my book and destroying my arms and doing it practically in the middle of the night because I didn’t have any other time and I fucking had to do it. She commented on how I seem to be a very driven person in general. I have managed to do a bunch of things–right?

She said, “I guess people like you are the ones who get things done in life. If you have to do it in the middle of the night you will because you want it done and that is just that.”

At the end she told me that she didn’t think she had ever spoken to a client as much as she spoke to me and she thanked me for coming in. She said that I gave her a lot of things to think about that are really important in her life right now and she’s glad that she met me.

That’s a well spent day, no?

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I want to believe that most parents have vague expectations/hopes/dreams about how this process of parenting will go because then I don’t feel like an asshole. I don’t have hard core expectations of my kids like “You will grow up and be a lawyer” but for most of my life I kind of fantasized about stroking my little girl’s hair and helping her fall asleep. Cue birth of first daughter. From about three months of age little S has been slapping my hand and glaring at me if I stroked her hair. I feel a degree of sadness about this that is entirely out of proportion but there it is. Then I had C. She loves having her hair stroked. I’m so glad I had two daughters so I could spread out my expectations and not ask too much of either one of them individually.

We are off sugar. It doesn’t effect the kids but I’m also off caffeine and alcohol till Easter. I think that harm springs from excess. Moderation is very important in life–moderation in everything! Even moderation. Which means that I am bad at keeping things like sugar/alcohol/caffeine as a sometimes treat and they start creeping in more and more. So I periodically take a while off then I try to go slow when I start again. Then things get out of hand and I take a break. I’m not sure it is “ideal” but it is how I get through. My kids hate me. My husband isn’t too sure about me. Why did I make everyone else do it with me? Because sugar is literally a drug. If you look at studies of what it does to your brain it’s not a joke. I want my kids to grow up knowing that you have to consciously look at your consumption of things that are bad for you and take breaks. Your body needs them. It’s not about punishment. This is a big part of my food religion.

I am too mean and nasty to be a vegan. I honestly don’t care enough about animal rights to do it. I am, however, not a big fan of factory farming or most of our current system of producing goods. I’m not a vegetarian because my diet is not diverse enough to provide me the nutrients I honest to dawg need so I eat meat to fill in the gaps. It’s not a perfect system but it has obviously worked for many species for a long time. I don’t need perfect–I need to not be dead. And when I read things about how consumption of quinoa is probably going to contribute to the destruction of a Latin American country I can’t help but be reaffirmed in my belief that if it doesn’t grow within 100 miles of my home I probably shouldn’t eat it.

But that springs from my hubris. I live in Northern California. More food grows here than anywhere else. The only thing I would have to give up from my regular diet in order to eat entirely locally is bananas. Whoopie. Most of the people in the entire world can’t have my hubris.

Ok. So my food religion doesn’t actually scale. Or make sense at all for large populations. If you look at pretty much every religion of every kind I feel that way about it. They don’t scale. They make sense for whoever they make sense for and not at all for the rest of the world. That’s kind of how things work.

My food religion partially springs from the fact that I live in a place where this is possible. It is disgusting, ethically, to be completely aware of all of my resources and make different choices. In my entirely judgmental opinion. But I know almost no one who has my degree of resources in this area. So it gets trickier almost immediately.

Understanding what privilege means, what having money means, what having resources really means is this constant slow-dawning process for me. What things are actually secure for me and which things aren’t.

I have been participating in an incest support group. Next week is our last meeting. They aren’t a bad group of women but I can’t deal with a support group that far away. It takes too much of my life to participate. In order to spend six hours a month with them I have to spend $240 and spend eight hours driving in miserable traffic. I don’t get enough out of it to balance the cost. Not when I also have to arrange child care and deal with stress around that. My friend who has been watching them is quite sick. I don’t feel ok asking her for this as a permanent favor. She can’t truly commit to doing it and I don’t want to get into the situation of being mad at her because her body is doing what it is doing. That would make me a serious asshole.

I did that with my former housemate. I thought I was agreeing to a trade of work. But I had an expectation level that was higher than her body could provide. Not because she didn’t want to. Not because she wasn’t trying. Bodies betray us. And I was an asshole. So I lost my friend over it. I can’t keep doing that in my life. I will end up totally alone. So I can’t ask too much of anyone.

I also participate in an online ptsd support forum. That is, uhm, more at my participation level and spoon level. I can do it in my garage at 4am and not trouble anyone at all. It’s fucking great.

But both groups function to scare the ever loving shit out of me. Given my level of trauma I am unbelievably productive and functional. At least that is how it appears to my judgmental eye. That’s… kind of scary for me.

Am I just in a good period? Am I going to crash like they did? Many of them didn’t truly lose control of their lives until they were in their 40’s or 50’s. I’m not past falling yet. I was reading today about why a woman became homeless at 49. I’m not past that yet. I can’t lose vigilance.

I live with extreme mental illness. I have studied the field enough to be utterly confident that the devils chasing me are much larger than most people deal with. I’m able to put that mental illness in a box and study it from the outside. I’m able to see where my behavior is broken and just decide that I have to alter that pattern. The mental illness is still there but the behavior is corrected.

I’m able to consciously try and see from other peoples perspectives. It’s empathy. My shaman laughed at me and told me that I act autistic but I don’t know that he is right. I make a logical decision… sorta. But I’m acting from the ability to guess what someone in that position would want. I’m kind of mind reading. I’m going through my film rolodex in my head, “What do I know about this person. Play entire film of life in fast forward. Go.”

What would someone who had that life want? I fucking guarantee you it is different from what I want. From what the monsters in my head are screaming at me to do. Doing this is very tiring. If I don’t do this in full detail with each person as an individual I fall prey to stereotypes and then I offend the shit out of people so I have to be careful not to do that. Or to blatantly say, “So if I were to treat you like person of _______ group the answer would be _______ but obviously you’ve had personal life experience that differs from your group. What do you say?”

I’ve fallen into Pinterest since I ditched Facebook and Mothering. I still feel that is a good decision. But I’ve been a bit more bored. I’ve also been rewatching The West Wing during break time. It’s less diverting. And less connecting. But I’ve been thinking about me more. So who knows.

Winter will always be a fallow period for me. I think I’m actually categorically ok with the idea that as an animal I want to take some time off from my most tiring work in the winter when my body aches and I’m stiff and uncomfortable all the god damn time.

So I was reading an article that was adamantly about Self-Reliance as opposed to Survivalist in nature and hanging my head in shame. I’m that kind of nutcase. I totally am. My uhh future planning is increasingly of the self-reliant nature. And travel. I want to root firmly then run away and know I can come back. It will always be here for me. I don’t know why I need to do this. I just do. I have to see things. I have to experience them myself. I don’t learn enough from reading about them.

I want to talk to people in a lower stakes environment. The thing that is hardest for me about my life is the degree of censoring what I say I have to do. Have I mentioned the extreme mental illness part?

My kids know that sometimes their mom is sad and cries. They know that a long time ago bad stuff happened but we are all safe now. They know we don’t have contact with my family because they are not nice people. That’s all they know.

I need to travel because I need to have the experience of being able to reinvent myself as new and interesting over and over. It is comfortable and safe. It makes me feel better about myself. I know how to do that. I have finally gotten good at it.

I have been thinking almost constantly about how I got good at that specifically because I was training myself for prostitution. When I first saw the movie Pretty Woman and Julia Roberts said something about how no little girl wants to grow up and do that I consciously thought, “Well I will charge more than you.”

I absolutely expected I would end up a prostitute until I was 19. Then I met a prostitute. One of the high charging kind. Ok, she wasn’t still a call girl by the time I met her. She was a pro domme. But she had done every kind of sex work there was and I ended up in her house over and over again. That sounds kind of funny. My boyfriend was best friends with her boyfriend and we visited them from out of state. So we had kind of an interesting relationship. Not exactly friends

She explained to me what was necessary for a girl to keep herself safe. She talked about a kind of trusting your instincts that I don’t have. I literally am not physically capable of doing what she talked about. I am specifically drawn to people who will damage me instead of people who will honor agreements.

That is a lot of why it has scared me so bad when Noah had done things that have pushed boundaries. Life is very scary. I am very dependent.

Those conversations with her are really why I never got into sex work. I was asked. I actually think that I gained so much weight because I was trying to avoid that fate. The last thing I wanted was to be attractive and stand near the people my boyfriend knew. As a fat girl I was invisible and left alone. I saw what happened to the thinner and more attractive women. I saw how they were rotated in and out of the community if they were bottoms. Only the tops survived.

I didn’t want to do that to people. So I got fat. Then I got out.

I’ve had a lot of time lately to think about my relationship with my body. I kind of wish I hadn’t let the doctors office weigh me. Going off sugar is letting me see my emotional pattern with regard to eating lately. If I’m hungry enough to eat some nuts then I do. Mostly I’ve just been eating a lot less and feeling fine.

Since I went to the doctor I’ve been eating a really lot. I thought I weighed more than ten pounds more than that and by golly before I go and see the bastard again I will weigh what I think I weigh. I will have the body I think I have.

It’s really kind of weird. I’m pretty afraid of being thin. I’ve been looking at my therapist and feeling twitchy lately. She is uhm a stones throw from my body. She is my body if I never had kids and I had exercised more starting earlier. So yeah. So I eat. And miss my old therapist who was a motherly alternating warm and stern black woman with a full figure and a rich laugh. When I was being stupid she called me on it. When I was doing well she was really enthusiastic and told me why I should feel good about myself.

I don’t have that kind of relationship with my current therapist. I don’t feel warm. I feel defensive. I feel like she is very agressive in pursuing her agenda. I’m having a hard time with therapist directed therapy. Ha.

I’ve been reading a lot of therapy comparison stuff lately and man are people against folks having a “paid friend”. I kind of think that is what I want. I miss Traci so much. I think Traci would be delighted with how my life is going.

I’m going to visit Dad soon. He has another new girlfriend. I was just getting to know the last one. I miss Francesca. I’m so sad that she doesn’t get to know my children. I think they would have filled a big void in her life. She had so much love to give. Grandkids who visited every other year? She would have been thrilled. She liked sending me presents every year as his “daughter”. My relationship was an entangled mess between both of them.

Traci was my therapist for seven years. She died of a heroin overdose just about five years ago. Francesca was Dad’s wife. I knew her from when I was nineteen. I met her long before they were married. Before they were even solidly together. She overdosed five years ago. Pain medication for cancer. She had gotten addicted while treating her mom. It looked like an accident. Kind of. But she was a recovered heroin addict.

Traci and Francesca were two of the people I looked to for a lot of support. They both died right around Shanna’s birth. I totally enmeshed with Shanna as a result in that first year. I tried reconciling with my family because I was lonely and needy. I paid for Conflict Mediation and was soundly manipulated.

I didn’t divorce my family until Uncle Bob died. Not until my sister asked me in a condescending voice if anyone close to me had ever died before. Because my brother and my father don’t count.

I feel like every relationship in my life has a shelf life. Brittney left at thirty years. Her family is angry about the book. Ok.

I look at Noah and my kids and I feel throat wrenching fear. I feel like I have a fifteen year year of reprieve and then oh holy hell what is going to happen to me? Sometimes I feel very ashamed that I “pull of normal” such that people are surprised at how broken I am. It’s complicated. I contribute to the invisibility of “people like me”. I feel a lot of pressure to maintain a specific front for the benefit of everyone but me. It feels invalidating all of the time.

Sometimes I just like staying home for a while. That way the level of censoring is automatic. We talk about what they want to talk about and it all works out. Other grown ups bring up topics. I spend a lot of time in my head. I have strong opinions loosely held. I’m ridiculously picky about how I am challenged though.

I’m starting to look at who is good at challenging me and getting me to actually change. That’s useful data for me to have. I like pushy people. Holy potato do I like me some pushy people. I combine that with requiring them to recognize specific “I’m done” signals and being willing to go with “Shiny Change Of Topic Please”. That’s a hard combination.

It’s kind of funny watching The West Wing. I have a lot of authority issues. I neither want to be the President nor serve anyone else. I don’t want responsibility for other people and I don’t want them to have responsibility for me. I want things exchanged to be gifts. But I’m really not into Burning Man. I think that is pretention not a gift economy. I need to travel. In other places they have gift economies. Yes, I will read about them before I go so I won’t be too gauche. I hope. I’m sure I will be. But I will be able to apologize for living in the native language.

I want to meet people who are nothing like me. I want to hear as many stories as I can hear. It is hard maintaining relationships with people who live near me. I feel afraid of the eventual brush off. I really need to travel.

I’ve been feeling a lot of guilt because the kind of travel I want is just not something Noah is interested in. And it will make this monogamy stuff more complicated. We also have stern agreements about celibacy. Complicated.

I’m dependent so I want to run away so I can prove that I’m not really in a cage. I am still free. Or some stupid shit like that. Or I want macro scale view on my country. I want to actually understand it better. And other countries. I want to talk to people. I need to. I need to hear their stories. I need to hear what life is like for other people. I need other models in my head. I need alternatives to what I know.

What I know isn’t good enough. I need to know more. I don’t learn as well from reading or from taking classes in school. I like talking to people. I want to know about them.

It feels like looking at the future destruction of my life. How far will I run? How many people will I hurt in the process?

I don’t know how I am going to balance everyones needs but I’m going to have to figure it out.

For a while there I was looking in the mirror a lot. I enjoyed watching my hair grow–I shit you not. I’m past that phase, mostly. Now when I look in the mirror I feel dismay at being untidy. But if I try to fix it I’ll make it worse; I promise. Curly hair is just like that. So I’m not looking at myself again.

And we come back to body issues. It’s just been that sort of week. I’ve been thinking. How am I going to wreck my life? My health? My relationships?

Participating on a ptsd support website and being in a support group for incest survivors is giving me a dizzying array of options to work with. Many/most of the issues being accidents because man do we not have control of our bodies. We just don’t.

I have a pretty ridiculous amount of control near as I can tell. I’m not sure why. I just do. I know that this role requires this behavior for this amount of time and you just fucking do it.

Two of my potential biggest supporters through this phase of my life were taken from me right at the beginning of the journey. I’m one quarter of the way through the expected time of specific duty. I’m doing ok. I’m trying to not be demanding or too taxing on any source of support but that balance often makes people feel unwanted or unappreciated or something.

I feel like I understand why I am taking winter off of people. I am not going out much. It is a good thing. Spring is coming. I have busy times coming. Lots of work to do. I won’t be able to sit around in my head. I want to seriously produce this year. I need to. I need to root. I have mother-in-law money set aside for it.

It will be fun.

Privilege. Responsibility. Curiosity. Sustainability. I don’t have any answers. I am, however, a wasteful American. I look at my habits and I think about what it will be like to live differently at this point.

I have been homeless. We lived in our car so I have not had the experience of living on the street. I have been sent to sleep on the floor or the couch in a series of homes of people I didn’t know. I was often not with family for extended periods. Given what I have read about attachment theory I cry for the child I was. No wonder I fucked everything that moved. Please, please love me. But I ran away right after the sex was over because I made sure that no one could leave me ever again.

Puppy did me a huge favor by being the only boyfriend I’ve ever had  as an adult who has broken up with me. He wasn’t a good fit and he recognized it. He could have been more gracious–I’m just saying. But that needed severing and I’m glad he did. Things are certainly working out really well.

And breakfast is ready.

book review as timeline

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I’m reading this book Giving the Love That Heals by Harville Hendrix and Helen Lakelly Hunt. I have no idea why I need to say the names. Any who. I think that books like this could potentially be labeled with a full page in the front Dangerous for Incest Survivors. I’m just saying.

I’m getting to the parts where they go through the developmental stages that children go through. They detail the problems that come out of interruptions of the appropriate pattern. I really have lead a text book life. I really have tried hard to be good in exactly the ways I was taught.

Every so often I sit on the floor in my room and I think about all the events they have already missed. They are already that much more whole than me. I tick them off. My father teaching me to be silent and unresponsive while he penetrated my vagina. I wasn’t even allowed to cry. If I did I would be given a reason to cry.

My kids have already escaped that. They believe that someone hurting them is a good reason to say, “Stop right now. That hurts me.” I wasn’t allowed to. I was taught to be passive with anyone who was willing to hurt me sexually. I can be extremely aggressive as long as someone does not go for my cunt. Then I feel my arms lock in as tight as possible to my sides and my neck muscles completely lock. I can move my hands, but not my arms. I feel my voice box basically go limp. I can whisper, “Please, no. Stop. I don’t want this.”

It started when I was younger than Calli. Both of my children already know a freedom I can’t know. This book puts a lot of emphasis on understanding that your children are not you are not going to turn out much like you. Appropriate control and such as children age.

I am absolutely sure that my children will be different from me. They have a whole branch of genetics I don’t share. They are growing up with different stories in their heads. Different experiences in their lives.

My kids get two hours of “unsupervised” (I can hear everything they say and do but I don’t have visual contact and there is a closed door) time with the iPad every day. My therapist says this is an extremely good idea and I absolutely need to keep doing it.

I treat my therapists as a mixture of older sibling/parent who gives me permission to do what I want to do. Is this really an ok thing to want? Am I allowed to do this without being bad? My therapist thinks taking two hours of downtime in the middle of the day so that I can be patient and loving all the rest of the time is just necessary and will be fine. Till they break the iPad. Ha. They lose it if they start bouncing or kicking the walls.

I’m being evasive. I’m afraid the kids will interrupt and the next part of the book is weighing heavy on my heart. “7-12: The Stage of Concern”

They say you never get “past” the stage you were when you were wounded. Surely I have made some progress beyond Callidora’s current level of development. I think I show significantly more sophistication in how I go about getting my way. I haven’t bitten anyone in the face in a very long time.

I worry about when my kids each hit seven. I fear that I am reversing the minimizer/maximizer thing with each kid. I don’t know. I fear that I will go to extremes and be wrong in every way. I’ve been thinking about rape a lot.

Apparently Paul Nathan, the last person who raped me before I ran off from the community is back in town. I’m really grateful I was told. I have one birthday party on my radar and she has already specifically told me that he isn’t invited. Or the other guy who sexually assaulted me. She was quite thoughtful. I’m not sure I will play at the party anyway. I plan to bring food, talk, and cuddle with Noah. I don’t have a fucking thing to prove. So I feel no real desire to play in public right now.

Oh that’s defensive and asshole-ish. I have something to prove. I don’t have to do it just because other people want me to. I’ve been listening to P!nk a lot lately. I’m not here for your entertainment. It makes me think about clothing. I’ve always dressed like a fucking nun. Only in the end–the last two was I finally dressed in provocative clothing.

So what are my kids going to wear in life? Being covered sure as shit didn’t save me. Uncovering in what I was told was a “safe environment” wasn’t.

It is interesting looking at how I have learned to set boundaries. It’s been a slow and painful process. I’ve been a major asshole. How do I want that to work for my kids? How am I going to behave?

Shanna recently told me that when it comes time to go shopping that she wants to do all the picking. There will of course be some guidance whether that’s her favorite or not. She might not like owning a pair of jeans–but she wears them when we are playing in the mud. You have to learn how to accommodate the life you have instead of the life you wish you had.

We will have to negotiate money in advance. Then she can spend it how she wants. Ok. Sure. Why not? It’s going to be a gigantic pain in the ass, but that’s ok too.

It’s disconcerting to read parenting books–innocuous items and experience surges of vaginal pain. Original wounding indeed.

When I was in my early twenties I managed to find a leather dyke gynecologist to help me with vaginal pain problems. The first thing she did was tell me to start eating yogurt whether I liked it or not. Just do it. Experiment. You’ll like something. And she told me to get off Depo Provera because it’s terrible for women. It thins vaginal tissue in long-term use.

Then we got to the spiffy exam. She looked, said, “Hm. Hang on.” She got up and took off her gloves one by one, slowly. Her brow was furrowed. She adjusted how I was sitting. She got a clear speculum and a mirror and a flashlight. She showed me the inside of my cunt.

She asked me, “How young were you when it started?”

There is so much wealth of knowledge in a question like that. But I lacked the ability to gather resources from her. I didn’t know how.

So I am running into this problem where in order to process who I am as a separate individual I have to really understand the fundamental ways I will never have a reflection of me. It’s all normal and shit but I have a lot of additional strong feelings. Being broken in plain sight does things to you.

Why is everyone else just more intrinsically deserving of love than I was? Because when I think twelve. Twelve fucking assholes raped me I know I’m not counting all of that right. I generally don’t count guys who only forced me to give them blowjobs, no matter how violent it was. I don’t want to think of that count. I don’t like thinking about the neighbors who pee’ed with the door open and invited me in to “learn how to hold one” with that sly little grin.

Over and over. Neighborhood after neighborhood. It didn’t matter if they were stinking unwashed alcoholic drug addicts in a trailer park or the nice little Catholic family or the rich old bastard in the mountains. And more. I moved more than fifty times before I was eighteen. I saw a lot of neighborhoods. I don’t remember a lot of specifics of the times when I managed to startle but run off.

I was always asked. I said no as I got older. When I realized I could. The first few times I was told, “Come here. Touch it” I did it. Of fucking course I did. With my father ignoring such a command would have resulted in him hitting me in the head. My kids are pushy in ways I wouldn’t have been able to pull off. I would have been black and blue. And sometimes it is hard to read these fucking development books and understand why Noah and I both are over sensitive to the noise in some moods and not in others. If Noah is happy he goes along with them playing. If not he’s grumpy.

Me too. We are both a bit moody. I hear that’s allowed. We’ll see.

I think I should stop reading for today. I haven’t even gotten through all the ways in which I am supposedly stunted yet. That’s enough for one day. I’ll finish it. I am finding value in it. They are right–this is all shit that must be kept away from my children.

This is my problem.

I think I need to get back to some extremist argument against educational standardization book after this light and fucking fluffy parenting book. You know, something cheerful.

I’m sick. And I’m crying. The snot is a river. Like my self pity. On that note I am going to go find more to eat.

Do something different

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I want to cut. I want to cut really a lot. I visualize it. It’s like I have a movie projector running in the background. It overlays everything I see. My thigh. Preferably my right. I think this would be a really long section of horizontal slashes. I like making them all the same length and then trying to make a straight row. Deviation from the uniform length is reason to gauge myself harder as I try to straighten the line.

Yes, I know I am bad. I should not have said a word to my niece. I should have shut my worthless whore mouth. I know. I fucking know. I am mean. I am selfish. How dare I share things with people that are not their problem. I’m bad. I know. It’s all my fault. I know.

Pot really isn’t cutting my anxiety today. Sometimes that happens. It isn’t that I am feeling paranoid–I’m fairly careful about my strains. I want to die. That is the only way to not be bad for not being part of my family. I want to bleed and bleed and bleed.

I know I am not good enough to defend or protect. My niece is. I know. I need to shut the fuck up because I don’t matter and I never have. I know. I know I fucking know.

I’m past my normal coping methods today. I sent an email to a friend who is a therapist. My therapist is on vacation. Merry Fucking Christmas.

I’m not worried about actually cutting. I’ve made that a lot harder to do. The tools are not as readily to hand. I don’t have privacy and I’m not going to fucking do it where my kids could see. I don’t have the body integrity to get away with hiding a large wound. Shanna is absolutely old enough to notice and question.

I’m not worried about going off and killing myself today. I don’t want to give them the satisfaction. Fuck them.

But I am going to have a hard time being calm all day. I am going to have a hard time not crying all day. I am going to have a hard time keeping to appropriate topics all day. I know it is because I am bad. Because I don’t know how to act right. I’m afraid of teaching my children to be bad like me.

I don’t know how to find enough silence to hide in without that magic button on my leg. The other random chronic pain stuff (holy shit my head hurts) is not the same. I have to block that out all the time in order to function. I just do it without thinking about it.

I don’t know how to distract myself today. I need to be able to emotionally connect with my children. But I hurt so much. I don’t know how to keep being good. I’m not. I’m bad. I’m disgusting. I know.

I should never have told anyone anything. I should have just killed myself and spared everyone the discomfort of knowing anything about my life. Why don’t I shut the fuck up.

Because I can’t.

It is my fault my dad and my brother are dead. It should have been me instead of them. All of the problems are my fault anyway. Everything was just fine until I showed up. Right? Isn’t that the story?

I should probably go run. But I’m worried about my balance. I’m very dizzy. Maybe I’ll stretch on the floor.

I don’t know how I am going to stop crying.

Have to think about the quota

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If one is going to have a quota for how much sex one has then one should occasionally examine how such a system is working. In my opinion.

The kids were gone for almost 48 hours so we spent more time than usual talking about sex. I feel really grateful that despite how hard I hunted in the bdsm community I ended up with someone basically outside that world. Don’t get me wrong–Noah likes kinky sex. He likes hitting someone who is ok with it. He likes being mean when he has permission. I have yet to know anyone within the community who is actually as good at reigning it in as Noah is. Noah is not driven by his desires. They are small and subtle accents on his overall sexuality. Hurting someone isn’t the point of sex for him.

It is weird when I think about my ex. My Owner. I wasn’t a real person to him. He didn’t know much about me and he actively shushed me because he didn’t want to know. He didn’t want to talk about his life much. He worked 60-80 hours a week. He wanted a slave to take care of details he didn’t like bothering about. He didn’t want to know me. He didn’t even particularly like having sex with me. We didn’t have much sex–he did it because I wanted to and mostly he wasn’t interested in meeting my needs. He liked tying me up and hurting me while fully dressed then he would masturbate. I was more or less live action porn.

Noah doesn’t treat me like that. Noah is quite clear that I am more interesting to him than any other human being has ever been. He likes talking to me. He likes knowing what I am thinking. He appreciates it when I tell him what is going on. He likes having sex with me. He would do it all day every day if we had time and no friction burns.

It’s different. Dealing with them is so different. Everything I learned for my Owner is irrelevant in the course of the rest of my life. I feel like I have gone through life trying on personalities. Who am I allowed to be around this person? What do they want to know about me? Mostly very little.

I started dating Noah for the first time when I was still living with Tom. They overlapped for months. Hell, Noah came over and slept with Tom and I. (I slept with Noah and his girlfriend too.)

I met Noah in February of 2004. I broke up with my Owner in August and moved out the first weekend in October. That first weekend I had my first date with my Daddy J.

Daddy J liked to bring people home with us. Between when I left Tom and when I married Noah in September of 2006 I slept with more than eighty people. Most of them were because Daddy J would bring people over to me and say, “She has an empty hole. You should fill it.”

I didn’t date him very long. I couldn’t handle it. That was so much worse than Tom not wanting to fuck me at all. I felt so very worthless as a person. All he wanted from me was access to my cunt and my ass and my mouth. He could avoid getting to know me by ensuring my mouth was never empty long enough to talk.

Noah feels so very nice to me. Noah was enthusiastic and ok about the idea of me sleeping with other people but he never pushed for it or watched or controlled it. He was ok with me doing that if I wanted to but it wasn’t about him.

I don’t want to any more. I feel so used up and abandoned. I feel like the vast majority of people who have fucked me have ended up not being very nice to me. They certainly don’t feel any kind of bond.

If I’m at all honest I think part of the reason I am going to be thrilled when Noah migrates away from his current company is he works with a lover. One who wasn’t just once. One who was almost a one night stand until I ran into him a few years later and all of a sudden he was so impressed with my sense of boundaries that he wanted to have an occasional thing on the side more often because I was good at not invading his life. I knew I was only supposed to show up for sex then leave and be silent. He wanted more of that.

I am so tired of people wanting access to my genitals while feeling like the right way to handle my mouth is to duct tape it shut.

I lived for four years with someone who thought it was great fun to put plastic bags over my head and then wrap my neck with duct tape. He liked watching me cry through the plastic. No, he didn’t want to know what I thought or felt. Eventually when I started freaking out he would poke his fingers through the plastic over my mouth. Usually followed immediately by kissing me so that I couldn’t actually breathe. It was hotter that way.

So now I’m married to this guy who seems practically angelically nice in comparison. He doesn’t pimp me. He doesn’t degrade me. He wants to know about me.

And I’ve got this quota. I kind of tried to explain it on MDC and failed. It isn’t at his initiation. Noah is a simple creature. I can look at his life and judge how much stress he is under. Sex has a specific trade value. It reduces his stress level by x%. If I want him to keep functioning then I have to help him with the stress balance in his life. I know how much sex makes him able to work how hard. I’ve been watching him for six years. Compared to everyone else I have tried to learn he is dead easy.

But that means I’m having sex because it is stress relief for Noah. Not because I want it per se. Post kids sex is just weird. I’m not getting off like I used to. It’s not that I can’t at all (this weekend was awesome we went to a sex party and had lame awkward sex [because I felt uncomfortable] and came home and had ridiculously hot sex and I got off multiple times. That doesn’t happen much anymore. Woo!) it’s that it works differently.

I’m not who I was. Not at all. I am struggling with how much change is permitted in a partner. If he married me because he thought it was hot to be with someone very promiscuous then we have problems. I can’t be that person forever. It is too hard on me.

I don’t think promiscuity is a problem per se I feel that I don’t have enough of a support system in my life for me to pour out my physical energy on something that does nothing for me. I don’t get energy back. It makes it harder to go do my life. I have too much to get done. I have nothing more to give in that department.

So sex doesn’t (usually) feel very sexy any more. It’s stress relief for Noah. That’s what I’m there for. It’s uhm, well… he is quite nice to me. I like that. I really appreciate that in order to feel like he has “the right” he spends a lot of time gently touching my body. I have never really experienced anything like this before. He is so nice to me. I feel like I don’t belong here. He should be giving this treatment to someone who deserves it. I’m the stupid whore. Why is he wasting time being nice to me? I don’t matter.

So things are muddy lately.

When you come out as a survivor of early childhood sexual assault (and ohman INCEST) and especially when you have major adult promiscuity people always want to talk to you about celibacy. Maybe you should try it. The prevalence of this response is annoying. I can’t possibly “work on my issues” unless I stop having compulsory sex.

Ah. I see. All this work I’ve done “doesn’t count” because I haven’t done it how you think I should do it. Right. Tell me again why I should care about your system? Oh, yes. You read an “Expert” so now I have to listen to you. You don’t even know for sure that your “Expert” would react to me how you are reacting so how about if I turn and walk away now.

The day-to-day life I lead now bears absolutely no resemblance to anything I have ever lived before. It is hard to believe that one life can encompass so much change. And I am going to change more. I am going to learn more. I will get better at a lot of things that I currently suck at.

I don’t think that celibacy is going to be part of it. I care too much about that stress relief function. I need to have Noah continue to feel invested in me. He bonds through sex. Oh baby does he bond through sex. And sex is much better when I tell him what I am thinking about. I’m not used to that. I’m used to people wanting to hear a narrative I make up. Usually what I’m “thinking about” is a story deliberately suited to that person–it has very little to do with me.

Noah is different.

It is weird to try to parse out the differences between my compulsive sexuality and my feelings of obligation and trying to earn someone liking me. Noah really likes me. To the point where when the kids are gone he follows me around with large fawn eyes because he is so happy that he can relax into adoring me without the risk of anyone screaming suddenly near our heads. The screaming totally harshes our mellow. Six years. He still follows me around because he wants to listen to what I’m babbling while I walk around doing random things.

I can’t express how overwhelming this is. Why does he care? It feels so good. Part of it is the sex. He wants me to feel loved and wanted all the time, not just when we are having sex, and we have a lot of sex so he feels pretty required to be demonstrative all the time. So I don’t feel bad about him only validating me during sex.

He brings me flowers. Yes, I’m going to keep a quota so this man stays happy. I think that taking sex away from him would be like kicking a puppy. It makes him so very happy. He’s not demanding. He phrases it as, “As always I would be entirely interested in sex. It is totally ok if you would like to just snuggle. I just wanted you to know.” When I say no, he still rubs my back. He still talks to me. He still strokes my hair and soothes me to sleep. There is no punishment. No revoking of love. No lessening of attention. He still likes me.

The only time Noah yells at me is when we are on opposite sides of the house and we just can’t stop talking to each other. We are a loud house. We like talking to one another and we like getting up and doing stuff. So we just raise our voices to carry on the conversation over greater distance. No big deal.

I feel so loved in this house. It is very hard that feeling loved is so alienating. I wish it wasn’t. I don’t always know how to engage.

I told Noah that the quota is a reminder to me that I have to hit the stress relief button a certain number of times every month if I want him at full capacity. I know that when stress is lower in our lives I can dip down a bit if I feel like it (and I do some months) and I know when I have to up the quota. I watch his life. Deliverables at work. The kids hitting a challenging milestone. His additional projects. I watch what he is eating. I adjust his diet as much as I can given that he eats at work.

He is able to be calm and happy and patient with me and the kids if I hit the stress relief button enough times. If I don’t then he gets tired and run down and kind of sad. He doesn’t get angry. He just moves slower. He looks wasted. He looks like he is literally running out of gas. Just add sex. It’s like a miracle drug. I’m going to keep doing that.

It is a pragmatic choice. I don’t feel exploited. I find it kind of happily fitting. I am unusually well suited by my life circumstances to benefit from having a partner who has this much of a connection between sex and well being. And it’s vanilla missionary sex and he’s gentle and nice and it’s really just not a big deal to do a lot of taking one for the team. Honestly it’s sweet. It doesn’t rock my world, but it makes me feel good about myself.

I feel like I have changed the deal on Noah to such a degree that consideration on my part is a good idea. Once upon a time in our marriage we had a set up where I could revoke all sex and that would be something he could live with–he was allowed to fuck other people if he needed to. He can’t do that any more.

It seems to me that marriage has to be good for both parties. I don’t feel used or exploited by Noah. If anything I feel overwhelmed by shame because he married down in pretty much every way. I don’t feel competent enough or smart enough or worthwhile enough for him. BUT I CAN HAVE SEX. I’m not going to strongly consider celibacy any decade soon here.

I feel bad about being this way. I feel like it would probably be a good idea for me to have some kind of idea of my body as a closed system I don’t owe anyone access to. But I don’t anticipate actually feeling that way until or unless Noah was out of the picture. I got married. That changes things. I’m no longer a closed system. I am part of a unit. I’m married.

Whether it is philosophically a good idea to feel like a closed unit or not it is specifically unuseful in my current life. It would be destructive. It would be harmful to my marriage to try hard to close off from him. I don’t want to. I like him. I don’t want to hurt him. I am not being harmed in any way and I like being part of this unit. This is the most positive experience of my life. I don’t see the benefit in trying to close off.

He isn’t harming me and he wants to know how I am doing and he adjusts his behavior based on my requests and he isn’t demanding and he isn’t pushy. I am not going to punish him just so I can have a philosophical conversion at this point in life. It wouldn’t make my life better.

I’m not worried about being forced. When I say, “not tonight” he backs off completely. I know that if I tell him that his needs aren’t important and I am not going to meet them he will put his head down and accept that as natural and right. I don’t need to be another big source of that in life for him. I married him because I wanted to be part of a family where we help one another be bigger and better than we can be while standing alone. I really want the mutual exchange of support. It allows me to do things I simply can’t do alone. I want to be part of a unit. That means consideration. A quota isn’t romantic or sweet but it reminds me that he has needs. He matters. Meeting his needs is a good idea if I want him to be able to continue to meet my needs.

That’s probably enough defensiveness for one day.

The social mask

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In the past three weeks I have had three people comment on the difference between what I write and what they see when we are together. That makes it something worth writing about.

Of course there is a difference in how I act in public and the crazy shit I write about. If I acted in public the way I write about on my journal I would be in a lot of danger. If I was unable to mask my craziness it would be extremely unsafe for me to go out in public. I would risk being 5150’ed again. I never want to go to a hospital again. I can’t lose it where anyone can see.

If you look at the whiteboard in my room there is a lot written down but if you notice very little of it is outside my house and even less than that is any kind of social activity. I generally keep my “socializing” to under twenty hours in a week and most weeks I’m under eight hours.

That is how much “playing the game” I can do right now.

On the occasional week when I try to push it and do more because that week just happens to be busy I am usually sorry. I will have to spend a lot of time in the bathroom crying for all the hours over my “maximum” I am actually out. It is embarrassing and humiliating and I feel ashamed of myself the whole time.

Being around people involves a lot of active and conscious thinking about “what I am allowed to say”. The consequences for getting it wrong include being asked to leave, being asked to never come back, or if I genuinely lose it and start freaking out I may lose my kids or get arrested.

I’m not exaggerating and I’m not wrong.

I’m aware of how “hysterical” women have been treated throughout history. I have done a lot of specific research. In olden times I may have had to walk around with my tongue in a heavy vice for days or had to wear a collar with spikes on the inside while tied to a post in public so other people could remind me how bad I was.

The consequences in the modern area are downright soft and fuzzy in comparison–I get that. Nevertheless I don’t want them.

I don’t want them. I don’t want them. I don’t want them.

I’m awake in the middle of the night because my stomach is hurting because I didn’t smoke before bed. By 2:30 my stomach hurts and I can’t sleep through it. Then I start having racing thoughts because that is just what I do when I am in pain. Then I risk being a mess tomorrow. Lots of breakthrough crying.

My kids know I cry. I can’t hide it from them. I try my best to present it as, “Everyone is different. I cry a lot–most people don’t. That’s ok. People vary.” They are still young enough that they don’t really ask questions about why.

Noah deals with/occasionally sees me crying as I’m going about my day. I wander around working and crying at the same time. That’s just life for me.

Yes, I believe this is something that I have to carefully keep people from seeing. This is probably, by hour, the biggest part of my life and I have to make sure no one else sees it happening. Or I will get in trouble for being bad again.

The fact that I wander through life feeling very sad and crying for many hours of most days is something I have to carefully hide and prevent people from seeing or I get in trouble. Over and over and over.

It’s not hyperbole. I can tell stories all day and all night long.

I’m at a very low ebb on my ability to “play the game” with other people because I require so much of myself for my interactions with my kids.

My kids know I cry. They know that I have wonky chemicals in my brain that make me prone to have my eyes just start watering and it’s not a big deal and they know that sometimes I think about things that happened long ago and it was bad and I’m really glad that my life is different now and I’m so glad that I know my kids. They know that they are nicer to me than anyone has ever been and that I am grateful.

Well, so far Shanna parrots these things back. I say “them” but I am still working on brainwashing Calli but Shanna is pretty ingrained at this point.

I feel really stupid sometimes but when I am saying in a calm and clear voice, “It’s ok to be mad at me. I do things you don’t like. You are totally allowed to have those feelings but it is not ok to call me names and it is not ok to scream at me. Try again.” I still have tears running down my face. I can keep control of my voice at this point–it is great effort but I can prevent myself from descending into the ragged sobbing sort of breathing that makes talking hard. I sound “like a teacher should” but my eyes are watering.

I feel weird knowing that my children are going to grow up thinking that your mom crying all the time is normal and something to ignore. I feel very ashamed of myself. I feel like I am proving those people right who told me that I should not be a mother because someone like me isn’t capable of being a good mother.

I’m not selfless enough? I don’t have enough self control? For the past couple of years of “bad cycle” which probably actually started as postpartum depression after Calli was born combined with Shanna hitting the age I was when my abuse started so I started having daily intrusive flashbacks.

That was not long after Traci–my therapist of seven years–OD’ed on heroin and I ended up finding Sharon who totally sucked and tried to talk me into believing that I had Disassociative Identity Disorder (Multiple Personalities) because of how I segment my behavior when I am around people.

I don’t think I really took the placenta pills as long with Calli. I stopped taking fish oil. I haven’t started again even though I know it is a mood stabilizer. I have other supplements my therapist wants me to start and when I think of the act of swallowing pills I start to gag and my stomach aches just thinking about it.

By the end of the time I was taking all the god damn supplements my midwife wanted me on (15 fucking pills a day) I was frequently spontaneously vomiting them up.

My body knows that when I take a lot of pills it is because I want to die. That is what my body thinks is happening because I was dumb enough to treat my body disrespectfully enough that it doesn’t trust my intentions anymore. Smart body.

I really am not so good at taking pills. And the idea that I should take a handful or so every day for the rest of my life is something that I don’t think I can get my gag reflex to move past.

Even though everyone keeps telling me that if I only swallow this pill my life will be magically better. It hasn’t worked any other fucking time I’ve tried some fucking magic pill. I’m still me. I’m still completely broken. I still don’t have a family or very much consistent support–I am building it. I’m trying. But it is dependent on having people in my life who actually show up to do it. I don’t have many people volunteering for that role and of the people volunteering I have to evaluate for them if they really have enough spoons to be dependable *for me* because I am a god damn special snowflake with standards through the roof.

If I know I will have an out of proportion negative reaction to someone acting how they typically act I need to be very careful how much time I spend around them. It is not their fucking problem I’m crazy and that I have had “bad life experiences” that cause me to want to yell at them. If I can’t be tactful (otherwise known as keep my fucking mouth shut or on trivial topics) then I can’t be around people. I silently back away from most relationships because I don’t think I have the right to hurt people by being mad at them for being them.

I don’t know how to reconcile the fact that it isn’t that I actually think they are wrong it’s that it is very hard for me to keep straight in my head what kind of commentary is appropriate in which settings. I’ve been introduced to a much larger number of social situations than most people. I have moved somewhere between 60 and 70 times in my life. Each of those times involved meeting somewhere between five and hundreds of new people all in a big rush. I have lived at every socio-economic level from the projects to multi-million dollar homes and I went to school with Steve Wozniac’s kid. His son was best friends with the brother of the girl I was best friends with. Many of my friends had server space hosted by Woz because that’s just how things worked. That’s where I lived.

I could pull out my sock puppet prime minister (it’s a long story–maybe I will tell it some day) and name drop all the long list of two degrees of separation I have with “important” people.

So uhm yeah. I walk through life feeling like I am the lowest status person in every single room I walk into. I assume that if I say the wrong thing and offend the wrong person (and I have no god damn idea who the “important” people are–I constantly fuck that up) I will be told to leave and all of a sudden there will be a tidal wave of nasty gossip about me behind my back.

How many illustrative stories do I need to have? I could start with less than two years ago and move backwards over thirty years and have many dozens.

Being the scapegoat is hard. I have a lot of behavior patterns that get me into trouble. I don’t understand exactly how they work. I don’t understand why I am so god damn offensive to people but I am.

I tend to go through life believing that people who are still here are the ones around whom I have been most successful at wearing the right mask. I look for signs that I am breaking their social contract and I try very hard to apologize for fucking up before they have to call me on it because I don’t want to be rejected just because I said or did something that was inappropriate for someone in that kind of relationship.

I hyperventilate over this and hyper-analyze every thing I say or do after the fact and try to look for reasons I might have crossed a line and pro-actively send an apology. I really can’t handle losing many more friends. It devastates me so much.

Oh for the love of toast of course I hide “what I am really like”. I am unpleasant and needy. No one likes people like that. I really can’t handle having more people decide they don’t like me en masse. So I need to be god damn careful about everything I say and do.

After smoking for half an hour I think that the stomach pain has changed enough that I can try eating and see if that will help.

I have been trying to track my marijuana usage more. Why am I using it. When. What, specifically, is it doing for me that I need? Mostly it is the end of the year and I am freaking out about how much I spent (I used edibles basically exclusively for about two months while I was training for the marathon to clear some of the lung funk–yes smoking is disgusting and I would like to stop–and those two months cost as much as the whole rest of the year combined and gosh it sounds like way too much money for any medication and… accompanying shame cycle.) thus I am beating myself up about how much I need to stop using it.

If I’m going to damn myself it will at least be with accurate data.

I go through ~ 1/8 of pot/week. I wake up earlier than everyone in my family and I have some then. It calms my stomach pain enough for me to eat. On days when I don’t smoke before breakfast (often out of impulses of shame because I am a disgusting person for needing a “drug” I should just “willpower” my way through after all) I generally am unable to eat because the stomach pain is such that I have constant nausea and I have a ridiculously strong gag reflex. If I try to eat I have a lot of violent stomach pain because my stomach is not fucking interested in accepting food.

If I am in a restaurant this is when I have to get up and leave the table. I either go to the restroom or I go outside because I need to cry. I need to cry because it hurts and because I am ashamed of myself for crying in public just for something stupid that someone else would be able to hide. I know I am not exhibiting the proper social behavior and if I keep that shit up in public I will be fucking sorry.

At home that is when I say in a small voice, “Excuse me” and I go smoke enough to relax my nausea and deal with my gag reflex. I usually feel better after eating. But I am also still stoned after eating. So who the heck knows exactly where the better comes from. But on days when I don’t smoke I probably don’t consume a full meal worth of food in a day. I physically can’t. It hurts too much.

So a year ago when I went to the doctor I layed out all my issues and I was told she wouldn’t deal with my stomach until I dealt with psychiatry and psychiatry told me to take a pill I didn’t want to take, stop breastfeeding instantly (because this new magic pill is extremely toxic to me and the baby), and stop pot instantly or psychiatry would not work with me.

Uhm. No. Fuck you. I know what those side effects will do to my life. They will make it so I can no longer play the game when I have to because I will be debilitated by the side effects. I have watched this effect cascade with person after person in my life. No. No. No.

I will not work with a fucking doctor who spends five minutes talking to me and then wants to prescribe a medication that will destroy every coping method I have and tell me that I just have to “deal with it” while smirking at me. That is demeaning. You have studied what trauma does to the brain? Well so have I, motherfucker. You have not done a single fucking blood test. You have not done a brain scan. You have not taken a full medical history to find out how bad the side effects have been every time I have been forced onto a drug “for my own good” and how often that has lead to significant public blow ups and more trauma.

You don’t give a shit. It shows on the fucking smirk on your face. I don’t fit into your mold of a good person so you want to drug me into a stupor so that I stop doing what I am doing and blindly do what you say. No. You don’t know what I have to react to or why.

Fuck you. You want me dead. I can’t come to any other conclusion and continue to survive.

It took twenty-five minutes (I’m uhm babbling paragraphs in between random distractions else-net Oooh shiny! That’s a lot of why it sounds so incoherent and random-ha.) but I finished a piece of string cheese. Minimal gagging but I haven’t been able to eat any nuts yet. And my graham cracker is untouched.

We will have new insurance cards soon. I promise that as soon as I can log into the new insurance system I will make an appointment. I promise me.

An awful lot of why I am smoking the pot is to deal with my massive stomach pain. I feel very scared because if I reveal that there is an anxiety portion to the pain I risk not being treated again but if I don’t tell the doctor that I may not get appropriate treatment.

I feel like I am in a bind and there is no way for me to get out of it. I have to just throw a dart at a dart board and pray that I get a doctor who will want to help me without requiring that I instantly trust them enough to send my entire life headlong. No one deserves that kind of trust from me. Give me a fucking break.

I know that my intense fear of having to deal with a doctor for this is making the pain escalate unbearably. I understand that link. I understand that for most of the year the pain has stayed at a consistent 1-3 with spikes up to 5 or so when I try to eat without smoking but since I have been actively been thinking about the fact that I have to deal with this soon the pain has been spiking to 8 and 9 and causing me to nearly vomit spontaneously in public–which is kind of embarrassing. And shame producing. Knowing that my body may betray me at any moment and make me a public spectacle makes me feel constantly ashamed of existing. I should just fucking die so that I don’t have to go around inconveniencing people all the time.

When I vomited on the floor of the hospital when I was twelve, when I was waiting in the lobby to get a cast on my broken arm, my mom grabbed me, hit me and hissed: “You just did that to get attention.”

Over and over I sobbed “I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m sorry.“

The nurse tried to tell me it would be ok but I couldn’t stop crying.

When I go out in public I generally did not smoke because I don’t do so before driving. Which means I have to get through breakfast without smoking if I want to go to the park. I generally don’t eat much or sleep properly the night before with anxiety about the spike in stomach pain and the increased difficulty in being patient with the kids.

That’s a lot of why I limit excursions out of the house. Those days are ridiculously hard on my body. When people come to me I evaluate how offended they will be if I am stoned and I try to uhm match expected tolerance because generally what I think other people will be ok with is lower than what I actually usually use.

This is the big problem with using any medication so sporadically. The effects are needed when dosage isn’t present. I have many days where I wake up and I let the negative thoughts get too entrenched before I start smoking (it is an unpleasant process and I don’t enjoy it and I don’t like being “the kind of person who smokes pot” and and and) so often I have to kind of psyche myself up first and bribe myself with the idea of being in a more pleasant mood.

The amount of conscious dealing with shame I do every day is really hard. I have to consciously deal with it or I will not eat and not sleep and get weak to the point where I am not physically able to complete my chores without slowly dragging chairs all over the house so that I can move from chair to chair to finish my cleaning.

Because I am that compulsive and crazy. I have to “appear” functional. I “have to” maintain certain appearances or I risk terrible consequences. I don’t know exactly what they will be or from whom. Sure as the sun will rise I will have someone else in my life whom I trust a great deal turn around and tell me that I am abusive and terrible and they are disgusted by me. It is going to happen again and again because that is something that people just feel free to say to me.

That is part of what I mean when I say that I am the lowest status person in every room I walk into. I am a white trash whore and I can never undo that. In any room I walk in to someone may decide to go off on me. It happens when I happen to say something I shouldn’t say.

Usually that means I answer a question honestly. People ask a wide variety of questions in the casual chit chat process that if I answer honestly the person will respond with horror and disgust and move away from me exhibiting great hostility. I have to guess which lies to tell and when.

When my mask is slipping, like it was this weekend, I went to a friends baby shower. Want to know my connection to the group? I knew the host from working together (where deliberately obscured) and the party was at the house of someone she has known since middle school–they were both around our mutual place of employment. I went out with both of them like twice. I uhh begged to eat out my friend’s friend. She let me. Then never talked to me again.

Till I walked into her house this weekend and she didn’t remember me even slightly (or at least gave no sign of remembering me–she certainly didn’t know my name).

This uhm, happens to me pretty regularly. I’m very careful what questions I answer when I talk to people in general. I uhm was kind of stupid.

So the father of the host (he has known the mom-to-be since she was a kid, remember) was chatting me up and he told me that his wife wrote a book but she is afraid to publish it. I uhm wasn’t thinking so I said, “I actually wrote a book and self published. If you look at places like Amazon publishing or there is a wide variety of competing models you can be e-published for practically nothing and you can get books in print and deal with hawking them at book stores yourself for fairly little money. That is how publishing often works, actually.”

So then he asked me about my book. He had to prod me more than once. “Oh you wrote a book? I bet it’s a lovey dovey romance isn’t it? I bet it’s all cutesy schmoopsy and adorable right?” heh heh.

Cue my not amused face.

“No, actually it’s a memoir about the first eighteen years of my life.”

*snicker* “No eighteen year old has done anything worth writing about.”

By that point in the conversation my heart was racing and I was breathing fast and I could feel the flush rising. I had been kind of avoiding eye contact. Then I looked straight at him and said, “Well I I was moved more than fifty times, I was homeless, I stole to eat, I went to twenty-five schools in diverse combinations of socio-economic levels and race: everything from the projects to graduating high school in Los Gatos after only going to that school for my sophomore year and only three semesters of high school total. (said to someone whose kid went to one of the worst schools in the east side of San Jose [these two places are right next to each other and Los Gatos is where all the rich people live]) I was raped or sexually assaulted dozens of times over more than twenty years, including my father and my brother extensively abusing me, along with a bunch of random neighbors. I self-mutilated for decades as part of how I dealt with what was going on with me and every mental health professional I have worked with has been freaked out by the variety and range of trauma I have been through.

I had enough happen to me to justify a book.”

At this point picture him kind of mouth agape blinking kind of fast. “Oh uhm. Wow. Yes. You would have enough to write about.”

We didn’t really talk after that.

I let my mask slip. I did not tightly contain my answer enough. I wasn’t appropriate enough. Mostly because I didn’t give a shit. I will probably never see this man again. My connection to him is tenuous enough that I just don’t have to fucking care if he thinks I am awful for unloading on him like that. (You wouldn’t fucking believe how often people screamed at me for uttering even four sentences of the above paragraph in a challenging voice. I should not be speaking. Shut up. I don’t have the right to make people think about unpleasant things.)

The conclusion I draw from this is I shouldn’t exist. Or I should simper and play stupid and lie and answer questions in evasive ways and for the love of crisco stop writing and talking about this shit.

So I do my very best to force my lips to be literally closed for as much of the time I am with other people as I can. I end every social interaction with sores on the inside of my mouth from chewing it so hard to keep from saying anything that might be inappropriate.

Yes. It is enormous physical strain.

I can’t tell how these descriptive/prescriptive things work about labels. People tell me that I should eschew thinking of myself as bad and stop thinking about my behavior as bad. But I regularly get into trouble I don’t want to be in because I don’t have appropriate filters. Bullshit I’m not bad. I’m punished for being bad often enough that it seems imprudent for me to stop trying to filter.

I want to be a nice person. I really fucking do. I am tired of being told I am not wanted and being abandoned. I am tired of people kicking me really hard and feeling free to tell me that I am a disgusting piece of shit but they still love me and if I start jumping through x, y, and z hoops then they might be able to have a relationship with me or help me. But not until I jump through all those hoops without support. If I don’t do that first I won’t be able to prove that I deserve them bothering to waste time and energy on me.

I uhm can’t bend to whims like that. I have to live in my body 24/7 and deal with the consequences. I have a very tightly controlled life that I can manage because I limit it so severely.

But when I say, “I stay home” I don’t mean that I hide in bed crying all day. I mean that my kids and I play in the yards and garden and walk for miles around our neighborhood when I stay regularly medicated thus I can sleep and eat in a way that allows me to be physically able to.

Since the marathon I have been fucking around with almost not using pot to see how this works for me. It’s going really badly. I need to see a doctor.

The reason I don’t just “get a vaporizer” to try it is because when I spend money on something believing that it is unlikely to solve my problem and it is money I don’t want to spend… it’s kind of doomed before I start. I can’t be on marijuana forever. I do have to figure out how to live life without it in order to do the things I want to do.

But what does that even mean? Part of it is that my stomach god damn hurts and I have to heavily medicate in order to deal with the pain and nausea in order to eat and sleep like a “normal” person and have any appearance of functionality.

Being in pain actively triggers my PTSD symptoms and causes flashbacks because I have such a long history of being in pain and that being something I am not allowed to talk about or deal with because “You aren’t really in pain–you are just a whiny hypochondriac.”

My mother screamed at me and threatened me that “my arm had better fucking be broken or she would break it herself” because I asked her to leave work early and come home (I was 12 and alone all day every day because I was on year round school and had no friends or family) to take me to the hospital. It was broken.

Something is wrong in my body. Something that I can’t fix. Something that I am self medicating (said with substantial scorn and derision) to deal with because doctors have actively told me they will not provide service until I jump through hoops I can’t jump through.

I can’t abruptly switch psych meds right now because I have no reliable help with my children. When I go through med rounds the side effects make me extremely unpredictable and historically very violent and my self-harming goes through the roof and my ability to function completely disintegrates and I spend hours every day literally hiding either in closets or under beds because I want to kill myself so much.

I literally cannot do that to my kids. There are reasons I’m not on psych meds. If someone bothered to ask me what those reasons were I would be happy to explain and I am willing to bet a compassionate doctor would hear my history and agree that it probably isn’t the best idea to try to force me to take a psych med as step one of any and all physical care.

That is not a way to establish trust because my behavior will abruptly be destroyed and out of control and erratic and I will completely associate it with my relationship with that doctor and have to stop association because I can’t continue to listen to the advice of someone who is going to force me to go through that given that I don’t have the fucking resources to deal with dropping the ball on the ways I am currently functional.

It feels humiliating. But that is the reality of my life right now. I stay home so that I can always handle talking to my kids in the tone of voice I want them to talk to me. I have to keep my physical stress levels down enough to not freak out when we are in an environment where I have less control.

Watch me at parties. If I stay seated the whole time I have a much better chance of being able to have conversations because being there makes me physically weak because of the strain on my body of having to be hyperaware to such a level. If it is a stand-and-mingle sort of party I am going to spend a lot of time walking in and out of the room because I have to go find somewhere to sit down and sob hysterically because standing in that room and trying to talk to people hurts my body so much.

No, this isn’t something that is obvious to people around me. If I was visibly contorting with pain people wouldn’t talk to me. If I said anything other than “Oh I’m fine” “Great!” when people ask me “How are you?” then they won’t ask me any more. And they won’t talk to me about anything else either. They try to keep a wide distance between them and me because I have revealed that I have needs and they are very fucking sure that isn’t their problem and they don’t want to get involved. That’s a direct quote. I get told that a lot. “I’m sorry. You have a lot of needs and I don’t want to get involved.”

Uhm, I didn’t ask you to do anything. I don’t fucking ask people to meet my needs. I can ask for help with wants–I have to be very ok with hearing “no” or with the fact that there is a better than 50/50 chance that I will be stood up because that is just my historical percentage. Because if I ask someone for help with a need all hell breaks loose when they let me down. My relationships don’t last through me asking things of people other than the pleasure of their company on sporadic occasions. I am doing my very best to ensure that I understand my place and stop fucking up this boundary.

Having this sort of level of need as a background thead in my life why won’t anyone help me means that I don’t understand how hard it is for people to meet my needs. I am not good at understanding the limits of how I should ask for things. When I ask for actual needs to be met I have to understand that the person may just not show up or may not feel like it any more once the time comes or have some emergency in their life that is more important than me so I have to suddenly scramble for how to figure things out at the last second without the normal planning time I give myself. It feels very unfair at the time I’ll tell you.

I go through life knowing that I am “not rational” and I am “over-sensitive” thus pretty much no one needs to give a shit what I think or feel because I’m a piece of shit.

No, I do not act in public like I have the thoughts I have. It would be incredibly dangerous. It’s not hyperbole; it is simply true.

Pity party, table of one

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Every life is a mixture of blessing and burden. Sometimes when I hear about the blessings that other people have I feel such envy. I dislike myself for feeling that envy. It is petty. I feel like I am going through life having one long series of pity parties for myself. My life is not like other peoples. When I found out I was pregnant with Shanna more than one person sat me down for a long earnest lecture about how someone like me (with mental health issues) has no business having children. I feel like I was essentially told to abort Shanna because I could not possibly be good enough to her.

That is not how other people experience the journey into motherhood. I am very glad that my friends have such different experiences. I feel very guilty that it is hard for me to listen to. I feel terrible about how much self pity I have. Get over it.

I feel kind of like a fraud. My family was fucking thrilled when I got pregnant. I paid for us to go to a conflict mediator. I tried to work things out. Then my sister loudly boasted about being able to kick my ass at my baby shower. Then my mother refused my request to come to Christmas because it “wasn’t worth it for her yet because the baby wasn’t interesting enough” because I am not interesting enough. Then it was “this is a loan not a gift. I will send you $20 every month until it is paid back.” She sent one nasty $100 after I told her not to buy any more cheap shit for my daughter until she pays me back. Then it was my sister telling me that the death of my father and brother were not allowed to count as significant to me.

If I want to know people I have to be very ok with the fact that nearly everyone I speak to is having a much more pleasant experience. I can’t be bitter. They are having troubles I am not having. I do not give proper weight to the difficulty of those struggles. I need to just love people if I am going to have relationships.

It’s ok if I cry about never really having a mother. That’s ok. I didn’t have a mother. I get to cry about that. No one ever really tried to meet my needs. No one volunteered or cared. I can cry about that. I can’t get mad because other people got more love than me. That’s not fair.

I don’t understand why everyone else deserves this love and I do not.

You know how I ate ramen for years? I started cooking it when I was three. All those years I was making the only food I really knew how to make. It felt comforting to have hot cooked food and we couldn’t afford frozen microwave food.

I have not been cared for in the ways that humans expect to be cared for by someone since I was an infant. When I was sick I was left alone to deal with it. I have dealt with post operation care alone. I was five. My mom didn’t want to look at my gross face after the dog attacked me. She told me that looking at that was my punishment for being stupid with the dog. She said I would learn not to stick my face in a dogs face. I had major reconstructive surgery with 117 stitches.

I am very glad that my daughters will have a different experience. And fuck you to the people who said I would be bad at this because it was inevitable.

I’m really glad that I am lucky enough to know people who have had completely different life experiences so they can tell me what it is liked to feel loved by a parent. I want to produce people who feel that way so I need to know what that kind of parenting was like. Thank you for sharing your lives with me.

(PS- I’m aware that I make a lot of weird typos and word substitutions. I don’t really have time to edit. I apologize.)

But then I came home and found out that my in-laws decided to send us a check for $15,000 out of the blue. Well, because a deer jumped on our car and because they still provide financial support to all three of his adult brothers. They feel bad for not helping Noah more. So they sent us money. Because they can.

I feel floored. That is seriously fucking with my world view. I am standing next to someone who benefits from enormous privilege. I get to borrow that privilege in substantial ways. It doesn’t come with a mother–I will never have any kind of relationship with my mother-in-law. We are non-compatibly crazy which is quite unfortunate. I don’t get to have a family but I get money.

I have a family. I have Noah and I have Shanna and I have Calli. Not everyone is so blessed.

Many years ago I had an intense fling with someone who was studying ayurvedic medicine. He did my natal chart. I had not told him much of anything about myself. He said I would always be lucky with money. Any time I needed it somehow it would arrive. I kind of startled. He laughed and said that anyone who challenged me in court would be sorry.

It’s not like I live my life trying to test that out but I have been really weirded out how much that has worked out. When I am not sitting at my pity party I am shocked by how much money just appears for me in a way that it doesn’t appear for other people.

The dog bite set me up for the first big chunk of my adulthood. Completely. I’m not sure it provided the lesson my mother intended. I run towards danger. The payoff is often well worth the damage I incur. I am ok with the results of karma in my favor. I had to deal with horrifying post-operative care when I was five years old and that was fairly traumatic. But it put me through college. And bought me three cars (they were all very good deals). And completely supported me for ten years. In a mercenary sense that was a good fucking deal.

Other people don’t have lives like mine. I don’t understand what it is like to be other people. But I’m very curious.

Maybe if I leave the monsters here I can sleep.

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I can’t sleep. I don’t feel good about keeping Noah awake with my crying. Ok internet, you can keep me company. I have done the best that I can with my ergonomic set up. I hope I don’t regret tonight. My arms hurt.

I can’t sleep because when I lie in bed I acutely notice this spot deep in my belly that has hurt since Calli was born. It hurts when I twist at all from a prone position. I’m kind of worried something is wrong.

I tried seeing a doctor a little over a year ago. I was told by the general doctor that she wouldn’t do anything for me until I dealt with psychiatry. Psychiatry told me they wouldn’t work with me until I stopped nursing and stopped smoking pot and start taking pills that will make my life a living hell.

I need a new doctor.

The problem is that finding a new doctor is kind of a nightmare of humiliation and expense. Doctors like to give me transvaginal ultrasounds despite knowing I am paying out of pocket and don’t want the procedure–I asked to just have a blood test. “Oh I just want to check.”

And I shut down. And I do what I am told. And I have to listen to a nasty lecture about how my previous miscarriage was my fault because I am still nursing Shanna and I will lose the baby I am carrying right now if I don’t stop nursing her immediately.

I didn’t stop nursing Shanna. She didn’t stop nursing until she was three. A full nine months after her sister was born.

Doctors are just people. But they think they are Smarter and Wiser than stupid little me. Even though this is my body.

I was told that my grandmother (father’s mother) died of cancer. It wasn’t found until it was too late for treatment. She was a stubborn woman and even though she was told she would die immediately she held out long enough to gather all of her grandchildren together one last time and then sit down with all of her sisters and do a crossword puzzle. It took a few months to arrange, apparently. Then she died.

I can’t help but wonder if she felt the pain inside her and thought, like me, I hope this kills me. Then at least my kids won’t have to deal with my suicide.

This is not a good approach to health care management. I really hate dealing with doctors. I find the entire process degrading and insulting. I never get adequate treatment and I always end up shutting my stupid mouth and consenting to procedures I initially protest. Not because I am convinced they are necessary–because when a sociopath tells me to shut up I do. I know I am at the bottom of the caste system. I shut up when I am scared. When I get to the point of going to see a doctor I am scared.

I don’t feel I can ask my midwife about it. She badly handled my labor. Really badly. She was burnt out on driving to Fremont. She shouldn’t have taken me on as a client. She didn’t really have the patience for dealing with me. She kept me from dying as I hemorrhaged in my bed so I feel like she fully earned her fee and all. But I don’t trust her any more. I will never ask her for help of any kind again.

I don’t want to keep Noah up as I cry because when you have mental illness you have to be aware of the cost on the people around you. I have to be careful not to overburden him. I can’t be too dependent on him. It’s not his fault that I don’t really have anyone else.

Noah and I are having a lot of hard conversations. And I’m not going to give details about them on the internet. He doesn’t get a lot of privacy in this lifetime but he gets a little.

Hard shit is hard. And tonight I’m having quite a pity party. I want to say that it feels like my whole fucking life has been hard. On one hand I want to berate myself for my hyperbole. On the other hand… can’t I justifiably say that? I mean, I do have easier periods. I’m drowning. And it’s my fucking problem.

And the lady who actually likes me in the home schooling group is telling me she might stop coming. (btw Lisa–don’t bloody tell anyone about the shit I write here.) That makes my throat close with fear. I wish the universe would stop fucking kicking me.

I feel like I must not be fit for human companionship. Otherwise I wouldn’t manage to drive people away so effectively. No one seems to be able to bear very much of me. They only want small pieces.

I had a hard time at the convention for a variety of reasons. I couldn’t be the performative whore. I am not hunting. I am trying to actively discourage people. I had to turn down multiple requests to play (which shocked the fuck out of me–that is not usual) which is kind of awkward. “Sorry but you don’t get to beat me in pay back for me beating on your (wasn’t then) wife many years ago.” Awww. Sad face. But but… I would look so cute bruised.

Yeah. A lot of people have thought that. A lot of people have wanted me to be in pain.

I feel like I am drowning. A nice bus to the head sounds really good right now. And close by. I think the best part of suicide is you don’t have to deal with the consequences of your actions.

I know someone who jumped in front of a train and survived. He lost the bottom part of a leg. He went on to become a minister. I fucked him in the dorm building of his seminary school. He was one of the most brutal people I have ever had sex with. He had an incredibly strong upper body (duh–he had to walk with crutches most of the time and he was a big man) and he really wanted to bruise me.

I was lying on the bed on my side. I was trying to look tempting. He mocked me and asked if I was playing my whore game. I kind of sputtered. Then he slapped his hands down on my side just below my armpit and my upper thigh really hard and picked me up and threw me against the wall.

I lay there and convulsed until he started hitting me again. He really liked slapping my face.

I chanted in my head, “I’m supposed to like this. I’m supposed to like this.”

After a few minutes of alternating between slapping my face and my breasts and my thighs and my belly he spread my legs open. He started hitting my cunt.

I didn’t really keep track of how long that went on but I just about levitated off the bed. It fucking hurt.

Then he put a condom on. Then he picked me up by the hips and flipped me over to my front. He yanked me up onto my knees and he entered me from behind.

It hurt. I wasn’t particularly well lubricated and condoms tear me internally during the best of times. Legacy of a network of scars that line my vagina. I was raped a little too much a little too early. I’ve seen the scars. A gynecologist used a clear speculum and a light and a mirror to show me why sex hurt me so much when I was 22.

I always thought it was just supposed to feel that way.

Being at the con this weekend was hard in a variety of ways. When I think about the things I have done I feel a wide variety of emotions. I don’t know what my core values are. I don’t know what I am most proud of beyond my children. I feel dead inside. I feel like I am nothing. I have nothing to give. I am a bottomless pit of need and that will always be just my problem. I don’t live in West Africa. We don’t consider stupid bitches like me community problems. (Errr–note to new readers: I participated in a grief ritual facilitated by a West African woman who talked about her tribe. It was a life changing experience. Sobonfu Somé is the name of the woman who presented and if you ever get a chance to work with her do it.)

My community is only interested in me if I want to dress like a whore and be beaten so they can watch and beat off. Or at the very least pawn off my kids on babysitters multiple nights of the week so I can “go out and have fun”. No.

I’m not interesting as myself. I have to play their games. I’m busy. I think my children deserve this span of time. They won’t be with me forever. In the long run, this is absolutely worth the sacrifices.

I hope. I pray to a God I would like to spit on. I think I am kind of officially “agnostic” at this point. I am trying to hope that science is right. Otherwise there is some all knowing “benevolent” person who wants me to suffer a really lot.

See Noah–I’m not just crying because of you.

I keep trying to tell myself that mental illness is a liar. This will pass. I will not always feel this way. I objectively know that I have non-depressed periods. It has been a bad three years.

I’m tired of being lied to. I’m tired of feeling abandoned and unwanted. I’m tired of people telling me how bad I am. I’m tired of being afraid of the next lie. How am I going to be hurt next? I HAVE GOOD FUCKING REASONS FOR BEING PARANOID. GIVE ME A GOD DAMN BREAK. But I hear I need to get over it anyway.

I think the stress is going to eat me alive. There isn’t much of my body that doesn’t hurt.

Noah is about to go through open enrollment at work. Our insurance is probably going to change again. I will probably not see a doctor before that happens.

I don’t think it is serious. But it feels like something pulsing. Like a piece of intestine got stuck between the abdominal muscles when they healed after the pregnancy. It’s a very dull ache. If it was sharp and piercing I would go see a doctor immediately. I tell myself that it could be referred pain. It’s nothing. I’m fine. I’m just a hypochondriac–just like my mama always (and I mean fucking always) said.

I have all the old goodies playing tonight. I hate my mother and I miss my mom so bad I feel like the top of my head is going to explode with pain. I have a blinding headache. I’ve been crying for a long time really hard. I’m probably getting dehydrated. And it’s not like I’m sleeping when I should be sleeping. And I’ve been sleep deprived for years.

Did I mention that the kids are going through a boundary testing phase and it is hard to not scream at them all day every day? I am not doing so. I’m not entirely sure that letting them watch the ipad for many hours a day is a great solution either. I don’t have a better one.

It was really weird being at the con. It’s really weird thinking about the things I have done. I don’t think I regret any of it. I learned from it. I learned what I specifically needed to learn from it.
Today I saw people I have beaten and tied up. People (male, female, other) I have had sex with.

It is so completely removed from my life now. I have done stage performances of bdsm with some of the people I saw this weekend. I didn’t see many classes. I have had contact with the presenters of all of the ones I did see for a decade or so.

In the class on erotic humiliation the presenter asked the audience to insult her core values (her Japanese-Americaness, her worthiness of being loved, her desirability, and her intelligence) in a sentence. After I listened to the audience fumble and lamely half-ass it for a few minutes I yelled, “Who would ever want an ugly, stupid, worthless Chink like you.” Her head whipped over. She told me to stand up and yell it louder. I made my voice get mean. I said it again.

Then I sat down really fast and my face was read and my heart was pounding and I was out of breath. She and I communicated about how much saying that affected me. She talked about how it effected the other people in the audience. Fucking awkward. (She was thrilled. That was exactly what she was fishing for.)

Do I still want to be this person?