Category Archives: art

start of a bad cycle?

I have so much anxiety right now that I am shaking and not sleeping. I got less than five hours tonight and I am so full of adrenaline there is no chance I will sleep again.

I deleted everything off my fetlife profile. Most of my experience there involves me having an unusual opinion and then a bunch of people jump on me and talk about how icki I am. I participate in casual sex conversations. Apparently women like me, who will have sex with strangers (err, at least I used to) are disgusting, stupid, and we are obviously not worth keeping around. We have no self-esteem and we denigrate the women around us just by existing.

I get less shit for my promiscuity from Christians than I do from “perverts”. At least the Christians act like, “Well duh you like sex.” The perverts talk about how there is something wrong with me for not wanting a deep emotional connection with everyone I fuck.

Does anyone else see this as odd?

I don’t think that is why I am up though. I feel horrible guilt for canceling on the mural. I’m really not functional enough. I have a job. I’m supposed to be homeschooling my kids. I haven’t paid much attention to them recently. I mean, I pay attention to them… but not to the degree I *should* as a home schooling parent. Right now I expect them to just entertain themselves all day while I do work. I’ve been doing this for months. This isn’t a long-term solution.

I feel like I am trying to do so many things that I’m not getting anything done.

And I feel left out because I don’t have the spoons to go do the fun social things my friends do. I really can’t handle it on a lot of levels. I will probably never work Dickens Fair again because I don’t want to run into my rapists.

I’m not sure why I feel so isolated, unimportant, and worthless right now. I have wanted to cut for a few days. It has been really hard to not do it. I haven’t which is supposed to be all that counts. But I want to. I trace designs on my flesh with a non-threatening finger.

I miss people but I am so tired and worn out that I really can’t handle being around anyone. I feel brittle, tired, and snappish. I’m not saying it is anyone else’s fault. It just is.

I hate when I do this. I want to be around people so much it physically hurts. But I know I can’t behave well enough to pull it off. If I spend time around people when I feel like this then I do stuff I know I shouldn’t do and I lose relationships.

Better to hide until I am less of a cunt.

I hate when I get into this place of feeling desperately lonely while seeing people. I am overscheduled with people I have to “behave” very carefully around.

I feel guilty because the easiest things to cancel on are things for the kids. I can skip their friends more easily than I can skip my long list of chores.

I feel lonely and mean at the same time. This isn’t a good combination. I feel angry in a way that is hard to pretend isn’t there. I’m not even sure what I’m angry about. I just feel really angry. So angry that I could probably punch dozens of holes in a wall without noticing the knuckle damage.

I’m sitting very still and not doing anything terrible.

I wonder how long this will go on this time. I hate this feeling. Tonight I could beat my head on concrete for a long time.

I think a lot about impulses. I think a lot about compulsive behavior. I think a lot about choices and emotions.

I don’t seem to be able to control my emotions. I am controlling my behavior by being quiet and still. But that is of limited duration. I’m sure I will come up with more work to do.

Noah is writing another book. And going back and forth on what he wants to do after some work issues. I have feelings about both set of circumstances but it is what it is. I don’t think that is why I’m freaking out. I may be feeling some increased anxiety because job stuff is kind of uncertain but he always lands on his feet. And I have almost five months of income in cash in the bank. We will be ok. (Which blows my mind considering how much money he makes.)

I know I’m worried about money in the “I feel existential angst for being a terrible person and spending money on anything other than rent, rice and beans” sort of way. I’m not actually worried.

I opened an IRA in my name and fully funded it for the year. (The limit is only $5500.00… so not that extreme.) I’m going to start having this as an auto-deposit thing.

No one will help when I am old. I will have what Noah and I have managed to save. I should take that more seriously and pay myself first. Making sure I don’t end up homeless when I’m old should be a serious priority. I’ve already been homeless. I don’t really want to be ever again.

I feel scared and dirty and bad.

I feel like I can’t do anything right. I can’t do anything worth doing. I can’t…

I don’t even know. I have been feeling a weird balance between feeling happy and feeling scared that it is all going away soon.

I am really upset with myself for saying yes to the mural and then saying no. That feels like a really horrible thing to do. I am bad. I should have said no from the beginning or I am stuck with having said yes.

It’s kind of like how I never thought I had the right to say ‘no’ to sex once I had a meal with someone.

Buy me a grilled cheese sandwich and a milkshake and that gets you a blowjob. I don’t even have the self-esteem to be high priced.

Which makes things complicated with Noah. A friend told me I should consider paying myself as a housewife.

I don’t deserve to be paid. These days I’m not even a good whore. I haven’t had sex ten times in the past two months and some put together let alone hitting quota each month.

I feel tired and sad and I hurt. I keep moving in and out of feeling sick. I’ve had terrible nausea for days. My throat hurts, well not my throat. My neck. The corded muscles that are kind of on the sides of the front.

Just over 2,000 words and I will hit 30,000 words on the book. I’m honestly running out of things I would want to say to twelve year olds. I’m also feeling like, “No one will let their kids read this thing anyway. Why am I wasting my time?”

I feel so bad that I needed this book terribly when I was twelve years old and I’m not sure it will be of any worth to anyone else. I don’t think other people need the same lessons I need. Not everyone is a worthless whore.

I feel so broken and disgusting. People like me shouldn’t be allowed to spread their disgusting point of view.

I’m not quite to suicidal but if this continues I will get there. That is where this is heading. I can more or less see the pattern.

Being suicidal is just a thought process. It is how a brain deals with feeling over loaded and unable to function through pain. Suicidal isn’t a “feeling”. I’m feeling sad and lonely and unimportant and expendable. Those are feelings. Suicidal isn’t a feeling. It’s a thought process. It is how my brain has learned to handle feeling all these feelings.

I don’t want to kill myself. I have these kids to raise. I really like them. I’m not at a dangerous spot.

I’m just struggling with how my brain works.

I need to not schedule anything until after the end of the year. Hell, it’s the holiday season. Maybe I’m just going bananas in that typical end of year SAD hell that so many people live with. Maybe I’m just missing my mom. I really miss my mom. Every year that goes by hurts more.

Why didn’t my mommy love me?

I can see my kids through my pain. I can make their needs more important than mine. My mother couldn’t do the same thing. She couldn’t do anything more than survive. She had no spoons left to give to helping me.

I have no spoons left to help other people right now. Do I have any right to throw stones?

I watched some really heavy TED talks today yesterday. Specifically Indian women talking about rape. Stories about three year old children raped until their intestine fall out of their bodies.

Ok, I don’t win the oppression olympics.

The woman who told that story was gang raped by eight men and used that as a reason to devote her entire life to helping victims of trafficking.

I am not that cool. I haven’t used my personal tragedies to help other people in a large and measurable way. I am small, selfish, and not very useful.

I wanted children too much. I think that engaging in that kind of work means you give up on a family of your own. You can’t take care of your own kids and devote your life to helping people. In the process you neglect your own kids.

I don’t want to neglect my kids.

I know a number of people who have devoted their lives to helping professions. I know therapists and emergency responders and… lots of professions. Lots of people. I know a lot of people.

I don’t feel like I deserve to know the good people I know. I am not as good as them. Sure, I taught high school for three years. It wasn’t even three years. It was 2.5 years because of my copious vomiting all day long. Because I was too incompetent to do anything while I gestated.

I hope that this round of self-pity doesn’t last long. I’m really tired of this shit.

After canceling on painting I have a couple of days where I can stay home. I am just about to the point where I don’t have house chores left. I need to clean off the tops of the bookshelves in the living room and shift things so the plumbing can be fixed on Thursday. I am thinking about asking Noah and Uncle C to help me Wednesday night.

My back hurts all the time. I have periodic spasms where I lie on the floor and breathe until I can move around again.

I’m just not being nice to my body. I’m acting like working a manual labor job is necessary for basic survival and that’s just not true at this stage of my life. It is self-hating.

I don’t know how to feel less pain. I add stress until I crack. I’m not good at doing anything else. This isn’t a healthy balance.

No painting this month or next. The paint will get put away. Maybe in the spring. Maybe in the summer.

Maybe more West Wing. Hiding from life sounds great.

second thoughts.

I’m already freaking out about the painting project I am in the process of beginning. I’m not sure I want to do it.

I was originally asked to do a painting on a gate. Ok. Now she wants me to do both sides of the gate and a second gate that has yet to be built. And she wants me to do it all for $300.

Uhm. If I’m doing four murals (even if it is only a total of 12′ wide) that are all supposed to be separate seasons in different forests… that’s complicated art. Not to mention that I emailed and asked her to pick a season because that decides what colors of paint I should buy. She responded that I should paint all four seasons.

But the $300 she is paying me is also supposed to cover paint.

I’m starting to feel like this is not a reasonable project.

I can’t buy paint (I’m running low on vibrant exterior paint… for some reason…) and do four murals on $300. Well… I could. If I was doing it for my house and it was a labor of love.

I feel like I am being asked to put my heart into a gate someone is putting up in the apartment complex they will probably only live in for a few years.

I’m not sure I have the spoons to spare for this. I am already so frazzled in general that I am alternating between crying, shaking, and sitting like a zombie on the couch. (I cry or shake while I work.)

I outsourced painting my god damn arbor because I am so dizzy all the time I was afraid I would fall off the ladder.

I think this is a stupid plan right now. I am drowning. I am not managing my body.

I emailed her and cancelled. I can’t spend 25+ hours at her house this week painting. I will be angry and hateful and nasty and by the end of this affair I will hate her guts. That seems pretty stupid to do on purpose.

I hate my incompetence. I hate my weakness. But I don’t see how it will improve my life to force myself to go do this work when I will spend the time gritting my teeth and cursing about how much I hate her guts for asking me to do it in the first place.

She didn’t do anything wrong by asking. I just can’t say yes.

yay morning

I’m not usually one to sit and look through pictures on iPhoto. I did this morning. Holy moly my kids are changing fast.

I’m in progress on doing another mural. That should be next week. I sent off a huge list of questions today. I’m excited about this art thing picking up. I would not have expected my life to go in this direction.

I feel overwhelmed with blessings and good things. I have so many things I want to do. And now I have a wonderful girl on my lap and typing is hard.

busier than a one legged man in a butt kicking contest

I am tracking too many projects at once. I feel like my head is about to explode. I do this to myself.

I am considering taking advantage of being a rich person and hiring someone to do a bunch of the tasks on my to do list because I spend a lot of time crying because I can only force my body through so many hours of physical labor in a day before I turn into a nasty bitch who screams a lot. I’m tired. I hurt everywhere. Could I keep doing all of my own work, sure. I could. If it was mandatory I could keep going like this forever. But I wouldn’t be nice.

I admire people who can deal with a lot of work and stay nice. I’m not one of them and I feel so ashamed of myself. Maybe it would be ok if someone else painted the arbor and sealed my garage door. Maybe.

I keep feeling enormous guilt because I know I am not focusing on the kids much lately. They get very little “attention” in the ways they are used to getting attention. I’m there with them. We are in the room talking, but I don’t do much of anything that is just for them right now. I haven’t been reading much. I don’t play games because I am tired, grumpy, and my body hurts. I’m not in the fucking mood to play. Play sounds horrible and like I want to hide in the closet.

This isn’t good. When am I going to learn balance? What is a sustainable work load for me?

I don’t know but I’m attaching all of my bookshelves to the walls for probably the first time in my life. (I do it partially so P can stop giving me a loving-hard-time when she comes over. She cares about our safety and she’s right so I should just listen to her.) But you see, I don’t attach bookshelves to the walls because I move furniture a lot. I used to just move house quickly and since I’ve been living with Noah I have completely changed the living room furniture around at least once a year since we have been married. (Err, not buying things–just moving around what I own.)

Now I won’t have alternative placements. I’m at max capacity because I bought more furniture. So I’m attaching to the wall.

I am kind of hoping that if I can no longer spend so much time rearranging furniture that I will move on to doing more kid-centric activities. Err, we’ll see.

Someone asked me to come to her house and paint a gate for money. An art commission for money is blowing my mind. Is this really my life? She won’t pay me a lot and it’s not like I need an extra painting project right now. But that feels like a huge step and I’m not going to turn it down. I will just pass on one of my own painting projects. Ha. Lame.

It isn’t lame though. I would use water based paint and a professional will use oil based paint. Water based paint only lasts about six years. Oil lasts closer to twenty. Maybe hiring a professional isn’t lazy it is smart. (I could use oil but it is more flammable and picky and fussy and… I’m used to water based paint. It makes a huge difference.)

Note to self: be done with “home improvement” shit by Calli’s next birthday. By the time she turns four Shanna will already be six and I have to stop working on the house all the time. I have to finish my interior painting projects. I need to stop having the house take up so much of my time and attention. I treat this like my job and it isn’t my job.

My job is home educating my kids. On one hand: Shanna is getting good at putting together furniture and figuring out how to do things. On the other hand: we could do something more fun once in a while too.

Stop with all the house-shit, Krissy. It’s an addiction, too.

(My house is getting much closer to being what I see in my head. I’m very happy about it. Probably in January-February I will repaint the kitchen. You’ll see. It’s going to be fucking awesome. Vines. Flowers. Yay!)

 

Good day

I write because when I am all done writing I feel empty and soothed and more calm. It is like taking an ice cold bath when you have a fever. I have a better day when I write. Maybe it is like taking a hose to the dirty screen.

Yesterday I cleaned the house. The older I get the weirder I feel about how much I love cleaning the house. At the end of the day when I walk through the house and everything is all orderly and sorted I feel so much better about myself. I feel like I am now free to start any project I want because I AM CAUGHT UP, MOTHERFUCKER!

I like the feeling of being done with what I was doing. I’m an asshole towards Noah about cleaning the kitchen. He has particular parts of cleaning the kitchen he cares about (mostly the dishes). So sometimes he will come to me and say, “I cleaned the kitchen” and I get snarky and snotty and say, “Then why do I need to spend an hour cleaning the kitchen?” We clean differently. We are bothered by different things. (Ok, I don’t actually say much about the kitchen any more beyond thank you. It’s nice when he does things and I appreciate the help and I try to not be an ungrateful bastard.)

The kids didn’t help much and I did not act like an asshole. That’s important to me. If cleaning is my thing then I need to be nice to other people while I do it.

Some day my wonderful children will be all grown up and off. My house will be clean. I don’t need to be an asshole to my kids right now as they are also living in the space. I’m glad they are here. I’m glad they are making a mess. I’m glad they are taking up space. I want them to take up space.

Shanna is always going to be a chaos muppet. There is merit in her style of creativity. I just hope I can teach her the balance and usefulness of order. You don’t have to always be ordered, not everyone cares. But it is important to be able to create order.

I understand that my need for order is about me. I don’t think it is morally right. I think I feel out of control and scared and having a neat house makes me feel less out-of-control. That doesn’t mean it is “right”. It just is.

Today the girls and I will work on painting their play structure. The kids feel really proud of doing the work. It is wonderful to watch. They are very studious and careful and yet still so uncoordinated. I think they are adorable. I like working with them. They force me to carefully consider whether I care about the process or the result of a given task.

That’s really important to how you teach something. Do you care about the process or the result? It makes such an impact.

It is fun to talk to the kids about painting. “Ok, where is your drop cloth? You must stand on the drop cloth. You can’t step off of it while you are wielding your paint brush or you will drip on the dirt. Look for drips as you spread the paint around. See how it is much thicker right here than anywhere else? Can you smooth that out? Yes! Just like that.”

I like talking to them about how to pick what colors they want. I like talking to them about what they want to see. I like finding out what they like and what they don’t like. They are so distinct from me–we don’t have similar impulses. I like having to stop and wait while they do what they want to do. I feel surprised by what they pick. Oh. You like… that? Well… ok.

I like moving slowly with the kids through tasks. I like talking about what I’m doing and why. I appreciate that they want to talk about everything. I am so glad that I did not end up with taciturn children. That would have been a real struggle for me. Thank goodness they are talkers.

After spending seven hours cleaning I took the kids out to dinner. (We got coupons in the mail. Whoo hoo.) We went to Home Town Buffet. The kids were quite excited. They like getting to pick from a wide variety of things. Hilariously the biggest hit is always the jello.

While we were there one of our neighbors came in. One of the elderly people who walk around and stop to talk to us. We haven’t seen him in a bit. It turns out he doesn’t live in our neighborhood anymore. His girlfriend of 34 years had to move into hospice care due to Alzheimer’s. She owned the house and emphatically did not want to get married because she had a previous messy divorce. So now he is living in an apartment on his own. He lived in the house for 21 years.

I didn’t tell that man anything even remotely sad about myself. I didn’t tell him one negative detail. Well, he asked why I moved around so much as a kid. (He was talking about moving a lot.) I said, “Enh sometimes it happens when you are poor.”

I spent the conversation trying to figure out if he is taking advantage of support systems because he isn’t doing very well emotionally or spiritually right now. He’s feeling very hopeless and sad. His son is sixty so he feels well past any point of usefulness. He spends one hour a day with his girlfriend in hospice and he said he is just waiting till she doesn’t remember him because he knows the day is coming and he doesn’t know how he will keep living when the most important person of his life can’t remember him any more.

I didn’t need to play poor-me with him.

It was kind of weird that he spent a lot of the time telling me about how wonderful it was to have someone like me move to the neighborhood. He said that walking by my house and seeing how it changed and progressed made him feel inspired. He said that seeing me with my kids gives him hope for the future. He’s glad to see people like me who exist loudly in creative ways because they inspire everyone to think bigger. (He hasn’t even seen the mural because he moved out of the neighborhood just before I painted it. I told him to come check it out.)

I didn’t go fishing for compliments. He just walked by every day and saw us outside. Shanna shared fruit with them as they walked around.

I’ve started asking the senior citizens in my neighborhood point blank questions about food security. I feel kind of anxious and like I am over-stepping but I know that a few of them don’t have kids nearby checking on them. I think that in the next few months the kids and I should figure out some kind of way to get involved in helping provide food. I know there is a local service who brings food to folks fighting cancer. That might be a good first starting place.

I was talking to the kids about classes–what they want to take next, what they are enjoying about the classes they are in right now. I don’t think I will end up with dancers. They get to take two PE classes at a time. Right now they have creative dance and gymnastics. They both say that at the end of this session they want to drop dance and go back to swimming but gymnastics can stay because it is awesome. So I hear. Near as I can tell they both want to be in swimming until they can just head out into the ocean. I told them that is still a bit off. You need to be able to swim in a pool without a life vest.

Shanna emphatically wants to start music of some kind in January. I haven’t been finding a lot in our area for five year olds so I’m not sure what she will start with. We own two ukeleles (thanks to Noah’s family) but I can’t find a local teacher who will teach a five year old. The local ukelele teachers are all unwilling to work with kids under eight. We’ll see. Hunt harder.

I wanted to start martial arts with the kids next year but I don’t know that Shanna will be willing to give up gymnastics or swimming. So I may start on my own. I haven’t decided yet.

I’m watching Walk the Line for the second time in two days. I will be sending it back to Netflix today. It is interesting thinking about what it takes to create a specific image that you must maintain under pressure. What kinds of ambient stress does that create? How do people break down when they have to be able to pretend upon demand that they are happy and cheerful?

What does it mean to find someone who is a good partner for you?

What kind of support do you need? What kind of support do you want?

Noah wants me to encourage him to do new things. He wants me to listen to him talk through his subject material in order to help him figure out how to teach it better. I may not be good at programming but I understand what it means to teach someone a new subject. I know how the brain learns. I know how to get peoples attention and hold it for at least an hour. I know what tends to make people remember things. I’m not good at everything. I’m good at sticking in peoples minds. People remember things I say. I’m not even entirely sure why but it is something that people comment on regularly so I think it is true.

Noah likes that I organize him so he doesn’t have to think about it. Noah likes that I do a lot of background work so he can do the last-fill-in-the-gaps with his subject matter knowledge.

I don’t think Noah would be pursuing teaching the way he is if he didn’t have someone at home to bounce ideas off. I get the impression that he is scared. I help him deal with that feeling. I believe in him enough to fill in the gaps where he doesn’t believe in himself enough.

I hope that living with me is nice. I hope that it is nice to live with someone who thinks you can accomplish just about anything provided you have a detailed enough plan, enough sleep, and enough rest.

If Noah had a different partner he would probably be more focused on the money. Long-term I don’t care if we are rich. I want a specific pre-planned level of safety and then I don’t need a lot. Money for travel. That will be the big long-term expense. Even having enough money to be safe is something that not everyone manages. What does it even mean to be safe? What is safe enough? I know that Noah has the potential to make a lot more money than he does but it would involve even more working than he does. I don’t want that trade.

I feel guilty that I don’t lighten his load enough. I feel like the burden of my financial need is unfair and unbalanced. Surely it doesn’t even out in terms of effort even if I do fold his fucking underwear. (I think folding underwear is stupid. He wants his folded. I fold it.)

I think life is about trade offs and choosing to be happy with what you have. If you defer happiness “I will be happy when I get _____” you will find that mostly you never reach happiness.

I am not a happy person but it isn’t about my life circumstances. I am trying to be a happy person. I believe with all my heart and soul that I have every reason in the world to be ok right now if not very happy.

I know a lot of people who can’t count three people who love them. I have three people who love me and hug me and tell me I am wonderful every day. We are really big on words of affirmation in this house.

We wake up to, “I am so glad to see you again.” We go to sleep saying, “I had a great day. I was glad to be with you today. I am so glad I know you.”

I smile as much as I can make myself smile. I know I am lucky. I know that not everyone gets to have people who are as nice. I get to have this mostly because I am creating it. My kids are nice to me because I am nice to them. I have to be consistent. I have to make this environment. If I don’t make the environment it won’t exist.

Speaking of environment, Calli has been bringing me books and saying, “Can you read this to me? I LOVE reading books. I think books are the best thing ever!” My kids see me read all day long. I talk to them about what I am reading on the computer. “I am reading a blog article. It is talking about ______.” They see me pick up a variety of books. I’m reading several non-fiction and a couple of fiction books at the same time. Every so often I sit down for a few minutes and plug away. Then I talk to them about the chapter I just read.

Right now one of the books I am reading is A History of the World in 100 Objects and the kids are really enjoying hearing me talk about the history. They ask a lot of questions. “Who were those people? Where did they live? How were they different from us?”

I like that my kids believe the world is to be questioned. Everything is worthy of a question. Sure it makes them less than convenient sometimes but I don’t want convenient children.

I feel proud of myself when I look at my kids. I have nothing else in my life I want to point at and say, “This is what I want to be judged by.” I fuck up everything else too much. But I haven’t fucked up my kids. My kids are happy, healthy, sure of themselves, and smart as can be. Not that I think that children must be “smart” in order to induce pride. But my kids are my kids and Noah’s kids. They are really smart. They figure things out. I like standing near them.

I want kids who are infuriating because they take everything apart. I want kids who want to understand the world so much that they have trouble containing their curiosity and destructive urges. Even though it is hard to live with. My kids now come to me and say, “Hey mom! I want to do an experiment so I’m going to make a mess in the kitchen. Is that ok?”

Sometimes I say, “No problem.” Sometimes I say, “Well… let me come check your set up and make sure everything will be easy to clean up; this might be an outside experiment.”

I feel sad that I am not better able to be a nice person under pressure. If you can only be nice if everything works out exactly right and you are in total control then you aren’t really a nice person, now are you?

But it isn’t true that I make everything about me. I talk to people without saying anything about myself often. I feel scared that I will screw up other peoples day so I try to pretend I am mostly just an audience.

I think that most people feel alone. I manage to find the vein of sadness that pretty much everyone is trying to hide. I can find that and I can tap into it. I wish to be seen. I wish for support. I wish for love. I think that most people have things they are hiding. Ways they need support. I think that hardly anyone gets enough love.

I like looking at people. I like seeing them. Seeing other people makes me feel like I am actually doing something. It makes me feel like I have value and purpose and a reason. I am good at doing something that people desperately need and most people suck at doing. Ok. That’s a reason. That can be enough.

Shanna expresses frustration sometimes for being where she is. “Why am I not better?” “Well, have you noticed how you started doing this two weeks ago and you are comparing yourself to someone who has been here for years? Uhm… yeah. Things happen in stages. You have to practice. You have to suck. You have to be frustrated or you won’t learn and you won’t get better.” “But this is frustrating.” “Yup. Life is. Keep plugging.”

I like that I can point out which things they can do now that they couldn’t do a week ago. I like that I can detail how they are growing and changing. I like that this is allowed to fill up so much of the space in my head. I like that I don’t have to things that matter to other people. I’m glad I don’t have to care about the priorities of a company. I am so grateful that I don’t have to fret about money.

I feel so unworthy of the life I have. This kind of safety should belong to people who can properly appreciate it and relax into it. I am wasting the security. Only I’m not. My kids will not be like me. My kids will not shake with fear for the majority of their lives. My children are able to move between many different environments comfortably and pull off “appropriate” behavior in nearly any context because they believe that they can do it. That is the main hurdle that people have to get past in life. You have to believe you can do what you want to do.

I believe that my daughters are capable of adjusting to any circumstance because some human being has done so at some point in time. I tell them so. Thus they believe it too. I coach them, “This is going to be different from most of the places we go. In this space I need you to _____.”

I’m very specific. Why will it be different? How will it be different? What do you need to do? What will other people be doing? How should you react? How do you tell which people want to talk and which ones don’t? How do you figure out what body language means ‘I want to socialize’ and which body language means ‘Go away’?

Most people in the world want love. They may not want it at this second from you but they want it. How do you convince them that maybe… just maybe… you might be a good person to be loved by.

Lately we are working on the fact that you don’t get to touch people just because you want to. Hell fucking no. Everyone gets to decide for themselves if they will be touched or not. Your body had better be respected. You have the right to defend yourself when someone touches you in a way you don’t like even if they think the touch is “mild”. It is always best to start defending yourself with your words but if you have to then escalate. Defend yourself. You matter. You matter so much.

How would I be different if I had thought I mattered?

I will never know what might have been for me. I feel so lucky that I get to watch my kids. I’m so glad that they just know that they are worthy of defense and love.

I am here. There is no right. There is no deserve. I am loved. Today will be another good day. My children and I will work together. Hopefully we will finish painting the play structure today. I’m ready to take a break until the new year. I need to finish Outrunning and that is going to be all my brain power for the next few months outside the daily rush.

So much to do and so little time.

I’m making Noah slow down his rate of work in late November and December. I think that both of us should have a few weeks of not doing extra projects near the end of the year. We are both tired. We both need to spend some time together. I love touching him. I like the cuddling we do. I like that we can touch one another a lot without it having to be sex all the time.

I’ve dated a lot of people who wouldn’t let me touch them unless it was leading to sex. They wanted their space. Noah doesn’t have a lot of interpersonal boundaries with me. If I want to flop on top of him and just lay there for an hour he’s ok with that–provided of course he has no specific reason to get up. He likes touching me too. I don’t think I have ever been around someone who makes me feel like they like looking at me the way he does.

It was really weird with my Owner. He wanted a fetish item. He liked the shoes and the clothes and the production of being the current woman in his fetish items. He passes the clothes and shoes from woman to woman. He picks us because we fit into what he already owns. Of course he does make/get new stuff for each new girl too. He took thousands of pictures of me. I should have felt like he wanted to look at me.

In a lot of the pictures I made sure my face was averted. I was aware he was taking a picture of the shoes and not me.

He wanted the pictures because he wanted the reminder that he had seen someone in those shoes. It wasn’t about him liking me. I mean, I think he did like me. I’m not hard to look at. I’m not ugly. I’m just… I just wasn’t very important to him. He didn’t care about me. He didn’t want to know me.

Noah wants to look at me. Noah asks me questions and listens to my answers and demonstrates that my answers impact his behavior.

I have never felt this important in my life. I try to appear happy because I know I should be. I know that I would be if I wasn’t broken. I have every reason to be happy. If only I could stop feeling scared.

Not proud.

In my continual efforts to not have secrets about which I feel shame, yesterday we had kind of an incident.

I had to dismantle the slide. An adult friend who was far above the weight limit decided to take a ride. It broke. No fucking shit. It ripped some of the bolts through the plastic and fucked up the wooden support under the slide. So it had to be taken apart. I could fix it with much larger washers, but it was a pain in my ass.

The entire time I was working on the slide, ok that isn’t fair–the first half of the time, the kids were not very happy with me. I tried to patiently explain what I was doing and why. I explained every tool and piece of equipment I was using. I showed them the damage and told them why I had to dismantle it in order to fix it.

The kids stood there and YELLED at me that I was mean for breaking their slide as I took it apart. Even though I had explained why and showed them how I would put it back together.

I fucking lost it. They have been yelling at me that I am mean a lot lately. Basically every time I do not instantly comply with their demands.

I turned around and started screaming at them that if I am so fucking mean go in the fucking house and leave me the fuck alone while I do this fucking work for your fucking play structure.

I don’t feel proud of myself.

I am not sure what the right thing to do there would be but I wasn’t capable of turning around and being nice. I just couldn’t. I am so fucking tired of being yelled at that I am mean while I am in the middle of doing demanding physical labor for someone else’s benefit. I just can’t sit there and tolerate that. I fucking can’t.

But I should figure out how to handle it without yelling “fuck” at children. On one hand I feel bad. On the other hand, wow have I never yelled fuck at my kids like that before. That was special. I’ve been remarkably good for me about swearing over the past few years.

I called K to calm me down. These days it feels like she is the only stress relief I have. The Godmamas are overwhelmed by familial need (that happens) and Noah is working a lot. A lot. A really really lot. He works his primary job, comes home for an hour or so then goes in the garage to do different work. This weekend he’s at a conference.

I used to get 3-5 hours of not-parenting every day. These days I’m under two hours. I do all of my work while managing the kids. Which isn’t something I deserve pity for. I wanted this and all. But it is hard to have enough patience for everything.

We did another hour or so of painting on the play structure. Calli has painted most of the stairs by herself. I was very impressed. I “helped” by doing a last few smoothing strokes on each board but she put the paint down and mostly spread it around by herself. Her paint clothes are now solidly covered in paint because she sat in it while she was painting. It was totally adorable.

Shanna painted the kid-side hand rail mostly on her own. I came along and did a little edging of the parts she had trouble seeing. That’s ok. There were a lot of little corners. Those are easy to miss.

I’m working on the rainbow. It’s a pain in my ass. But it’s coming along. I have used three fucking ladders in order to reach everything. I could have gotten away with two ladders if the thing was about three inches shorter. But it isn’t. So I needed a third ladder. C’est la vie.

I’m starting to have trouble sleeping again. Once I get six or so hours of sleep I feel like my sleep gets lighter–I come up to a lighter sleep cycle and then I just can’t really rest more. I get up to use the bathroom and then I fret. And fret. And fret.

Do you know what makes me feel worst about yelling at Shanna like I did? She came back to me and apologized for yelling at me about an hour after I yelled at them. I apologized to her too. I told her that I was sorry for yelling “fuck” at her because that isn’t very nice or respectful or loving. She said, “Well, we weren’t being very nice to you.”

I said, “No you weren’t. But you are kids. Kids push grown ups. It is my job to be the grown up and hold boundaries. It isn’t very cool of me to scream at you for being a kid.”

She told me she forgives me.

I don’t know how to be a better mother than I am. But I feel she deserves better. She is such a wonderful kid. It is kind of funny that I feel like I am mean to them. But never for the things they yell at me about. Those things are never the mean things. They yell at me that I am mean when I am doing nice things. If they yelled at me while I was actually being mean I think I would just nod and agree.

I think that when they start yelling at me I need to immediately separate us whenever possible. Not because they are “getting in trouble”. If you have feelings like that go express them somewhere else. You are allowed to have them. You aren’t allowed to yell at me like that. Hell, I barely yell at them the way they feel free to yell at me.

My kids are so fucking not abused. The cocky little… oh man. Clearly not abused. Abused children aren’t this god damned demanding.

I haven’t made progress on the book this week. I am thinking about it a lot. I know what I want to say. I just haven’t sat down to write. The minute I sit down the kids jump on top of me and demand that I do _________. (The list is long.)

I feel like we have phases where I can do independent work (like the mural on the fence) and then I just can’t for a while because they feel clingy and upset about being ignored and they won’t allow me to focus on anything. Right now I can’t do the dishes without them bugging the shit out of me to entertain them in some way.

I spend a lot of time saying, “It is not my job to entertain you. Go entertain yourself.” Sometimes it works. Sometimes not so much. That’s the process.

This is hard. I absolutely understand the impulse to just “put them in school”. I feel like there is stuff here to learn. There are lessons in this learning-to-put-up-with-people that I have to learn. I need it. NEED.

When I am an old woman I hope I will be proud of myself for doing the things that I knew were things *I* needed to do. I don’t in any way think that other people should mirror my path. I need to figure out how to be with kids.

When I lose it, which doesn’t happen very often–I do record pretty much all of them–I feel like I am proving that my children deserve to be removed from my care and given to someone who could treat them better. Only when I talk to so-called-“normal” (not diagnosed as crazy from a young age) mothers most of them spend a lot more time screaming at and/or punishing their kids. There is no way in hell I could treat my kids the way I hear/see other mothers doing it. I would not be able to look at myself in the mirror.

But I don’t think they are abusive. I don’t think their kids are damaged or fucked up in any way. So why do I feel so strongly that if *I* behaved that way I would be an abusive monster?

Is it the slippery slope argument? I can’t scream at my kids frequently because screaming just makes me more and more angry (being the one to scream means I am the one to escalate) and I have a really hard time controlling my urge to hit when I get too angry. And when I start screaming I am more or less incapable of screaming without cursing every other word. That is just part of the whole dynamic for me. I see other mothers who are able to scream or discipline and they don’t have to chant fuck fuck fuck over and over.

Right now my kids are sleeping in the cutest way possible. Shanna is “normal” direction but curled up in child’s pose. (Now I get why that is named that way.) Her nightgown is rucked up around her waist and she didn’t wear panties to bed. So she’s mooning the hallway. Calli is also in child’s pose but her head is firmly up against Shanna’s side so they are at a 90 degree angle to one another. They make a T.

I love how connected they are. They fight more now. But holy tomato they are attached to one another. They want to be near one another. Even when they are mad they don’t like separating. They do play in different rooms sometimes (Calli is very willing to run her own games when Shanna is being too bossy) but mostly they don’t like being away from one another.

Shanna keeps telling me that when she is a grown up she is going to go find my big sister and teach her how a big sister should act.

I tell my kids a lot, “How you treat your sister teaches her how to treat you. If you hit, pinch, kick, or shove you are saying that it is ok to do to you. I will not intervene until you get to the point of serious injury. You need to learn how to be nice.”

It is really interesting how Shanna is starting to take responsibility for “I am older and have more self control so I have to teach my sister how to act.” She frequently tells Calli, “Oh Calli! Please stop pinching me. It is hard to not pinch you back when you do that.” Once in a while she does pinch back. Then Calli wants to cry foul. I play at being deaf.

Today is a weeding day. The front yard is really bothering me. I haven’t weeded all summer. My pansies are getting choked out and fuck that noise.

The asparagus are growing like mad. I had no idea they looked like that. They kind of look like fennel as they grow up. It’s really neat. No one believes me that they are asparagus.

Tomato season is (thank goodness) nearly over. I will probably get another 5-10 lbs this year. One more batch of sauce. I’m ready to stop processing.

I am learning a lot about how I feel about food preservation and eating from my yard. I don’t know where I am going to put more raised beds in the future (maybe my roof?) but I think that long-term I will mostly want to figure out how to eat what is in season and do staggered planting. Like putting lettuce out to start every three weeks. Eat it as it comes ripe. We tend to not preserve a whole lot of fruit from the yard so far. Partially this is just current production size but partially it is that we gorge when things are in season. It feels nice. Then we have a break and that feels nice too. Preserving and eating the same things all the time causes me to get really bored and not want to eat at home.

I am sorta keeping to the schedule I drew up. That makes me feel good. I haven’t worked on Outrunning this week but that is the most serious deviation.

I’m having a hard time writing. I think that I’m actually feeling writers block about the book. I’m scared. I’m scared of really and truly committing to what I think a 12 year old should know. That feels like a heavy responsibility. I don’t want to do it wrong. I don’t want to give too much information and push kids towards making bad decisions.

Something I’ve been thinking about a lot is that no one wants to seriously think about how much power they have. People don’t like acknowledging to themselves who and what they really are in the scope of things. People either under or over rate themselves. It’s hard to be accurate.

I don’t know how much influence I might potentially have and that is really scary. If Torque (the guy who publicly apologized to me and who gave me specific permission to use his handle whenever I talk about him) had understood how much it meant that he publicly say, “I screwed up and I am sorry” he would have done it ten years ago. If he had been willing to actually deal with me, what difference might that have made in my life?

Sure, he was a softball sized trauma. He violated my consent in a painful way. But he didn’t have sex with me. He didn’t rape me. He did beat me… but I had asked him to so it is a really weird thing to figure out how upset I am allowed to get about the whole situation.

I asked him to do a scene. Scenes are potentially fraught. Everyone has to be responsible for themselves or they SHOULD NOT ENGAGE IN BDSM. If you need to be taken care of then you are not someone who should engage in bdsm. Period.

But he did stuff I told him not to do. And when I screamed “no” and “stop” he ignored me until I said “red” even though I had negotiated not using safewords. But I did have a safeword. I did make it stop.

Recently I was thinking about the last rape. What I really really really hope will be the last rape.

I gave permission in advance for a rape scene. I didn’t understand the difference between compliant rape and a rape I would actually fight against. I never fought before that. I was trained to not fight from when I was a toddler. I was literally physically taught to not fight against being raped from when I was a toddler. When I was twenty-five I finally fought back.

I still lost.

I still got raped. Even though that time I didn’t want it and I was upset enough to fight and I fought as fucking hard as I was physically capable of fighting.

I haven’t ever done that before. I always give. I always know that it is right that I lose. I know I deserve to be raped. I know I deserve to service the needs of people around me because I am a whore and that is what whores are for.

But that last rape was different from all the others. That is the only time I can look at and really believe in my heart, “I was not able to stop that.”

Every other time I acted like it was like the scene with Torque. If I knew the safeword I could stop it but I don’t play with safewords so mostly I will eventually go limp and try to not die.

I don’t say “no” to sex. Well, I do now. Rarely. Barely. I started in pregnancy. I made Noah promise in advance that if I decided to not have sex from the date of conception to three months after delivery that he wouldn’t divorce me. I knew there was the non-zero possibility. I know that happens for some people. I was really scared. I made him promise because clearly he picked me because I am sexually compulsive and at that point we were still non-monogamous and I was pretty scared that he would wander off and not come back if I cut him off.

He didn’t.

I went and did a lot of bdsm because I wanted to find out what it felt like to believe you were allowed to say “stop” and have it work. When that mechanism failed me…

I don’t say “no” much. I learned how to say “stop”. Barely. It took a lot of effort and work. It took really consciously trying to do it. My Owner worked with me. He did a lot of very dangerous things where I HAD to say stop or he might end up in jail for manslaughter and we don’t want that now, do we?

It is kind of funny because outside of sex I say “no” more easily than almost anyone I’ve ever met. I’m pretty happy to add a “and go fuck yourself while you are at it!” But that sex button thing is old.

Lately I’ve been waking up in the morning and looking in the mirror and saying repeatedly, “You will not be held accountable for your feelings; you will only be held accountable for your actions.”

I have big feelings. I have mean feelings. I have sad feelings. I have hateful feelings. I have painful feelings.

I’m not hurting anyone else by having these things inside of me. If I control my temper and manage to not lash out (screaming that I am not fucking mean for fixing the fucking slide aside) then I am not hurting people. If I am not hitting anyone I am not hurting anyone. If I control my tone of voice such that I do not sound mean or hateful then I am doing fine. It’s ok that I am playing a game.

That’s the point. It is all a game.

No one is against you. They are for themselves. Don’t take it personally.

You will only be held accountable for how you act. I don’t know how you feel. I can’t know. That is forever a shut door. I just know how you act. I care about how you act.

That is comforting and very disturbing.

Just another whinging Friday

It isn’t that I think my kids are bad or anything. They are just excellent boundary pushers. I want them to push boundaries. I flat encourage them in that direction. I want children who are tenacious, stubborn, and sure that their idea is A Good One. But. But sometimes I wish I could say, “I know I’m willing to argue/negotiate with you all day every day but can I please have a friggin break on my birthday.” They just aren’t old enough to understand.

We did have good moments. I feel really bad that it seems like all I do is complain. Doesn’t anything make me happy? Am I ever satisfied? Is there any point in reaching for satisfied or is that just not something I can feel? I feel really guilty for not being able to turn this into a fun trip. It should have been a fun trip. I hate that I am such a downer all the fucking time.

But it felt really bad getting yelled at for what I wanted to order for lunch. I fucking told them four days in advance, “On my birthday I want us to have gumbo and papas fritas and beignets for lunch. That’s what I want.” They were enthusiastic and supportive until we got to the park. Then I was a mean and terrible person for not letting them have popcorn for lunch. Or ice cream. Or a Dole Whip. Or…

My kids rarely have extreme cases of the gimme’s. I don’t buy them things all that often on our outings and I’m kind of nasty about being pestered to buy stuff. Holy.Fucking.Shit. This trip was the most gimme-gimme-gimme I think Shanna has ever been. She actually sat on her ass in the middle of the store and started yelling at me because I wouldn’t buy her a FUCKING SECOND MUSIC BOX. SHE HAS ONE AT HOME THAT SHE BOUGHT WITH HER ALLOWANCE ON OUR LAST TRIP.

I almost lost my shit. If we had been within an hour of home I would have left the park fifteen minutes into the day.

The really funny thing is the DMV portion of the trip was the best natured and happiest all three of us were on the whole trip. We played games and met people and it was a really enjoyable 3.5 hours. Hell, I’m talking to a lady via email after that. She’s nice.

I think it is that whole kicked puppy thing. I was acting like a kicked puppy. I was begging them to please let me have a turn. When you act like a low status person you get kicked like a low status person. So my kids kicked me (only literally a few times figuratively much more often) all day.

It all feels like my fault. If things go badly it is because I planned wrong or anticipated wrong or… something.

Having them both scream at the top of their lungs that I was mean and nasty multiple times before 10am felt really hard. I know this is a current tick. I know that the best way to handle it is to not engage. At this point in time I am having trouble not bursting into hysterical tears or hitting them. I have strong impulses to do both. I’m not doing either but I want to.

Just breathe. This moment will pass.

I have spent ~15 hours over the past week and some working on scheduling. I’m getting close to knowing the shape of my days all the way through the end of the year. If I stick with my schedule. Ha.

In order to make it so that I can potentially accomplish what I want to accomplish I need a schedule with a lot of rest time scheduled. I need to not be booked all day every day. I have to have multiple days in a week where what I do is hang around the house and putter. I need to have scheduled “sit on the couch and read books and snuggle” time with the kids just about every day.

I have to run more. I just have to. Not running is feeling a lot worse than running. Which is hella funny. We have gone out all four of us a couple of mornings in a row. We hope to get the kids used to going for a morning jog. Noah and I take turns doing sprints up the block and back to the family because the kids are a lot slower.

Outrunning Suicide is starting to take shape. I have mostly written several chapters. I have a skeleton. This one is very different than No Secrets. The entire writing process feels different. This will feel more like a collection of essays than a story, but there needs to be some sense of story in it as well. I am trying as hard as I can to be conscious of the fact that I want this book to be appropriate for twelve year olds. Even though the mothers of twelve year olds will say that it is too mature. The mothers are wrong.

I need to start working on painting in the back yard. All of the stuff that was built this year needs to be painted so it doesn’t rot quickly. Oh man.

I don’t want to go out very much over the next few months. I want to get work done. I want to home school my kids. I need to stop looking outward for a while. We will go to park days. I will continue to try to make time for Noah’s friends who have all had kids and the few people I have hanging on who had kids.

I need to stop looking for new people. I don’t have the bandwidth. My monkey spheres are full.

I like having a lot of… I’ll call them third tier friendships. People generally don’t want to think of themselves as third tier, but oh well. At this point the only person I have near daily contact with who I don’t live with is K. Thank goodness for her. That is the first tier. Second tier are all of the people who have kept contact with me for long-stretches of time and they know real things about me and I know real things about them. These are people who very consciously schedule with me and make sure that I know that they think about me. The third tier are the people I don’t see a lot of and they know very little that is real about me but I want to feel acceptance and love so I try very hard to maintain Appropriate Behavior around them and I know there are consequences if I slip up.

The third tier is where you get into the idea of Community. These are people I want to know. They add value to the world and to my life in particular but I don’t think they actually like very much about me so I have to carefully construct what they see or I will be shunned again.

I can’t overload my second tier. When I overload my second tier then I see the ending of nearly-decade-long relationships and the backlash hurts me for years.

The third tier is where I spend most of my time. I carefully dole out just small bits of my personality to people. It all tends to feel very artificial. I know I need to be careful not to be too real. I need to not saying things that will upset people. Good fucking luck guessing who is sensitive to what.

Why is the third tier so important? Because I have absolutely stressed the first and second tiers to the limits of their ability to support me and if I have free-floating miasma of need and I get it met in bursts of random kindness from the universe. I depend on a lot of Pay It Forward. Mostly this has worked out fairly well. Humans in general are loving, kind, and they want connection.

But then we get to this punishment thing. I think that most people have trouble understanding that they are punishing people. I know that I struggle with understanding how and where I punish people. I do it but it is hard for me to understand the mechanism of it. It is hard for me to understand that I have the power to punish people. I don’t feel like I have such power. I feel weak and powerless.

My second tier has worked very hard to step up since I had kids. As much as I am still in a place of great hostility towards the idea of “chosen family” (given that most of the people who have emphatically told me that I am their family no matter what no longer speak to me I think I get to be hostile to this concept) I… feel conflicted. Clearly I have friends who have moved into family roles.

I feel like I am understanding how other peoples limitations work better as the years go on. Like, I’m not inviting people on trips. It isn’t that anyone wants to hurt me (I don’t think that the desire to hurt me played any part in people not being able to go on the trip–major health concerns came up for everyone) but I am still here hurting. How do I move towards hurting less?

I have been asking for help with things where I can’t handle the answer “no”. That is always where I get into trouble. This is consistent for me. I wait until the lack of support will be crippling then I ask for support then I get told no because other people don’t have the bandwidth and I crumble.

I need my life to require fewer spoons. I need to not need help.

Having children has been humbling and humiliating. The amount of help I have needed has been really hard. Things like going to the doctor for an ultrasound of my abdomen. That turned into a huge long lecture at Kaiser about how I need child care or I can’t get health care. I understand why my dentist pushed me to get the dental implant I needed while I was pregnant even though the pain meds aren’t optimal because “Mothers don’t take care of their teeth when they have children under ten.”

It is kind of weird and hard to talk about but since having children I am more house bound than I was before simply because of how my bathroom habits changed. I have always had a small and urgent bladder (common problem with early childhood sexual abuse) but after the kids my life-long diarrhea problem became urgent and explosive too. And then there is how my periods have changed. Having a body sucks.

Having kids is hard but I did not anticipate the specific ways this would be so hard. I anticipated getting sick of laundry and wiping up poop and being screamed at. I didn’t understand that after having children it would be a rare thing for me to be able to handle three hours between bathroom trips–I get a few freak days once in a while. I normally go to the bathroom every half hour or so. I don’t think I would physically be able to teach right now. I used to have 110 minute class periods. I can’t hold my bladder that long any more. And it is illegal to leave in the middle of a class to use the restroom. I did it anyway but you aren’t supposed to and there are severe potential punishments.

You want to know why I have so much anxiety about neglecting my children when they are playing in another room and I can’t see them but I can hear them? Because I went through teacher training and discovered just how much trouble I can get in if I don’t “properly supervise” other peoples kids. Apparently properly supervise means sit on top of the child and physically prevent them from ever breaking the rules. Good luck.

I swear this all ties together in my head.

I have historically depended heavily on the third tier. Why do I consider them third tier? What I can ask of them is much smaller and more limited and I have to be careful of watching how often I ask. The tiering is how much of my need they have demonstrated an ability to handle. It isn’t about me judging them negatively or thinking they are bad people. I’m intense. I hurt people without trying. I need to be careful to notice when I am hitting stress points for people and withdraw so there can be a next time. If I push third tier people too hard they eject me from their lives.

With children this is different and difficult. At this point I feel like a user if I ask people for anything. I try hard to bully K to let me come do work at her house because I feel like such a user all of the time given how much support she gives me. It isn’t actually a better dynamic.

I have a hard time knowing that at this point in my life I need more support than I give. It has been true for years. Maybe for all of my life. This totally plays into being financially dependent. I feel ashamed of myself. I look at the women in my life who are not dependent and I feel pathetic. This is part of that defining myself by being not-like other people. It isn’t good for me or anyone else.

I don’t feel like the things I do are good or worthy. And yet I really really really want to do the things I am doing. With fervor and intensity I want these things in the world and I don’t think anyone but me will do them. I take that as a sign they probably aren’t worth doing and I am just a waste of resources.

Part of the problem with an extensive third tier is someone always needs help. People are always struggling and I wish I could help more. I wish I had more to offer. I wish I had more energy. I wish I had more time to give them.

But instead I will stay home and weed my garden and write a book and paint. I am selfish and small. My life is limited and unimportant. I totally struggle with that Gen Y thing of, “But I am SPECIAL”. No. I’m really not. I don’t have anything unique and special to offer the world.

But sometimes I feel like I do. Sometimes I feel like I am good at helping people see their own value. Because I think so little of myself I view basically everyone in the world as higher status as me. When I explain to people all that I see about them that is good and wonderful they tend to be surprised. They are not able to see themselves that way. Isn’t that ability good and useful? Is that enough? What is enough? Enough of what? Enough for what?

I don’t know.

But I need to pull back into my little shell. I need to count my spoons and carefully lay them next to tasks. I want to read more books this year. I want to look out my back window on New Years Eve and see a rainbow castle. I want to finish writing the book that I really needed to read when I was twelve. I want to teach my children the daily habits of picking up after themselves. Even though it is hard. Even though you would rather do it later. If you do it now then you are free to go do anything you want on a whim. It takes practice to learn these habits.

I want my children to think that physical activity is just part of life. So I have to model it every day.

I want to not be fucking screamed at. I have already made a lot of progress on my own screaming. I will figure this out. It is going to be hard and it will take patience. We will figure this out. Without anyone getting beaten. There may be a fair bit of time out in our future.

I don’t think that anyone did anything wrong per se on my birthday. But I think that at this point my birthday is such a thing that I’m not sure anyone can do right. I don’t think it is anyone else’s fault at this point.

Rope bridges last a long time but eventually decay. You aren’t doing anything wrong by jumping up and down as you go across a rope bridge. Sometimes a log may break and you could plummet to your death. No one actually did anything “wrong” but there are still end results that suck.

I don’t know how to feel special. I want that feeling so bad. I want to feel loved and appreciated and like people are really really glad I am alive. I don’t feel that way. I feel like people tolerate me so long as I can fill their needs and not be too annoying. I know that people don’t actually feel that way about me. I don’t think I offer enough trade to actually justify that belief.

It isn’t that I believe that Noah and Shanna and Calli secretly hate me. It is clear that they all love me with great intensity. But something inside me is broken. It is like pouring boiling water into a tank of liquid nitrogen so that you can warm it up. That just isn’t going to work how you hope.

I feel raw. I know I am “over sensitive”. I know I “shouldn’t take things so personally”. But I am. I just am. Maybe I shouldn’t be. Maybe I shouldn’t exist. But I do. And this is how I feel. And I can’t make it go away just because it is inconvenient for me or for other people. The only thing I can do is try to stop being in a room with anyone else on my birthday so that it is very very clear that this problem is in me and not because of anyone else.

My birthday is really hard for me. I’m afraid it always will be. I desperately desperately want a kind of feeling loved and cared for and appreciated that I’m not getting. I don’t know what it is or how to get it. Everything I have tried so far has failed miserably. I really and truly have tried to change this pattern.

I wish I could stop feeling like it would be better if I was dead. Then I wouldn’t be so fucking inconvenient.

I know it isn’t “true”. I had kids so that I would know beyond the shadow of a doubt that my labor is necessary for a few decades. Nothing would be better right now if I was dead.

But I don’t know how to feel loved. I feel despised. I feel unappreciated.

Which is ridiculous. Noah couldn’t work harder than he does. And he clearly is doing it for me–he didn’t work like this before me. My Owner was a workaholic. Noah was kinda lazy when I met him. He was certainly unfocused–that is probably a better word than lazy. He works like a dog, largely because he is doing it for me. He wants to make all of my dreams come true.

And I reward him by crying and crying and crying and feeling like a worthless piece of shit. He is very confused. If I knew what to ask him to do he would do it. I don’t know. I don’t know how to stop feeling this way.

I mean, in the abstract I know how to deal with this feeling. Feel it. Cry while you have it. Wait. It will end.

That’s the awesome thing about feelings. They change.

Sometimes I do feel that Noah loves me. Sometimes I do feel that my kids love me. But somehow when it comes to my birthday that is broken. There is this big brick wall. I don’t feel attached. I don’t feel love or loved. I feel worthless and stupid and pathetic and bad and mean and unwanted and like I should just die.

And god I miss my mother. I miss my mother so much I want to curl up into a ball and never eat again. I am not worthy. I dishonor the woman who bore me. I am a piece of shit. I am not protecting her and taking care of her. I know she needs it. She has always needed it. She has always needed to be taken care of more than I need it.

And I think my kids need more taking care of than I need. Except for one day a year. Where I think I am going to need to have different boundaries.

I have started grieving really hard for the apology I was told I would get and I didn’t get. That guy in the scene I went and talked to who said he would write an apology. I’m sorry I made myself vulnerable to that.

I’m even more grateful for talking to the guy who made me uncomfortable at the wedding.

I know that I have to keep trying with people. Every relationship is unique. Every dynamic changes over time. I need people to jump over hoops for me. I need it. I’m pretty clear and direct about how and where I need it. I try not to be too demanding of any one person. But I do ask people to jump through hoops for me.

I want people to show me with their actions that I am actually as important as they verbally claim I am. I want my body to matter. This is a really dangerous kind of validation to want. Because I am not going to get it. People will say they will do ______ and not do it.

Do you know what makes people happy? Giving help to other people. Do you know what makes people feel shitty? Needing help. I hate my neediness as much as other people resent me inflicting it on them.

The kids are slightly sick. Runny nose on elder child, both are coughing. Younger child keeps telling us she needs a bucket but she isn’t vomiting. I’ve been crying so much I don’t know if I am sick or not. I scheduled a potentially light weekend because I am S-M-R-T.

I am looking forward to fall and winter. It will feel really nice after the frantic work pace of spring and summer. It is a puttering kind of day. I will go grocery shopping. I should wash the windows. Then they can color on them again. Ha. Right now they are too full to be fun.

I should stop typing. Annnnnnnny minute here……

Empty the brain.

Still to do:

  • blackberry bush
  • clean house (Monday–this weekend is resting)
  • upload pictures (in progress) (http://www.flickr.com/photos/rightkindofme/sets/72157634785800521/with/9426289945/)
  • write descriptions (I don’t actually want to do this)
  • this weekend (or Monday) it is time to make pasta sauce. I have fresh frozen tomatoes, canned whole tomatoes, frozen home made paste–next load of tomatoes is for sauce.
  • take kids to water park
  • get over belief that everyone hates me and go back to park day
  • work on books again
  • start running again (DSH–Blacksheep says she is down for a half marathon in Portland in October 2014. 😀 Am I going to be able to talk you into a road trip? My Dad would probably be happy to help the awesome BlackSmithGuy with kids during the race so he isn’t stuck with all six girls. Man. Don’t we want to get all six girls together?!)
  • Pick up load of beef from K. Mmmm beef.
  • Make mead. It’s August. It’s time. (It doesn’t make my stomach hurt and pretty much ALL OTHER ALCOHOL is poison. I should make more.)
  • Start cleaning/preparing the backyard for birthday parties. I have less than four weeks. We are having two birthday parties for Calli because she is adamant about not wanting a big party (she broke down in tears at the thought) but she has enough “friends” that she can’t figure out how to narrow down the list. That’s ok. Some people are available during the week on your actual birthday and some people are available on Saturday. It’ll be fine. (And most of the party “decoration” stuff is available online for free because apparently Disney is totally happy to support people having Jake and the Neverland Pirates parties without spending money.)
  • Resign self to birthday with just girls.

Really a lot of what has been going on for the past couple of days is I am missing my mom. I wish my mother was proud of me so much that it hurts. It is probably in the top three reasons I cry all the fucking time. I wish I could stop caring. I really wish I could. But I don’t want my children to stop caring about me so I don’t really see how I can model not caring about your mother and get anything different.

Part one of the English class I am teaching is over. Hindi class is over. Thank goodness. I am so tired and over scheduled I feel like shit all the time. We will do Hindi class again but I need a break. I have four more weeks of teaching English once a week. I’m having fun with the kids. They say they have picked up some useful stuff. I’m particularly enjoying the one girl who seriously came for a writing workshop. She’s producing 5-8 pages per week and she wants major feedback. I can do that! YES! I feel useful in a way I don’t get to feel very much.

Mostly I think the things inside my head are stupid and pointless and not worth knowing–that’s why I know them instead of people who are smart and who matter. Once in a while I find out that something inside my brain is useful. It’s a very powerful feeling.

“Why do you need to see a therapist?” “You know how I cry all the time. It’s not because of you. You are the best thing that has ever happened in my whole life. But a long time ago my life wasn’t this awesome. Apparently I still need to cry about it.”

I don’t cry every single day but I probably cry more than 75% of days. I have control over the anger these days… not the crying. I used to be able to control the crying and not the anger. I don’t know if this is progress or not. It is certainly different than I was when I was younger.

For the first twenty five years of my life crying was very dangerous, but I had a lot to cry about. I would say that more than half of the times I have been hit in my life it has been as punishment for crying. I’ve been hit a lot. I could not begin to count it all. So many people. So many times.

I have so much to cry about. Why am I so bad that I don’t deserve to have a mom who will protect me? Yesterday I read about a case where an adult woman seduced a 14/15 year old boy (that’s RAPE, my friends) and after she got out of jail (because that’s rape and she’s a rapist) she sued for custody of the baby she had as a result of being a rapist and is not requiring her 15 year old rape victim to pay child support.

Because being a rape victim never fucking stops. And the baby? The child born of rape? That’s the one I pick out of that scenario to identify with. No one wants children born of rape. They are treated like shit for their entire lives. They don’t get to forget that them being here on this planet is the tangible result of something terrible happening.

I feel so insecure and yet so sure that the parenting choices I am making are the only ones I can make. I feel so ashamed of myself that I can not be more like other people. I can’t. It is too late for me to join a herd.

I have caught up on the internet. I should probably leave the screen off today. I haven’t read much in a month.

to do on fence

Cover up the hideous face/hat thing. I tried to fix what the neighborhood chickees did and it looks stupid and awful. Time to cover it and try something else. Someone showing up for thirty minutes to “help” doesn’t always help.

I am up to 43 hours of work. Between Pam and Noah there have been ~5.5 hours of help. I think this means it will actually end up being a 60 hour project. YAY! It can use it.

Add buildings with religious symbols.

Add animals on Mission Peak.

More people playing in Aqua Adventure.

Add library

Add GLITTER

Add princess, unicorn, and other fantasy stuff to the enchanted garden.

Holy f’in shit. How will I do all of that in ONE DAY?!

BY GETTING OFF YOUR ASS YOU LAZY SLUG.

Three more days in the month, paint faster.

I am going to do 13-23 more hours on the fence. I want to finish this week. I suppose that means that I will be painting all day today and tomorrow and maybe Wednesday. The kids will *love* that. Not. They are very very done with me doing a task that requires intense concentration and that they not walk up and touch me. But it’s coming along!

Yesterday I started the work of unwinding the blackberry bramble from the trellis it has been on for the past year and a half. Hard to believe that the bush has been in my yard for only a year and a half. That’s one massive sucker. I have probably another five hours of work before it is transferred over to the new trellis structure (which mostly consists of retired Twisted Monk rope. Ha. My yard is visually full of it. My stuff is far too old for safe suspensions and I don’t do enough floor bondage to care. Not that I suspend anyone lately. Sigh.).

Ice skating was wicked fun and I didn’t fall *once*. I feel so proud of myself. I went off and did some speed laps on my own when the rest of my family was worn out from falling. I find it strange that my thirties are the decade of physical independence and strength. I have the courage to try things now. I am not so afraid of failing that I stay home and cry instead of showing up. I have always been afraid. It is weird to not let fear run very much of my life.

“Falling is part of the learning process. If you are afraid of falling you will never be good. You can’t get real mad either. You just have to accept it and try to do better.”

I learn these things as I teach them.

I went and talked to an old acquaintance who is a Contra dance leader person last night. I am curious about bringing the home school kids to a Contra dance because I think it is potentially interesting to them. It sounds like I should wait until more kids are closer to ten. That makes sense. That’s ok, I don’t need to do everything this year. I will start trying to teach some things in the park though as pre-prep.

It is kind of weird constantly thinking about scaffolding. What do I want them to be able to do when they are thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, fifty that requires preparation at this point. There are more things than anyone wants to think about.

Life is about a series of A/B choices. As you go on your list narrows. Do you want children–yes or no. Did you actually have children–yes or no. Do you want to work or stay at home–pick one. When you make choices you close a lot of doors. I get this. I don’t think that one road is morally superior than other roads. I don’t think that picking home schooling proves I love my kids more than anyone else. It is just the A/B choice I wanted.

Recently I wrote a fairly defensive six page letter to my grandmother-in-law. She has been expressing clearly that she has never seen home schooling go well and she does not approve. Ok. Well, I know a lot of people for whom it has gone well so if we are doing the anecdote thing I win. If we are looking at actual fucking data then I win and win and win and win. So fuck you. Home schooling has been around since the dawn of time so can we not act like the American public school system has a lock on education? Give me a break.

But I don’t say “fuck” in letters to the grandmother. Even I recognize some limits.

What I have been doing instead is writing long philosophical letters where I mention all the educational theorists and I talk about the strengths and advantages of different systems and I talk about schema and scaffolding and all the shit I’m doing.

I knew I wanted to home school my children when I was seventeen years old. I went to college, graduate school, and I got a teaching credential because I wanted to home school my kids and I believed it required preparation. No, I really and truly don’t believe that everyone should home school their kids. However I think I am fully fucking qualified and I’m not going to be nice to people who imply otherwise.

I prepared for this for more than ten years before having children. I did that knowing that there is the very real possibility that I will home school my kids till they are seven or so and then they will say, “Screw you mom, I’m going to school.” I did that knowing that if I had a child who was blind, deaf, autistic, fill in the blank special needs, I probably wouldn’t be able to home school. I prepared anyway and hoped for the best. My children appear to be very “normal” in terms of development. Shanna is advanced verbally but not emotionally or in terms of education. She just can talk. Calli is very on track to be average.

I can handle average kids. I really can. I understand that lots of people worry about home schooling as an educational choice–I worry too. But I have yet to meet someone who comes out of the public education without major gaps in their education… I can’t believe that home schooling would magically be worse. Not if I seriously undertake it as my profession.

I’ve tried to figure out how to use a word other than vocation. Now that I know I am using vocation wrong (it has way less emphasis than I want) I’m not even sure how to talk about it. Some children know very young they want to grow up and be a nun. It’s a calling. I knew I wanted to home school.

I want this intensity of relationship. I understand that not everyone wants it. I am not trying to claim that this intensity is the healthiest or the best or superior for everyone. Noah sure as shit couldn’t do what I am doing with the kids. He would go bananas. He gets very short with them by the end of a weekend. I would not leave Noah alone with the kids for more than a week by himself. I mean, no one would die or anything. They wouldn’t have much fun though.

I have been alone for most of my life in a way that other people can’t understand. Moving around all the time such that you literally don’t have friendships that last longer than three months is quite traumatic in and of itself without mentioning all the other shit in my life. I really am a freak. It is pretty verifiable if you go talk to medical professionals.

I want to be with people all the time. I want to be able to hug and touch people safely without them expecting me to offer blowjobs. I haven’t had a lot of that. I have spent most of my life believing that if I am not actively offering sex I should leave because no one is interested in my presence.

I don’t believe I “love my children more” because of the choices I make. I believe that I am using my children to meet my needs in some ways that could be massively unhealthy if I am not careful.

Shanna asks me why I see a therapist almost every time we go. She doesn’t want to be away from me for the hour of the appointment. She complains loudly. “You know how I cry all the time? Well, I cry because I’m thinking about things I need to talk about. No, I can’t talk to you about these things. It would be totally inappropriate. It is wrong for grown ups to bring their problems to children. I need someone to talk to. She helps me be a better mother.”

I am very careful that neither child becomes my “little mother”. That’s not what I want. I think that is very wrong. That is what my mother did to me. That is what my grandmother did to my mother. I am not passing on that generational wound. I believe that I (I’m not fucking talking about anyone else so don’t take this as a projection) would not be capable of taking care of my own shit and holding down a job. I think that if I had a job I would expect my kids to pick up a ton more slack than I do right now. I would expect them to “help me” because you have kids to help you–right? Isn’t that how the tradition goes?

I didn’t have kids to help me. I had kids because I want a life long relationship so bad it makes me shake with need. I had kids because I want a reason to not die and I don’t think I have very many good reasons. I don’t think other people are worth staying alive for. Other people don’t do much of anything to make my life a demonstrably better place to be. They can’t. It isn’t that they don’t care. It’s that they are living their lives and they can’t stop to take care of me. That’s not healthy in any way–there is even a word: codependence. I don’t expect people to do that. Hell, I don’t want anyone to stop their life to try and take care of me.

But being a parent means that I have to think about how relationships work all day every day. I have to do measurable work on myself to deserve this relationship. I have to change.

I was talking to a new person last night at a party. I don’t know how we got on this topic but we were discussing parental guidance with regard to reading. When I was eight my aunt (who was basically a foster mother) told me I wasn’t allowed to read Sweet Valley High books because they were too mature and graphic. (The kids made out in the sand at the beach or something.) I left her house and went back to my mother’s house where I read Bertrice Small books. Small is very into incest, pony play, harems, sodomy, raping, kidnapping, dildos, bestiality, LOTS of group sex.

That is, in a nutshell, the conundrum of my life. Those kind of hard-core pornography books were the only books my mom had in the house. I went between being punished for thinking about kissing a boy to being given a detailed instruction manual on how to have really graphic sex that I bloody well followed over and over.

I was eight when I started trying to memorize these books. What was I supposed to do in order to make people want me? I thought it was very important. I thought that was the only way people might let me be around. When the characters were taught how to behave in the harem I god damn took notes.

My children will not be reading Bertrice Small pre-puberty. The books are in my room up on a very high shelf. I still have them. I still wank to them. Oh man formative literature.

I no longer think I deserve to be beaten and raped. That is a fairly big step for me. That is how I found the bdsm community. I thought that was what I deserved and I went on the internet looking for men to do that to me. I was told to buy SM 101 and that was it. I found what I was supposed to be doing.

Let me tell you I have some cognitive dissonance sometimes. What am I supposed to be doing now? Well, painting a fence. Winding some blackberry bushes. Preserving tomatoes. Loving children. Teaching reading and writing and arithmetic.

I am supposed to figure out how to be stable and happy and a “good influence” whatever that means. Am I a good influence? I don’t know. I think that you, whoever you are, are someone who has unique gifts and talents and things to offer the world. I don’t know what they are so I can’t tell you what you “should” be doing. You have to figure it out for yourself.

When I was young I believed that my only talent/skill thing was being able to read fast. I didn’t see how that could possibly be a big deal later in life. I thought I was pathetic. Now I think that being able to read as fast I can has been an unbelievable gift in this lifetime. I can learn anything I want to know.

I am teaching myself gardening. It is complicated and there is a lot to understand. I’m learning it. I am teaching myself cooking. It’s fucking chemistry. I understand that these are things that humans have been teaching themselves without books for thousands, maybe a million years. But I am really progressing at these skills at a pace my forbearers could not imagine. That’s kind of cool.

It is hard believing in the pit of your stomach that you are stupid, worthless, and unworthy of breathing while also knowing that you are an unusual specimen of the species. It doesn’t fit in my brain. I am more competent at being able to learn things than average. Why do I feel so weak and pathetic? Because these things are impossible to measure in any useful way. Because the measurement of these qualities has nothing to do with feelings. Because I just think I suck. (Yes, but what do you suck? Suck is a transitive verb.)

I know a lot of people who make choices without thinking a lot about them. I’m not saying that is a terrible decision. If you are following the pattern you know and it works for you there isn’t a strong need to question the normal M.O. That’s fine. I can’t do that though.

I don’t think I am making the UNIVERSAL BEST CHOICES. I don’t think there is any such thing. I think I am making the choices that make the most sense for me given my set of issues and life circumstances.

I worry a lot about whether or not I am making the best choices for my children. I look at studies that say that children, in general, do “best” when they have a stay at home mother. I look at studies that verify that home schooled children, on average, do very well. But those things tell me literally nothing about whether or not I am meeting the needs of my children. I’m not sure if I am capable of knowing at this point.

My children are clean, well fed, and loved. That’s what I know. But that is pretty much exactly what the neighbor said about me to justify why she didn’t tell anyone I was being raped as a small child. How in the fuck do I know if what I am doing is right given that set of knowledge? Am I actually taking care of my kids? My mom thought she was and she wasn’t.

I tell my children that they don’t need to be like me even though I apparently have a desperate need to be like my mother. I am doing her job and I am doing it god damn better than she did. My children are safe in a way my mothers children were never safe. My children don’t need to grow up and do what I am doing any more than they have to grow up and do what Noah is doing. There is a whole wide world out there. There are so many people living in so many different ways. If you don’t like my approach, well let’s go study some other approaches. I can’t explain them like an insider so we will have to find people so you can ask your questions.

If I do anything right in this lifetime it will be to teach my children that being like me is not necessarily part of being an adult. I’m a special fucking snowflake. Don’t try to be like me.

It feels so sad that it always comes back to, “Don’t be like me. I am bad.” If you want people to like you, don’t be like me. If you want people to think you are a good person, don’t be like me. If you want people to let their children play with you, don’t be like me. Throughout my whole life people have been keeping their children away from me because I am a bad influence. From when I was three years old people have said to my face that they don’t want me around their children because I am a bad influence.

No, don’t be like me. There is no good to come of that road.

Am I really that bad? I don’t even know. I don’t know how these things are measured. I don’t know how they are decided. That process is invisible to me.

It’s kind of funny that I rarely decide that a person is “bad”. I frequently think that someone made a bad decision. I don’t conflate anyone else’s personhood with whether or not they make bad decisions sometimes. I do for me though. There is no redemption out of this pit.

Yesterday I worked on the fence for two hours. One of the old white guys who walks around my neighborhood chatted with me, as they all do, about the painting. He said that he recognized the Hindu Temple but “wished they would just go away.”

I went off. “Uhm, my family doesn’t share that opinion even slightly. I teach English classes there. My family has been taking Hindi classes there. We are glad it is on our street as a valuable resource to our community.” He looked gobsmacked.

I recently read a neat blog entry (I can’t find the link) about a white woman talking about her feelings of discomfort when people make racist comments to her and why she doesn’t say anything. Basically she wants to feel safe.

I don’t feel, as a white person, like it is ok for me to choose to feel “safe” rather than speak against racism. I think that is white privilege at its most insidious and disgusting. If another white person says something racist to me I do not keep my mouth shut. Silence is consent. When my neighbor told me his Hispanic gardeners trimmed his tree wrong and he threatened to kill them over it I told him that what he did was a criminal act and he should be ashamed of himself. He later told he apologized profusely to the gardner. You had god damn better. What the fuck were you thinking in the first place?

To me all of this consent-for-sex, racism, feminism stuff is all entwined. It’s not ok to have a better life at the expense of stepping on someone else’s neck.

Breathe in. Breathe out. It will be a long day of hard work. That will be ok. It will end. Tomorrow will be a long day of hard work. That will be ok too. Hopefully by the end of tomorrow I will finish the fence. *cross fingers* I want to be done in July. One month. I want to give this project one month of my life.

And my beloved husband has finished making me breakfast. This isn’t a eat-in-the-garage-alone-because-I-can’t-stop-crying morning. Time to go in and tell my children that I missed them while I was sleeping. I have hugs and kisses to give. I hear that they need them.

art progress

Noah helped paint! I feel so grateful for my husband. <3 We are up to a cumulative total of 25 hours. There are 15-25ish hours left.

I need to add the 7-11, ice cream store, and Irvington park. Then I am down to adding the little people doing things all over town.

I still don’t know for sure how I will clean up the farmers market section. The girls who helped didn’t actually help. They half-started some flowers that are out of proportion and in a wacky place. Sigh.

It’ll work out.

brain dump

I am on my second night of not sleeping because I am angry about the PTSD forum. Third night? I can’t even remember. This is why I backed away from facebook. Maybe my therapist is right and I shouldn’t be on this website either.

I have a chip on my shoulder the size of Wyoming when it comes to people nastily lecturing me about my behavior. You do not have the ability to foretell the future. Shut the fuck up.

But it’s all my fault if someone chooses to yell at me about how stupid I am… right? I chose to talk in public about something I did. I did not write a 20 page dissertation justifying my decision thus I am just being self-hating. If a man ever says anything sexual to a woman and she continues talking to him it will be all her fault if he later beats her and rapes her. So I’m fucking stupid for talking to this guy and asking for a boundary. Like, duh.

That sounds like a crazy person with PTSD trying to make me act even crazier than I do. Please forgive for being dismissive and nasty after you have derided me multiple times. At least I’m not doing it where she can see and I have not yet typed any of the swirling nasty names for her running about in my head.

I did go back to the thread this morning. *hang head in shame* I said that in the future I would like her to know that I am not interested in her opinion and please never comment on anything I write again. I believe her crystal ball to be out of service and I wish she would quit sharing the hysteria it is stuck on with me.

You notice how I almost never comment on other peoples writing? I probably comment on substantially less than 1% of what I read. I understand that my hysterical opinion is not usually welcome.

P, I do notice that it is a big deal that you are able to get to our house. I just think that at this point you continue to do so because you are being nice to my kids. I’m grateful that you are willing to be nice to my kids. They love and adore you and think you are smart and funny and capable. I want them to look up to women like you. I *do* understand that it is hard. I *do* appreciate it.

I just don’t know how to be unoffensive. And I don’t particularly want to offend you. So I don’t know what to say now.

I spend so much time worrying about how to not offend people. What can I possibly say or do to not offend and piss people off. I seem to piss people off by existing and breathing. (I’m not trying to dismiss the valid complaints of people who get upset with me. Sometimes I do know why people don’t like me any more. Sometimes it is very confusing though.)

I know I am a selfish asshole. I don’t know a different way of staying alive. I am not capable of living for unselfish reasons. All of my forbearance is gone. The closest I have to that left is taking care of my kids and having kids was the single most selfish thing I have ever done. So I’m not sure I can do the unselfish thing. I don’t think I would want to try. Near as I can tell the reason to live unselfishly is because your invisible sky friend told you to. Have fun with that.

I am up to twenty hours on the mural. I am somewhere between 40%-50% done. My neighbor bitched that there weren’t any people on it. My comment was I JUST FINISHED THE BACKGROUND COLORS GIVE ME A BLOODY BREAK. But he also very helpfully went and fetched a flashlight as I worked at dusk yesterday so I screeched that in a more or less pleasant way. Or at least he just laughed at me.

Yesterday he was trying to get a rise out of me (that’s basically all he does) and he was asking me if I knew anything about racing cars. After stating that I don’t watch Nascar it was kind of awesome to be able to say that I went to track school for racing Porsche’s so please don’t lecture me about how racing works. (To be clear I never actually *drove* on a track. My Owner got into that part after I left with the girl after me. Oh well. I still did the track school with him.)

So today, after the cheerful argument about racing cars yesterday, he showed up and asked me a bunch of questions. He said as he was walking up, “So now that I now I have a resident expert….”

I of course made it clear that I don’t consider myself an expert at much of anything. I am at best a dilettante. But we had a lengthy conversation and yeah I can answer a lot of questions.

Yesterday I was blessed with two (ok really four throughout the day–two adults) people coming over. One just stopped long enough to show off her HOLY SHIT DRAMATIC hair cut (she looks great) and the other friend walked around our neighborhood and looked at the fence and shared ice cream with us. The ice cream sharer brought little girls so my kids thought the day was a win.

Every day during dinner we try to go around the table sharing our favorite part of the day. My kids always say that seeing their friends is their favorite part of a day. They are really grateful when they get to see the kids they know. I am too. It is nice to still know people.

I feel really weird about trying to provide my kids steady access to people. I want them to have actual long-term relationships. I didn’t during childhood. I rarely knew people for any consistent period of time.

At this point Jenny is the person who has known me the longest and best. Everyone else comes post-bdsm period.

I went to a party recently and watched two beautiful women top a third beautiful woman. I have known the two tops for more than a third of my life.

A woman I used to date is moving back to the area. I’m having feelings about this. I’m having really intense feelings around the idea that I will never have sex with her again. It is really bothering me. I want to fuck her so bad my hands shake.

When I met my friend at the coffee shop to talk about the boundary incursion one of the things we talked about was inappropriate sexual acting out on the part of parents. That has dramatically played into his and his wife’s emotional issues–their parents not being appropriate.

I don’t think that promiscuity is always wrong. I don’t think that polyamory is wrong. I just think that I am not going to be able to model healthy versions of these. I think that *I* would be incredibly unhealthy. I am obsessive. I tend to forget everyone else in the world when I am thinking about a new (or returning after a long absence) sex partner. I think my children fucking deserve twenty years of my attention.

But good golly Miss Molly I want to fuck her. I want to. I want to. I want to. And I get the distinct impression she would really like me to. Mostly she is stone because she doesn’t trust people. (For the non-queers in the reading audience “stone” means that she does sexual things to people but she doesn’t tend to allow people to touch her genitals.) Given my long history of fucking her six ways from Sunday I’m pretty sure I would still be an exception–I always was.

I think it is that ability to side step peoples normal boundaries that drives a lot of my sex. I solicit people to actively reconsider their boundaries for me. I push them. I ask them to change the rules for me. It’s that whole selfish asshole thing.

I am having a hard time with the idea that I will never again validate someones sexuality and identity. I want to make her feel like she is beautiful and desirous and yet there isn’t a long list of people wanting to date her so she doesn’t believe me. If I’m not there to apply ego stroking… there is no ego stroking. So maybe she is only those things to me. And now I don’t want her either.

It is all very tied up in knots of shame and wanting people to feel loved and important. A lot of the reason I have always picked the partners I have picked is because I go hunting for people who are used to being told “no” and then I undo some of that damage. “Ok, maybe you aren’t a good fit with everyone but let me show you HOW AWESOME it can be to find someone compatible. You aren’t wrong or broken–you just need to find people who mesh.”

And perverts really have a hard time finding people to validate them. I’m just sayin’.

On my last trip to the dispensary I only bought edibles (not any of the sugar enhanced kinds–the variety is breath-taking these days). So I’m trying to eek them out for more than a month. So I’m under dosing for the first potion of time. Given that it is coinciding with doing EMDR again I sort of expected to hit a suicidal ideation period again. I haven’t. That is good. *happy dance* Any month without living in a multi-plex of suicidal horror is a good month. Happiness is about low expectations.

Last night putting the kids to bed was one of those magical experiences. I lay down with them for a few minutes when I got back from painting. I like hearing what they want to say as they empty their heads in preparation for sleep.

“I share my things with my family because I love my family. I share with my mama. I share with my big sister. I share with my daddy. My mommy shares with me. My big sister shares with me. My daddy shares with me. My family loves me!”

Is sharing of stuff how love is decided? I don’t know.

“I am happy! Sometimes I am sad. Sometimes I am mad. Right now I am happy!”

Yes, my beloved, feelings happen. I’m glad you are happy right now. I am too. I almost always feel happy when I get to snuggle between my two favorite girls in the whole wide world. I feel so deeply grateful that I get to have many hours a day every single day of cuddling my children. That is filling my decades old touch deficit.

I get that because Noah wants me to have it. Because I want it. He’s ok with me being selfish. I am very lucky. Not everyone wants what I have (which is more than ok–it’s kind of necessary). I feel lucky.

Ok, now I’m feeling less angry about the hysterical woman on the ptsd forum. I’m sure in her head everything is stuck on hysterical. I have totally had that feeling. I just choose to not take on someone else’s hysteria. I have enough of my own.

I think I can look at patterns and determine what will happen. I get the feeling that you absolutely MUST listen to your own impulses on this topic. Ignoring nigling feelings of worry is part of my problem. It is part of how I have ended up sexually assaulted so many times. I don’t know when to run. I absolutely get why people would want to lecture me “for my own good”.

I just honestly don’t want to hear it. You don’t know much about me. You don’t care to find out. How in the fuck do you presume to know what is good for me?

I feel lucky

It’s kind of weird, but with the letter writing I find that I am enjoying Noah’s family quite a bit. I had expected to spend most of my life quaking with terror when I saw his mom’s handwriting on a box. These days I take an intake of breath and prepare to manage the arguments (she sends a mish mash of stuff to “the girls” but often she doesn’t label what goes to whom or there isn’t something obvious in one kid’s size and there are a lot of tears) but I’m grateful to get the boxes. The letters from his grandmother are really nice too. (I got one yesterday. Thus I am thinking about it.)

I have a really good time describing the kids to them. They will never really know my children. They live too far away and don’t have any interest in visiting. *shrug* I have offered. After how many times I have been rebuffed, well, I’m planning a driving trip through there in 2015 and that’s all I’m promising in the next ten years.

Turns out I *totally* didn’t need to move the concrete this week. The dude who is picking up my hot tub came over to scout but he won’t be back for it for two weeks. I feel semi-stupid but really buff and I’m still riding that endorphin high. It was not necessary but I feel like it did measurable good for my body. Which is a little weird. Maybe I should take up weight lifting? I had no idea what a high I could get from that. (Way cheaper than pot–lemme tell you. Since weight lifting I’ve used about 1/2 of what I usually do in that time period. Ok, part of the reason for that is also because I have to go to the dispensary today. But I don’t feel undermedicated. This is nice.)

Yesterday the girls and I had a really great day. Most of our days are perfectly tolerable with some highs and lows. Yesterday was just freakin wonderful. I am so happy that I get to do this with my life.

I went and taught an English class at the Hindi temple. I get the impression that if I want a job teaching English there I can have it for as long as I want. I get the impression I could even negotiate for pay and everyone would be thrilled. (This first class was a test-run of a program that a woman is putting together. I knew it was a volunteer gig and I was cool with that.) Random people came in and asked me if I would provide tutoring. I refrained from committing.

The kids are fun. They are young. The kind of young I DELIBERATELY WENT INTO HIGH SCHOOL TO AVOID. Ahem. I’m forcing them to read Sherlock Holmes. And Grimm Fairy Tales. It’s fun. I’m forcing them to find connections in their lives and write a lot. I feel drunk from the power. 🙂 But apparently the kids are having fun and parents are already asking if I can continue this series during the school year.

My kids are remarkably good while I’m teaching. Shanna sets up “her classroom” on the other side of the room. Next time I am bringing stuffed animals for students. She goes back and forth between her different kinds of toys and “teaches” the “students” how to make things. It’s really fun. Sometimes she has to come and ask me a question about how to teach something and it is more fun than disruptive.

Then we came home for lunch and we waited around while lumber was delivered and the hot tub guy came scouting. Then we went to the water park! I am having so much fun with the girls at the water park. That season pass was the right choice. Both girls went around the lazy river once without a life vest! That’s huge. Then we went and got life vests and things were easier.

Calli begged for macaroni and cheese for dinner. I thought that might make me sick (hilariously I ate a three cheese pasta instead–I just couldn’t handle Kraft then) so we went to Applebee’s. Which is, in Calli’s opinion, the Mac’n’cheese Restaurant! Sure, why not.

I have been a lot more consistent lately with, “You must fulfill your responsibilities before you get your privileges.” I feel that is making the whole house run more smoothly. I’m not an arbitrary asshole deciding if you get stuff on a given day or not. There is a WRITTEN CONTRACT! WITH PICTURES! Things are just easier. Both kids are pitching in more with less fuss. We are still a house of screamers. Sigh. We are working on it.

I’m almost done with Little House in the Big Woods with the kids. Shanna loves it and Calli seems to only pay moderate attention. That’s on target. I haven’t done any personal new reading in weeks. I’m so tired. I can’t wait for July to end. This month is just brutal. My plan for the weekend is to spend as much time painting my neighbor’s fence as I can. Once I get that off my plate, and my friend’s husband is done at my house (I feel zero crankiness at his rate of progress–I think he is a small step down from Godhood for the rate at which he works. I don’t often feel impressed by peoples work ethics. I’m a really judgmental asshole on that front. This man impresses me a lot.) things will calm down again.

I still have more stuff I want to do in the yards but I think once he’s done with his current list I should be done for the year on yard stuff. (Monetarily–not in manual labor.) I need to talk to him about his company doing the bathroom upgrade (that wouldn’t be just him) and then that is all I can do to the house this year. (The bathroom damage from water leaking is obviously spreading now. Ah shit. It is becoming a very bad idea to put off longer. Crap crap crap. Well, good thing I have a well padded savings account.)

I feel so lucky. I have things go wrong. I have things I need to fix. I have things I’m making progress on. I can fix things. I have the money to hire people to fix things. I have the luxury to sit around just making progress on my own lists of things to do. This is not a life path every one gets. I get to decide how my time is used. I feel happy in a way I didn’t expect to feel. I feel so much gratitude for my life.

I think the PTSD support forum helps me keep this in perspective. For someone who has the symptoms I have I have a blessed life. Given how “crazy” I am–I’m doing so very well. I *am* nice to my kids. I *am* nice to my husband. Ok, I get grumpy too. On balance my grumpy days are infrequent, usually not too intense, and I apologize profusely for every word out of my mouth when I can feel that my tone of voice sucks. I know that the problem is inside me and not with anyone else. I am good at separating that.

I feel so incredibly lucky that I get to have a marriage where I can’t blame any of my mood shit on my partner. My husband is so nice to me. He is patient and kind. He is affectionate and loving without being demanding or pushy. Ok, sometimes he’s pushy. But he doesn’t push me for sex. He doesn’t push me to do things I don’t want to do. He pushes me to set higher goals. He pushes me to rest. He pushes me towards believing that I am competent and talented. He only hits me if we negotiate a lot and I ask very very nicely and then he only hits me in ways that I like. (I’m telling you, endorphins are your friend.)

Girls like me don’t end up like this. I am stable. I do my god damn meal planning a month at a time because my life is so stable. Every month when I put a new month on the white board I meal plan for the whole month and I try to invite people for dinner at the rate I like and I set up events for a whole month at a time. We have like a 75% success rate of following these plans. (Ok, I often reverse which order a given set of meals happen in but I don’t feel bad about that. We follow my plan on a month level, not on a day-by-day level.)

I’m going to travel this year to Portland to see friends. It is getting closer. This on top of having a Portland friend come down TWICE this year. That was rad. And a different Portland friend may be down here in about two weeks. I will travel to see the rest of the extended clan.  I feel very lucky that I have people who want to see me so much.

And I managed to get in some solid work on Outrunning Suicide this morning. I seem to be alternating between which book I’m writing. OS  is very different in tone, feel, and mostly in content from Part 2.

By the end of this year I hope to have another book finished.

Sometimes I feel mighty. I know I can’t do “anything” because I have limits. But I feel like my limits are so far out there that it is almost impossible for me to reach them. I don’t hit the wall very often. I just slow down and keep working.

I have these two amazing daughters. I have to be a mighty example. I have to show them that women are powerful and smart and competent. I have to show them that even if someone is financially a “dependent” that doesn’t make the person weak, ineffectual, lazy or stupid. It just means you have a contract with another person.

I want to be a positive influence so much I feel like I am choking on it. I want to be a person worthy of respect. That means I have to behave in ways that earn respect. I have to be consistent. I don’t have to be perfect.

Where are the lines? What is “good enough”?

I keep looking backwards over my shoulder at the pergola in the back yard. (Apparently that is the most accurate name for what this structure is.) I feel kind of shocked that I wanted something there and… now there is something there. It’s like magic.

In the past week I have given two mini-lectures on the topic of grafting trees. I had no idea I knew so much. But apparently I do. I read a lot. I’m very curious about how things work. I want to be able to do a lot of things. I want to be so competent that it is incredibly hard to kill me–even for me.

Martial arts are coming. Not this month. This month I can barely hold my head above water. Soon.

When I was a child there is no chance I would have believed that I could be a bad ass. According to my wonderful Shanna there is no doubt–I AM a bad ass.

I don’t know everything. I don’t know the right path for other people. I do have a lot of useful skills though. I do know a lot about human development. I do know a lot about the limitations of safety and strength. I do know how to teach. I do know how to break things down into pieces other people can grok. I’m not always good at taking things apart the first time–I need coaxing to keep taking things into smaller and smaller pieces. I can explain almost any topic to almost anyone. But it may take me a few rounds of getting deeper and deeper into the explanation in order to find the correct scaffolding for a given person.

You have to understand schema. It’s the fucking coolest concept.

I am not perfect. I am not ideal. I am not unreservedly good. I am an asshole. I am selfish. I am self-absorbed. I also stop to genuinely look at people and evaluate them–for good or for ill. I like to believe I can see people pretty well. (Not in the needs glasses sense.)

I’m good at guessing that people are underrating themselves. I’m sure I can encourage people towards being their better selves. But only if they can handle my extremely rough form of affection. I’m not sure the trade is actually worth it.

Off-schedule freak out.

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.

Emotional volatility sucks.

I woke up already crying. My belly is cramping like mad and it feels like fear. (It could be dinner, I suppose.)

I talked to my friend yesterday. After meandering a bit I got to the part where, “Painting the fence is freaking me out because every car that drives by slows down and yells at me out the window. I turn around in a blind panic (I’ve had a lot of rocks thrown at me in my life) and have to evaluate the situation fast enough to be charming almost instantly because they are actually saying something nice. No pressure. If I’m an asshole I will not build the community I want. I HAVE to be charming.”

Whenever someone asks me how much pot I use I feel ashamed of myself. How many times a day do I have some pot? At least three. Do you know why? I would like to be able to eat three meals without crying from the pain. With pot that happens. I am even capable of smiling through most meals. Without the pot I’m surly and cranky and difficult to be around and I don’t talk much. It fucking hurts and I don’t seem to be capable of thinking about other things.

My friend and I were talking about spoons. I feel weird about using the metaphor because I feel like I start out most days with such a high number of spoons that I should STFU given that it is a system designed for serious disabilities. I start every day with a freakishly high number of spoons. I CAN get a lot of things done.

Then you find out that things like someone shouting, “HEY! Whatcha doin’?!” out the car over and over and over uses a really high number of spoons. I probably had somewhere between two and three dozen people stop to talk to me. Each time I heard the “HEY!” my body locked. I was full of adrenaline and fear. I had that “This is the moment to decide to freeze or run… what should I do?” thought over and over.

That is very hard on my body. That is harder than rototilling the entire yard down three feet. (I have use of an extremely small electric rototiller that doesn’t like going down three feet. That’s a son-of-a-bitch sort of exercise.)

And I feel so guilty about how hard this is for me. Just get over it already. Geez, stop being such a whiny fucking baby.

When we went to the sex party last weekend I saw someone across the room that I had sex with at a party probably eight years ago. He didn’t recognize me at all.

That’s how it usually goes. I am either so memorable that people remember me after a thirty second conversation or I can fuck someone and they won’t remember me at all. Maybe sex isn’t the good thing people think it is.

The old guy neighbor I talk to a lot is harassing me while I paint. He clearly is trying to be friendly. Yelling at me over and over that I need to hurry up because I’m not working hard enough isn’t really funny after a while. I told him if he wants me to spread the paint faster he can come over here and I’ll dump a bucket on his head. It’ll spread real fast. He laughed but looked shocked.

I haven’t worked on the book much this week. I think the painting is harder than I thought. I’m going to spend most of today on it.

I’m really freaking out about something that is happening today but I can’t write about it. I hate that. I’m not doing so well with this whole “people don’t like me” thing lately. I know I am a piece of shit so it is ok that people don’t like me. I don’t know how to still be nice after they have decided they don’t like me.

Silence? I don’t know.

I feel really weird about the amount of approval I’m getting for the fence. I’m pretty sure that I have never had this many people say something nice to me about my actions before. I keep waiting for someone to call the police so that I get in trouble. Surely you aren’t allowed to just put paint on private buildings. (A different women in my neighborhood was contracted to paint a mural on a local liquor store (that sells the Best Ice Cream Ever) and the city said no. That’s why I didn’t ask the city before I started.)

Uhm, I need to clarify from yesterday. I have met very few people I actually think are wastes of oxygen. I have only thought we should retroactively abort a few people. I could certainly count them on my fingers and toes. And given that these are just thoughts that exist in my brain I can’t see how it is that bad. But I’ve been feeling bad since I typed. Mean spirited, nasty, harpy.

I don’t feel worthy of anything positive. I feel like I am probably the biggest waste of resources I know.

My friend said I should print out little fliers explaining who I am and what I’m doing. That way I can hand out the flier and say, “Can’t talk! Paint will dry!” It would at least be a reduction in the “Oh shit must be charming” cycle. Maybe that will be easier.

At least ten people have said, “You had better put your name down in the corner. You deserve all the credit for this.”

Hi, my name is Krissy Gibbs. I am a writer, artist, runner, home schooling mother, gardener, and a teacher. I have a lot of skills and I know a lot of things. When I see a fence that is on the unattractive side of meh I think “I could fix that.”

I asked students at our local elementary school to draw me pictures of what they love about living here. 52 kids submitted drawings. I am incorporating them as much as I can. (I was given five drawings of Mission Peak, for example, so I am doing a composite of styles and details.)

I will walk past this fence many times a week for the rest of my life. I want to see beauty. If you want to see something sometimes you have to go make it. So I did.

Feeling useful

I spend a lot of my life feeling useless and worthless. I have nothing of any value to contribute. I have no skills worth having. I tend to assume that if something is a skill *I* am capable of picking up it can’t be that hard or interesting.

Then I go out into the world and I find out that the reality is that I just have no self-esteem. Different. My whole neighborhood is excited about the fence. People are thanking me profusely. Everyone is so glad that they get to look at the painting. They don’t care if it looks like a “professional artist” did the work. They care that someone had an idea to spruce up the place and just started in on working.

It really is a relief to be copying drawings from children. It gives me a tremendous amount of wiggle room in terms of artistic technique.

I helped my friend with her graduate school paper last night. We have time scheduled for a month. She *has* to finish. And I understand the writing process and I can push her through it. If she manages to write a good paper and get her degree I’m going to be patting myself on the back for years. I can’t get my own graduate degree but I can help other people get theirs.

I am prepared for the English classes I will be teaching. I don’t know how many students. I don’t know what grade levels or reading/writing levels the kids will be at. I have enough work to keep a slow 5th grader busy or six months or a smart high school student for a solid two weeks. Let’s see how much work I need to do after this. Today is mostly diagnostic.

When I say that I don’t want to do something unless it is a vocation I mean that I’m not willing to go do something for pay that I won’t do for free. I’m not willing to take care of someone else’s kids right now. I would not be able to do so in a loving way–not full time. I would be a monster. I am not willing to teach full time for pay–I don’t have that to give. I am not willing to work for a company that will earn money from my hard work. I want to remodel my house and put in a garden that will feed me for decades.

I have luxury and privilege because of Noah. I get to make “choices” that aren’t available to other people.

When I was younger I did a tremendous amount of volunteering my time. I have always become uncomfortable the minute I am paid for something. If I’m not willing to just go do it because it is fun then it feels like a serious problem. If you have to pay me to do this then I don’t want to do it.

Apparently our belief that women don’t ask for the money they are worth isn’t as firmly based on research as one might assume. I like the whole idea, “Maybe the problem isn’t that women don’t ask for enough maybe the problem is that men ask for too much.” How’s that for spin?

Noah walks in and asks for outrageous salaries these days. I stand back and feel utter horror that someone could be such a presumptuous schmuck. Then they give him how much money he asks for.

Many of the neighbors have expressed shock that I would paint the fence for free. That seems utterly bizarre. I get to look at it every time I walk through my neighborhood for the next goodness knows how many years. That is a reward. That is something I lacked before painting it.

I feel like a complete asshole sometimes. I have the luxury of donating my time and materials (paint ain’t cheap) because I have a husband who can ask for a lot of money. Doesn’t that make me a using piece of shit? Noah doesn’t hate me.

After looking up the word vocation it just means a strong feeling of suitability. Well that explains why I am using it differently and wrong. I don’t mean just that it feels suitable. I mean that I must do it. I suppose I should pick a different word.

One man said, “How did you get permission to do this?” “I asked.” He looked floored. Really? All I did was ask? Ok, so I asked a friend who is fluent in Chinese to help me write a letter and her whole family ensured that I was sucking up properly and that’s how I got permission. Let’s be clear here.

I’m not making the whole world better. But I’m making my neighborhood better. I’m not a big fish in a big pond. I never will be. Does that mean I have less value? Is the good I bring into the world of no merit just because it will only be felt by a few people? I don’t know.

How much good do you have to produce in the world in order to not be a waste of oxygen? I don’t know. I know that I consciously consider this question. I know that I look around at a lot of people I know and consider them a waste of resources. (Yes, I *am* that big of an asshole.) I’m not going to go tell them to commit suicide or anything. I assume they provide some value that I just don’t see.

Every person on this planet is valued for what they can do. Sometimes all they can “do” is look pretty and that causes other people to feel good. I uhhhh don’t want to be in that cohort. I understand that it is what some people have to offer–I just don’t prize it much. Good thing I am unusual and everyone else thinks those people are AWESOME or maybe I would cause people to have low self esteem.

When I’m having my existential crises about whether there is any point in continuing to live (It sounds really lame and whiny when I’m not feeling suicidal.)  I very consciously evaluate whether I make more good in the world or bad. I know I make bad in the world. Do I do enough good to make up for it?

I am increasingly more ok and less ok with judging people as I get older. On one hand I understand the scope of someone else’s life better as I get older–it makes me more patient and sympathetic. On the other hand I think most people don’t do half of what they are capable of and I’m kind of sick of this shit.

I’m processing some stuff with friendships that have ended. I still feel like shit. I feel like it is all my fault even though I can make lists of things that went wrong and my column isn’t the only one with entries. I’m not saying that it is all someone else’s fault. I’m saying we are all human and we all fuck up.

How do you learn how to talk about “triggers”? When I read on the internet about people feeling “triggered” I think it doesn’t mean what I think it means.

In retrospect I can see how my ability to be “ok” with someone will unravel if they repeatedly promise to be responsible for giving me food and they don’t. I have a problem with that going back to early childhood. I’m not worth people bothering to feed. I should just die. After a fairly brief period of time if someone jerks me around over the topic of food I am not going to be able to treat that person like a neutral party. I am going to treat them like someone who wants me to die and I am going to get violent and angry. If I think really hard it has happened more than once.

I have watched this as my relationship with my kids has changed over the past five years. I am like a dog who cannot be approached while eating. I have a lot of food issues and I get angry and violent when people say they will give me food and don’t.

Sometimes I feel like a petty piece of shit. My mom used to eat at Orange Julius a lot. For most of my life just thinking of the name or seeing the logo is enough to make my body go haywire. I am instantly full of adrenaline and I’m ready to attack someone.

I ate fucking ramen every fucking meal and she went out to eat.

I ate leftovers that weren’t that good and she went out to get a smoothie because “she didn’t feel that well”. I don’t feel that well either. And I don’t like this food. But I have to eat it even though you won’t even fucking eat it. Fuck you you fucking fuck.

None of this is rational. At this point in time I just make sure that there aren’t many people responsible for providing me with food. When I went camping with my friend and her family I freaked out about a lot of the same stuff.

Wait, my end of this bargain is something I don’t like and I will have to do whether it is shitty or not and you get to just sit there and watch me do this shitty thing? You get to opt-out though? Oh wait. You are *special*.

I hate you. I hate you. I hate you. I want to break your nose. I want to punch you in the kidneys until you pee blood for a month you piece of shit.

Entitlement. I have too much entitlement. I think that if I am suffering someone else better fucking be suffering too. Or I will make them suffer.

No, I’m not nice.

Do I do this to my kids? I don’t think I have so far–they don’t feel like responsible parties. I think I get mad at responsible parties–people who can and should be held accountable for their own actions.

That makes me feel nervous about them growing up. Am I just waiting until they hit some magic age to blow up at them? I hope I get this under control before then.

If I manage to find a way to not depend on my kids then it will work out. That sounds like a terrible set-up. One of my many problems is that when someone promises that they will take care of me but they are lying…. I can’t reconcile that in my head.

You want to take care of me. But you don’t take care of me. You lie to me. You lie to me over and over. You think it would be nice if the universe somehow magically took care of me but you are going to fuck me over. You are selfish and self-absorbed and you only care about yourself. You are not capable of evaluating what you are actually capable of. You over promise and under deliver over and over and over.

This is why I am so afraid of promising anything. I don’t want to be like you.

If I promise something I am going to kill myself getting it done. Why do you think I have given up just about everything else in my life to parent? I said I would do this. I decided at the beginning what standard of behavior was ok from me and I have a ridiculous success rate on hitting my prescribed metrics.

I am doing what I said I would do.

It means that I can’t have a lot of other things. It means that many other dreams must be deferred or abandoned. Life is about choices.

I can choose to think that “my” stuff is more important or I can choose to think that my commitments are more important.

Do I have this hubris because I am able bodied? Mostly able bodied? I have times in my life where I end up laying on the floor sobbing for hours because my back is spasming. When I am alone with my children it doesn’t matter that I feel unable to function. I crawl to the kitchen and they get their fucking food.

Ok, so this abdominal pain thing isn’t a hernia. Other possible suspects include IBS. Guess what? I started drinking carbonated water after my kids were born. Carbonation is a known irritant to IBS. (I switched to carbonated water because I was trying to get off juice because sugar is bad for you–right? This was a big step down from my early life of living on soda. I have never drunk still water by habit. Ever.) I haven’t had carbonation in over a week (pretty amazing for me) and probably 75% of the pain is gone. That horrible throbbing thing right in that one spot just isn’t hurting.

However, in researching what this is I found out that it probably isn’t normal that I have had diarrhea for most of my life and I live my whole life around knowing where bathrooms are because I need to pee and/or poop so frequently. Apparently eight loose stools a day is probably a sign that I am not healthy. Well, shit. (pun intended.)

It is probably time for allergy testing.

I don’t take care of my body very well. I don’t know how. Looking around at my culture I can see why. People reap what they sow. I don’t think I will use the family recipes that my mother so laboriously hand copied for me almost ever in my life. I don’t cook with canned food. I don’t depend on bottles of “sauce” for my calories. I don’t put Crisco in everything.

There were reasons they did. But I don’t want to be like them.

Kids are waking up. It’s going to be a very busy day. Time to stop whining.

Progress report.

So.Forking.Off.Schedule.

I did five hours of unexpected painting today. Now I think this will be a forty to fifty hour project. Oh man. I don’t think I booked enough time over the next month. I don’t know how this is going to work.

Well, no way to get through it but to just up and do it. This too shall pass.

I am always much happier about the idea of being done with a project than I am about the work. I was bitchy for over an hour of painting. Then I finally relaxed.

I had a lovely chat with the lady who lives there. She thanked me repeatedly for painting her fence and gave me three little tomato sprouts. I thanked her. I’m shocked she is letting me do this. So far she likes it. That’s good.

The old guy down the road wasn’t avoiding me. My paranoia can end. *Phew* He was just super busy and then out of town. I got to hear all about his travels to I-de-ho recently. He is getting bawdier and bawdier and he swears more and more as he talks to me. He is starting to think of me as One Of The Guys. I can tell. It is always a funny shift when older men realize they can’t shock me.

Today I feel so glad that I get to have this life. My therapist wants me to walk around my house with a video camera looking at the pictures on the wall. She wants me to tell a story with them. She thinks it will be good for me.

I told her that I put the pictures up because I have a hard time reminding myself that anyone would care if I died. I largely put the pictures up so I can’t walk through my house and pretend I don’t matter. There are a lot of pictures on the wall of people who would be very upset and hurt if I died. I need to remember that.

I tell my kids that I put them up so that the kids will learn who their family is. That’s a much better story for them.

I appreciate that my therapist validates me as a parent so much. I mean, I think I am doing a good job of meeting the goals I am setting for myself as a parent and as a person. I really and truly have gotten my temper under control. I don’t rant and scream. I don’t hit. I don’t terrorize my children. I just don’t. I have a very mellow relationship with them. We are all working hard on life together.

We have one more Hindi class before two 1.5 hour oral exams. Oof. I need to study more.

I start teaching English on Thursday. I need to copy the short story. I need to pick the short story. And put together questions. And decide what I’m going to teach. And, err, basically every other aspect of teaching. No big deal, right? It’s only in 36 hours. No rush or anything.

Enh, ten kids for two hours. No big deal.

I’m really grateful for my friends. I know some good people.

I had a raunchy good time at a sex party this weekend. My husband puts out very well. Yay! I continue to have mixed feelings about how much better sex is when someone is watching. That would be exhibitionism, ma’am. I feel quite grateful that I found a partner who is so sexually compatible. *swoon* I no longer need to find many men for a night. Ha. He’s enough.

I’m not actually that off-schedule. Just a bit. But I’m going to need to up how much I plan to paint this week. Oy. It will all work out. The work, it will get done. I will it so.

I feel weird about how much I feel like most of the effort of my hands “doesn’t matter” and “isn’t important” and “has no value”.  How much of that perception is tied to my internalized misogyny and devaluation of womens work?

Today I told a (female) friend that I am glad that my daughters are growing up in a little bubble where most movies/tv/books pass the Bechdel test (1. It has to have at least two [named] women in it. 2. Who talk to each other. 3. About something besides a man)

My friend said that sounded exhausting after we talked about the three movies she recently watched in one weekend all of which fail the Bechdel test. I kind of blinked. Exhausting? I think that my world is wonderful and comfy and carefully constructed over many years. I feel like I finally get to relax for the first time in my life. No one here is going to tell me that I can’t do _____ because I’m a girl. Noah assumes I am more generally competent at most of the butch tasks in our house… because I am.

I don’t live in a world of female side kicks. I’m not going to fucking be one. I don’t need women to be the only characters but it is very rare for me to watch an all male movie. (Big exception for Shawshank Redemption.)

I look at the world created in mainstream media and don’t see a place for me. So it isn’t part of my life. I don’t miss it. I don’t feel sad about not participating. I don’t see why that would be exhausting. It’s a good thing everyone gets to be different.

I want to learn about the wisdom of women. I have no grandmother to learn from. I read books and watch movies. What lessons have women learned before me? Which wheels do I not bloody need to reinvent? I don’t find those same lessons in male-oriented movies.

Given that I am not allowed to punch people randomly in the face when I’m in a bad mood I don’t find action flicks enjoyable. It raises that “want to punch people” feeling. It isn’t that fun to suppress.

August needs to be slower. Ugh. We have another wedding coming up. (I’m not the officiant but it will be great!) Lots to look forward to. Lots to do. I can’t die yet.

Day one of painting

 

Not sleeping well.

I don’t sleep much while it is hot. My err internals are unhappy. I worked on a book for a while this morning. *pat self on back* Now if I can just keep this up I might be more than a one hit wonder. Not that my book was a hit. You know what I mean.

I’m kind of tired and mellow feeling. It is actually nice. Noah is going to take Shanna to camp today (she said please and all) so I will be at the nursery at 8:30 when it opens. A friend asked to come over and garden with me today. I can barely contain my squee. We will be weeding and mulching and such. (Yes, Pam I saw your note about “just use cardboard.” All of the cardboard on my property is still in good shape and the kids play with the boxes.)

I absolutely HAVE to work on the fence today. No excuses! I was productive all of yesterday… just not on the fence. This is going to be difficult to force myself to do. I can tell. I’m terrified of fucking up and having people make fun of me or hate me. Oh well. Keep working.

This morning I was foolish and I read some of that nasty anti-home schooling stuff. Oh boy are some people pissed off about even the *idea* of home schooling. Has someone tried to force you into something? Is there a reason you are SO ANGRY with people who make this choice? No? Ok then.

I get the logic that putting my kids in school would be better for the other kids in the school because then I would be forced to be involved with the school and I would make it better for not just my kids. I absolutely agree with every step in that process.

I just can’t get onboard with the part where I am supposed to throw my kids under a bus because it would be better for someone else. My experiences of public school have been bad. Not just for me as a student, but as a teacher and as a person in the credential program.

I won’t force my kids to be part of that system. I don’t believe it is healthy for our species to be forced to sit in chairs for 6+ hours/day while quietly listening to someone else. Nope. Not what we are meant to do this lifetime.

I understand that this is a privileged position. I believe that I am stinking with privilege. I have choices that many people can’t even dream of. I think that is positive and I am not going to give up my choices just because they aren’t available to everyone.

I don’t see 5 star restaurants going to a McDonald’s level of pricing (and food quality) just so that it is faaaaaaiiiiiiiiirrrrrrrr to everyone involved.

Life isn’t fair. At all. Ever. There is no fair.

That said, I am pretty happy that Noah’s obscene raise came with a much lower than expected amount of money. Ahhh skipping tax brackets. That’s ok. We don’t actually need all of the money. It’s ok that it is being used for services for people who need them. I feel pretty good about that.

I can give some things in some ways. I can’t necessarily give what someone wants or needs. I don’t want to be responsible. I am too selfish. I will donate money and food. I will assist with my labor when I have extra spoons and not when I don’t. I am not going to be forced to sign up for working all the god damn time for someone else’s benefit. I don’t care enough about other people.

I can say that out loud. I don’t care enough about other people to give them the time and energy I want to use on my own selfish pursuits.

Could I donate more time so that I am making other peoples lives at least slightly less awful if not better? Probably. Almost certainly. There is no shortage of suffering in the world.

Some people feel motivated to help a lot a lot of the time. That’s awesome. I’m glad you have so much to give. I don’t have it. If I try to do that I end up spending a lot of time cutting my body to remind me that I don’t matter so I don’t forget who I am supposed to be focusing on.

Cutting really is a useful tool. I think about it a lot. I think about what it does and why it is useful in the ways it is useful. Self-control is both under rated and under valued by most people. Very few people have the self-control to abruptly shift large chunks of their behavior. It is the same thing as not that many people are truly good actors. Same mechanism.

Cutting influences a lot of brain chemicals. Cutting is a dramatic shift to the body chemistry makeup. It induces calmness and a feeling of focus–tunnel vision, really. When your body is in shock it tends to shut down a lot of your nerve endings. You stop getting a lot of distracting messages from your body.

Cutting allows me to borrow spoons of self-control. I don’t really have that kind of calmness in my body without something to trigger a much-larger-than-usual grab of chemicals. Yay drugs! Due to experimentation I have learned a lot more about what my base level is vs. what is my elevated mood vs. what is my depressed mood. It’s a process.

Sometimes it is very powerful to stop and really concentrate on how powerful my brain is (your brain too; just sayin’). The brain scans they are doing these days feel like magic to me. You can see what is happening. The most magical part is you can see how people have the sheer willpower to change things.

I believe that my brain was altered by trauma. What I mean by that is I believe my brain adapted to living in an environment with a freakishly high level of stress. That is the level of stress my brain believes is necessary/appropriate to common life.

If my brain adapted to stress, how can I consciously choose to change the adaptation again? Studies show that mostly people don’t change much. It is hard. It takes will and effort and work and misery.

Being inside my brain sucks bowling balls through a hose. It isn’t fun. The difficulty of changing things is really hard to notice when stacked up to how shitty it is to live here.

I believe in magic. I believe that people make things happen when everyone else believes that it can’t. It happens all the time.

I have had the good/bad privilege of spending a lot of time with people who have experienced severe traumatic brain injuries. I have seen people survive the most horrifying accidents with terrible injuries. Their lives are forever altered. They can’t get back to being who they were.

I have no before picture I am struggling towards. That isn’t part of my story. I don’t have a base line to return to. All I have is the absolute all encompassing belief that I can change the story. I can learn how to be a good parent and I can be present through a healthy and happy childhood. This is not about a return to anything. This is about consciously choosing something different from my life.

Last night we read the part in the Little House in the Big Woods where Pa teases Laura about the kids getting only a switch in their Christmas stocking if they are bad. Shanna’s eyes went wide.

“Those parents hit those kids?”

“Yup. A long time ago people believed that if a kid did something bad the parents were required to hit the kid to teach the kid a lesson. It never worked very well.”

“Gosh I’m glad that no one has to be hit in this house.”

Me too. She cuddled up really close after that and told me that she would never hit me because I have been hit enough. I didn’t really know how to respond. I kept reading.

I’m reading my friend’s book. It is a rather fun read so far. I’m about 20% into it. He combines irreverence and history in his fabulous manner. (He intersperses national/international news events on the time lines to let people get a scope on what is happening. He said which year (I’ve already forgotten–1800’s, I think the last number is a 4 or a 6 but the decade escapes me and that is pretty important.) that Beethoven began de-composing. Similar gems are liberally sprinkled. I’ve always liked his writing. That’s why I know him in the first place. Yay for internet friends.

Why is it that I feel like I am standing still and free falling at the same time? I feel like I am not doing enough and I am terribly bored and I feel like I am doing too much and I am so overwhelmed I cannot possibly keep functioning at this rate.

I’m not balancing the marathon vs. sprint timing thing very well. I’m not actually talking about running–it’s one of those metaphor things.

Gardening has a rhythm and I am struggling to learn it. Some months of the year I need to spend 40 hours/week in the garden. Some months I spend more like 1-2 hours/week. I don’t yet feel this rhythm in my bones but it is coming. Spring is like a drug for me these days. Must move. Must plant. It is weird and primitive.

Summer is feeling different. I am a delicate and trembling flower and I wilt in the heat. More accurately I have attacks of horrifying bowel pain. I HATE SUMMER. I spend hours a day not sure if I am on the verge of spontaneously vomiting or shitting my pants because I won’t make it to the bathroom in time. It is hard to keep a schedule when I feel like this. (For the record I have only had one bathroom accident since childhood. The first day Noah went back to work after Shanna was born I had not yet learned that post-children the urgent signals are uhhh less timely and more actually urgent. Eww. Eww. Eww.)

But I have managed to go to the water park at least one day a week since it opened for week days. *pat self on back* That is a summer routine that I want to start. We only stay for an hour to an hour and a half. We might stay longer if the kids could do more swimming on their own and I had to do less work. As is I don’t have the physical ability to manage entertaining them in water for four hours. I take this as a sign that I am out of shape.

I feel like what I should do is make up a variety of different schedules–the way I did when I was teaching. Year planning was my favorite step. <3 It is like a puzzle! What do you want to do and when? How does it all fit together to make a cohesive picture of education? How do I fit in all of the standards and methods of teaching I want to hit?

I used to list: poetry, grammar, writing, reading boring analytical non-fiction, reading novels, reading short stories all as separate units. How many weeks to spend on each? How many hours in those weeks? How do I pre-test to figure out what people already know so I don’t bore the shit out of people? How do I evaluate people accurately to find out what they really learned?

If I had a dick this process would give me a hard on. It is a control thing. I like feeling like I am dotting all of my i’s and crossing all of my t’s. (I understand that in that case the apostrophe isn’t strictly appropriate but it looks bad any other way of writing it. See, this is what many years of obsessively worrying about grammar gives you. You know the rules and don’t follow them any way because the rules suck. Go English?)

I probably should get out some paper. It is easier without typing.

What are my categories now? Gardening, schooling, social activities, making food, cleaning house, money (there are a lot of once a year payments, for example, so budgeting is kind of weird), kid-separate-from-adult-time (my kids are *not* actually attached to me at the hip very consciously), reading, writing, running, hygiene (this takes time! Every Damn Day!), and I could come up with more if I tried.

They are all on slightly different schedules. Some things are scheduled and balanced on a month to month basis, some things are scheduled and balanced weekly or even daily. How do you balance all of the daily obligations against the weekly and monthly and annual?

Near as I can tell most people do more or less what their parents did because that is what they know of life. Thus I do a lot of robbing Peter to pay Paul because that is what I learned. I do it while squirreling away a lot of money which is, strangely, also what I learned.

I don’t usually mention that my father was rather well off throughout my childhood. I lived in poverty. I ate nothing but ramen and free lunch. I moved every three months because we were couch surfing and my mom couldn’t pay rent. He would tell my mom he was too poor to pay for things but he had a lot of savings. My mom just flat never had enough money to live.

Shanna sees me play with Mint a lot. She asks what it is. I talk to her about the balance of wants and needs and future savings. I tell her, “If you save money and you have a buffer then you don’t have to feel afraid when unexpected things happen. You can just shrug and move on with your life. Not having savings is one of the scariest things in life. It means you can not go out and solve the problems that come up and that is really hard.”

When I lived on $1200/month I had $3,000 in the bank at (almost) all times in a savings account I otherwise didn’t touch. My theory was that I might have to leave suddenly at some point in time and I needed a buffer. I burned through the buffer when I left my Owner. I got down to the point of my bank account only having four digits.

My friend offered me $100. He said that was his friends-need-help emergency fund. I wouldn’t let him give me money. I told him that I would make it come out ok in the end. I was right.

It is harder to deny yourself things you can afford to buy than it is to not buy things when you have no money. That has been my experience. It is harder and harder for me to save money. (In my defense the largest chunk of my spending is going to paying the mortgage off faster. I shouldn’t feel so upset with myself for not “saving” when I am spending the money on debt pay off instead of consumer spending but there you go.)

A while back I read a book, Raising the Perfect Child Through Guilt and Manipulation and whereas I am not up for adopting most of her methods or practices (I’m not taking up Catholicism nor sports) I really latched on to a few important points in the book. If you are really nice to your kids and you are interested in them and you share things with them then they will want you to like them. If they want you to like them then they will make choices that are in line with your values.

Oh man.

What are my values then? I want my kids to be interested in life and in people. Most people are good. Most people are pretty kind when given the opportunity. If someone is not kind to you, pull back first but be able to attack to defend yourself. You are worth defending. Read as much as you can–as many different kinds of things as you can. I believe that there are more things to learn than there is time in the day to learn it. I want my children to believe that their body is theirs to do with as they please–not as someone else pleases (unless it is fun and then I just don’t want details–m’kay?). I want my children to believe that work is necessary and fun. I want them to understand that different people are good at different kinds of work and that is no judgment one way or another on the people or the work. Do what you like.

I want my children to understand that they have privilege. That their ancestors have been privileged for quite some time. What does that mean about our place in the world and in history?

I check a lot of books out of the library that deal with African American issues. Seeing my little Aryan baby read, “A long time ago before you or I were born our people were enslaved” makes me wince. I told her that actually her ancestors were the slave owners. She asked if my ancestors owned slaves and I got to say no. (Yankees, more-recent-immigrants, and prostitutes for the win.) There goes white guilt in full form! But it’s true. Noah’s family owned slaves.

I find that as I get older and as I read more feminist writing I realize that if I were to fall into the most obvious trope presented to me I should hate Noah. I should hate everything he stands for and everything about him.

That is really hard to live with. I’m sure that is as hard to live with as the trope that women are just meant to be props for a man’s life.

I don’t hate Noah. I like Noah. Having the life of privilege he has had has made him one of the kindest and most considerate people I have ever had in my life. But maybe he just treats me that way because I put out. I’m only sort of kidding.

I am nice to Noah and he is nice to me and we have a whole virtuous cycle thing going on. Different people care about different kinds of “being nice”. Different people want different kinds of support.

In the past three days I have talked to four different women who have all been extremely upset with their (male) partners because of a lack of support. In most of these cases the woman can’t even put her finger on what more support would look like but they know they aren’t getting it. (Mothers of many children can come up with a list of what they want without having to pause for breath.)

When I think about how upset these women are I stop and think about how tired Noah is. Then I cycle through my male friends who are working as hard as they physically can to support their partners.

Yes, yes I know that the “love languages” crap plays in with it but it feels bigger than that. I think that evolution wants us to feel like what this person is giving us isn’t enough so that we will go shopping for someone who provides us with more. I think that it is just a good bet in terms of producing prosperous off-spring.

Only it doesn’t work. Because splitting up families is hella complicated. I think about the interweaving needs that exist in a family. I think about how children learn to care for themselves and for one another earlier when there are more of them around.

Then I come back to the fact that Noah started off in this world no bigger or stronger than me but he is now in some ways. He may or may not have a higher IQ. I definitely have a higher EQ. He has a higher earning potential at this stage. I can run farther. We are different. We are not equal.

How does one measure worth? I can hate him as a symbol of oppression or I can recognize that he personally isn’t oppressing anyone and he hasn’t spent a lot of time actively doing any oppressing. Living with me has dramatically changed how feminist he is at work. (I feel damn proud of that.)

He is moving in the direction of having power and influence. And I stand behind him filling his ear with my opinions. Does that make me a prop? Is he a prop? Is he just a paycheque to support my lavish lifestyle?

We are good at very different things. We like very different things. We complement one another. And because we are white that means that we have what is sometimes presented as the widest array of options in life.

My demographic is mocked up one side and down the other in the media. I am an upper middle class rich white liberal. I am a stay at home mom and I home school my kids. I am a punch line and a punching bag. Waa waa poor me.

Do I want to be a caricature? Do I want to treat Noah like he is a caricature? Noah is an upper middle class rich white liberal gamer geek. Doesn’t that make him kind of icki by definition? And don’t let that sicko watch My Little Ponies!! Ahem. Sorry.

What does being anything mean? I never identified as trailer trash despite living in trailers off and on and despite white trash being so much less “ok”. I am not defined by the box in which I sleep. Or in which I fuck random men I just picked up.

What am I?

I told Noah the other day that most of the people in my family would describe themselves as good people who sometimes do bad things. They are rapists and pedophiles. Ok, most of them aren’t rapists. But even the non-rapists adamantly defend the rapists.

I think of myself as a bad person who doesn’t really do bad things very often. I believe I am inherently unworthy of any relationship. It is inevitable that I will kick the cabinet off the wall. Duh. Being the kind of person who can, has, and may do so again means that I am just bad.

Do I rape people? Well, I’m pretty confident that I have not raped anyone since I was eighteen. I am pretty sure that I did commit rape before then. I am so sorry. I didn’t understand what I was doing. I didn’t understand power differentials. I didn’t understand that I was ever capable of having power.

Sometimes I look at Noah and I understand on a gut level that he doesn’t see himself as someone who has or has ever had power. He is still in that timeless place with the little boy who wasn’t treated all that well.

I mean, not that he’s immature or anything–that’s not what I’m trying to say. I’m saying that ones internal perspective doesn’t much resemble other peoples view of one. See how that non-gendering thing is awkward?

I do not believe I am a good person. It is, frankly, freeing. I get to make selfish and self-interested choices without caring that much about the effect. I generally do take the effect into consideration because I will have to live with it and all. That is one of the best parts of getting older. You have had a chance to learn from more mistakes.

Every time someone tells me not to dwell on the past I wonder what they mean by that. The people I know who tell me, “I don’t think about the past” are people who have the same little cycle of life over and over with people who are practically paper dolls. People who are roles.

I don’t hate Noah. I don’t feel I can. The longer I know him the older and more grizzled he becomes. (He’s got quite the beard these days.) But I see him as younger and softer as time goes by. I see more of his innocence and his desire for simple connection. I see more of him wanting to be liked and feeling sad because he knows most of the world doesn’t like him very much. (I mean, he’s charismatic and has friends and all–but he’s a symbol to be hated.)

What does any of it mean? Nothing? Everything? Who knows. I like him. I like the life I get to share with him more than I have ever liked anything in my whole life. I feel grateful for the peace and joy in my life. I have stability, safety, and privilege. I can write for six hours straight (in various places on differing projects) when I have insomnia (or intestinal pain–let’s be clear here) after getting almost six hours of sleep because my husband helps so much.

I can invite two kids over for the weekend and trust that my husband will just be around making food and cleaning up messes and playing with kids as much or more than I do.

Sex. That is the thing to schedule that didn’t make the list. I’m sorta interested in my cycles around that as well. Obviously I am more interested in sex around ovulation. We often have most of our ten times a month sex in a four day period. It’s awesome. But he would prefer other spacing. I struggle internally with treating sex like a chore to cross off the list like brushing my teeth.

And yet.

Why am I having sex ten times a month? (Ok, I’ve actually had at least two months in the past year where I didn’t put out ten times and I’ve had paroxysms of guilt. I try to compensate by some months getting up to more like fifteen. Noah agrees that it balances and all is copacetic.) Because sex is a lot of where Noah gets positive energy. He is drained and tired all of the time. If I put out more he would have more energy. This is a pretty trackable situation in our life.

But it is different for me. Sex is different than it has ever been. HA! I’ve been trying to think for days what base lines I have in my life. People revert to base line when they are under stress. I finally came up with one: picking up strangers for sex. That is probably the primary base line behavior I have had in life. I did it for 27 years.

Monogamy is weird. I’m not even going to call it boring because it isn’t that it is boring. It is consistent, but not boring. It feels different in a lot of ways I don’t feel up to putting into words right now. I hear breakfast finishing up and my arms hurt.

And then I’ll just abruptly stop. Because I can’t end for shit.

Stand still. Get moving.

Today I get to sand the fence as long as I can stand. At 2pm the exterminator is coming to make a dent into the waves of ants hitting our house (we are losing the battle). At 3:30 Shanna has her penultimate dance lesson. At 4:35 (like that timing there?) We go to her swim class. We are bringing a kid and a mom home from swim class for dinner. So I should make something in the crock pot. At 6:20 Calli has swim with Noah.

Long and busy day. But I go no farther than three miles from my house. That will be good. I think all but two days out of the next month have at least one and often three or four things scheduled on a day. Some of them are many hours in the day. Oh boy.

Don’t think. Work.

Feeling insecure. The way I live is weird. I feel it acutely sometimes.